Проанализируйте и переведите следующие предложения. 3 страница

14. The Scottish National Party (SNP), which had campaigned quite
ineffectively since it was founded in 1928, became a significant political
force when it latched on to the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1960s to
argue that an independent Scotland could escape from the economic de­
cline caused by the collapse of traditional heavy industry.

15. Given the contempt with which I hold television, why would I
want to appear on it to promote a new book that deals with its perverse
effects? I have no easy answer. I struggle daily to find one. The best that I
have been able to come up with is that I believe strongly that there is a
deep, unsatisfied hunger on the part of the American people for some­
thing better, for something that speaks directly to our constant search for
meaning on the basic issues of life itself.

16. Egypt was committed, under its agreements with the IMF, to de­
nationalise one of the four state banks that together control 60% of retail
banking. When the agreements expired, with no bank privatised yet, the
IMF decided to give the government more time. Although Egypt's banks
have a sounder reputation than some in the region, their closets still rattle
with the skeletons of dodgy loans, handed out to inefficient state enter­
prises on government instructions.

17. One reason why foreign investors still tend to hold back is that
they are seldom invited to buy a controlling share of a company. The law
has been changed so that there are no longer restrictions about the spe­
cific level of foreign shareholding; moreover, the new laws on repatriat­
ing capital and profits are very liberal. But multinationals tend still to
think that the government's policy is not quite convincing: the legal
groundwork for offering them a controlling share is there but it doesn't
often happen in practice. Bad public relations, say Egyptians, plus preju­
diced foreigners.

18. Mr. Clinton's domestic critics are dismayed. They understand his
words are another sort of code: permission for the appeasement-minded
on the Security Council — including Russia, China and France among
the five permanent members — to plead mitigation for Iraq and so make
a military response from the 35,000 American servicemen currently mas­
tered in the Gulf anything but automatic.

19. Hungarians like to think that ethnic hatred is something that takes
place only in the Balkan badlands to the south. The government also re­
alises that it needs to be seen to be doing something — not least if its
own lecturing of its neighbours on the fights of ethnic Hungarian minori­
ties is not to sound hollow. But what? — The government acknowledges
that the country's current policy is inadequate, that all is not well with its
showpiece policy, a system of ethnic self-government. These autono­
mous, democratically elected bodies are quite good at doing such things
as organising dance troupes for ethnic Germans, but are ill-equipped to
deal with the many problems facing gypsies.

20. Donors can still help by spreading knowledge of a technological
or institutional sort. This is one rationale for (small-scale) project aid. But
what donors should not be spreading in these cases are large quantities of
cash. That policy not only wastes money; it also undermines political
support for every kind of aid, including those that work. While it remains
true — as this study makes crystal-clear — that the key to development
is good economic policy, and that this is something, which only the gov­
ernments concerned can put into effect, aid can play a useful role. It is up
to donor governments to see that it does.

21. From the recruiting sergeants who haunt the high schools and
malls and Mс Donald's across America to the generals who count bunk
and beans, there is a growing concern that generational and demographic
changes have overtaken the ideals of military service.

22. Sweden, of all places, has one of the most segregated work forces
in the West. And while it didn't much matter economically when Sweden
was a prosperous, welfare state, the country faces increasing pressure to
tighten its belt. Sweden can no longer afford the disparity, needing
women to contribute their full share into government tax coffers and pen­
sion funds. In fact, economists and policy makers warn that this is a
challenge that much of Europe will face.

23. Economic and social transformations of the past 20 years of re­
forms are likely to have been less destabilising than if modernisation had
not taken place.

This does not mean that social instability poses no risk at all. A seri­ous economic downturn would make it harder for the government to buy off the disaffected.

What of the party? Here lies the problem. For, much as China's econ­omy and society have been transformed, its political structure has not. Its political institutions were designed to change society, but are now inca­pable to adapt to it.

24. The high divorce rate and liberated lifestyles of the boomer gen­
eration may now be producing more cautious, conservative attitudes
among the young. «Generation X-ers basically believe the baby boomers
went too far with their lifestyle, taking it to the brink», says Ann Clurman
of Jankelovich Partners. «Children of divorce are 50 per cent of gen X-
ers. They think they are victims of divorce and want to pull back from the
precipice. Down the road we will definitely see less divorce».

25. Like the Council of Ministers, the EU Parliament has been accru­
ing power at the Commission's expense. Yet, it too suffers from weak
leadership. It needs to attend to its own faults if it is to exercise better
control over the executive, bringing to an end, in particular, its expensive
dual life in Brussels and Strasbourg. Best stick to Brussels, even though
this would require a treaty change.

26. Germany's chancellor faces two general difficulties and one par­
ticular one. First, he has to show that he really has some sense of what he
wants to achieve: he has, in other words, to dismiss the impression that he
has no central values and no clear idea of how Germany, or indeed
Europe, should be run. Second, he has still to reform his party, which has
been subjected to none of the colonic irrigation of that other new Middler,
the British Labour Party. And then, unrelated to these general concerns,
and perhaps even harder to achieve, he has to cajole the other members of
the EU into accepting a budgetary arrangement that makes it possible for
newcomers to join.

27. America has the best technology, so it is inevitably the best, and
right target for espionage, by China and a host of others. Given that China
does indeed have spies, and that it is an actual rival and potential threat,
America should be spying on China in return. Have no fear: it is.

China rightly senses that trade can be used as a lever to soften, or blur, foreign policy issues. American businesses lobby for a softer line and for rule-changes at home to allow them to sell more in China, particularly for high-tech goods previously controlled on security grounds. They rein­force that pressure with political donations.

28. The challenges of running a country may also stimulate Scottish
intellectual life. Many Scots fondly dream of a new «Scottish Enlighten­
ment», like the one the country enjoyed in the 18th century when Scottish
thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith were at the center of the

philosophical revolution which swept through Europe. The French phi­losopher Voltaire remarked, only slightly sarcastically, that if one wanted to learn anything from gardening to philosophy, one had to go to Edin­burgh.

The Enlightenment was partly stimulated, some think, because politi­cal union with England ended the Scottish preoccupation with battling against its more powerful southern neighbour and opened northern eyes and minds to the possibilities, both intellectual and commercial, arising in a fast-changing world in which Britain was then playing a decisive impe­rial role.

29. Between principle and practice, of course, can lie an ocean of dif­
ference, and seas of ink have indeed been drained in arguing about the
consequences of accepting that gender as social. If it is, mustn't society
be overturned to better women's lot? Is it inequality with men or male
stereotyping that women suffer from? Isn't talk of suffering itself a new
form of victimhood?

Naomi Wolf, in her book «Fire with Fire» (1993) blamed older femi­nists for exaggerating women's powerlessness and for the supposed ex­cesses of political correctness.

30. Mr. Menem's [of Argentina] past services are undeniable. Elected
in 1989, he inherited hyperinflation. That alone might have led back to
strongman rale. Instead, his government by creating a currency board, has
killed inflation stone-dead.

He has brought to heel the armed forces, still snarling when first he came to office. Today, these once masters of the land serve its elected government.

Abroad, Mr. Menem has mended fences with the United States, taken Argentina into the Mercosur trade group, and solved its border disputes with Chile.

This is a solid record.

31. There are clear arguments to be made in favour of equality (relief
of poverty, the encouragement of social cohesion); but there are also clear
arguments to be made against imposing it (this is unnatural, unattainable,
suppresses initiative, attempts self-defeatingly to create a sense of broth­
erhood by coercion). «Fairness», by contrast, is a label a government can
slap on pretty much any policy it chooses. Equality is measurable, fair­
ness — in the eye of the beholder. The left thought equality was fair; the
right thought inequality was fair.

32. When overseas aid was under Foreign Office control, it was
clearly a tool of foreign policy as well as a way of helping poor countries.

And it sometimes subsidised British business by being tied to British goods and services. But that approach clearly had drawbacks. Aid priori­ties were distorted by the pursuit of commercial advantage. Britain, for example, was discovered to be funding a dubious dam project in Malaysia in the hope of winning arms sales. When New Labour came into office, it announced that aid should be purely for helping the poor.

33. Modern youth becomes the dreaded avenging angel of his parents,
since he holds the power to prove his parents'success or failure as parents
and this counts so much more now, since his parents' economic success is
no longer so important in a society of abundance. Youth itself, feeling in­
secure because of its marginal position in a society that no longer depends
on it for economic security, is tempted to use the one power this reversal
between the generations has conferred on it: to be accuser, and judge of
the parents' success or failure as parents.

34. With monetary policy in the hands of the European Central Bank,
fiscal policy — budget deficits and surpluses a la Keynes — is the re­
maining tool with which the member states of European Economic and
Monetary Union, or EMU, can affect their own growth and employment.

35. The sense of energy and optimism generated by Mr. Blair's at­
tempt to create a brave new Britain could easily give way to disillusion­
ment — as it did in the 1970s — if his government cannot turn visionary
rhetoric into something rather more substantial.

36. It is less than a month since the prime minister decided to break
cover, stand up in the House of Commons, launch his «national changeo­
ver plan», and make it plain to anyone who had ever doubted it that he
really did intend to lead Britain into the promised land of the euro.

This was the very week in which big business started to fire its pro-euro artillery, with the official launch of the «Britain in Europe» cam­paign headed by chairman of British Airways.

37. The US elections have often been compared to a circus. It is a
shame that the comparison has some truth in it. It is a time when a clear
and precise estimate of the national situation should be made, a balance
drawn and a course agreed on for the next period, but it is actually a time
when the leading political contestants exert themselves most to deceive
the public, falsify the record and lie about the future.

It is national aberration-time when politicians roam the land, trying to put matters more out of focus than usual. It is the time of statistics-twisting, juggling with facts, gymnastics in the position-taking, and hocus-pocus.

Such a situation is contrary to the interests of the people and to the national interest. More and more voters are disgusted with it. It is, there-

fore, more urgent than ever not only to bring the real issues to the fore and to mobilize the broadest possible coalition around «people before profits» solutions, but also to take steps to restore — or to impart — to elections their real function, to correct what is wrong and to steer a better course for the future.

38. There are powerful big business lobbies in the capital, and an ele­
ment in the Democratic Party here favors pampering multinational corpo­
rations.

This group insists that any legislation favorable to working people in the state must also include financial incentives to big business.

Labor observers here see a similarity between recent contract negotia­tions and the approach of big business to legislation. «Make it worth our while,» they say, «or we'll pack up and leave.»

Corporations shut plants and move operations in order to maximize profits.

Some move to get out from union contracts. Some move to states of­fering financial incentives. Some move to the South where wages are low. Some move totally out of the US.

The legislative proposals, which are not yet fully formulated, lean heavily in the direction of the corporations. They offer increased incen­tives to keep corporations from moving out of the state — more profit — and place the burden of picking up the pieces after a plant has moved on the shoulders of the tax payers of the state.

39. Officialdom in Huyton, Liverpool, does not know the meaning of
democracy, which we are supposed to have in Britain.

They charge what rent and rates they like and think they are doing us a favour if they do any maintenance or repairs to the council housing, which they assume they own, as apparently the councillors do not regard themselves as the elected representatives of the people.

40. The Prime Minister has come down heavily in favour of waiting
for a consensus to build, based on the belief that «a strong leader is not
needed for the Japanese people because they themselves are full of vital­
ity». But his self-cast role as orchestra conductor to the numerous minis­
tries and agencies in Tokyo while the body politic calls the tune is said by.
many to neglect the fact that participatory democracy is still only surface
deep in Japan. Also, that role is directly at odds with the high-profile, ас-
tive stances taken by former premiers.

Contrary to popular belief, the Prime Minister has not totally forsaken day-to-day political matters. He is well aware of the pressing problems: the Foreign Minister is being given a somewhat larger role to play in

policy planning and is to lend a hand in calming the still rough Japan-US economic waters.

41. The Prime Minister's insistence on the «politics of waiting» and
his homespun advice to proceed «slow and steady» have opened the door
to critics of his approach to the running of the government and matters of
state — but perhaps they have moved the discussion into an area that fits
well within the premier's game plan.

There is little argument from any camp that the new government is facing problems — for instance, slow economic growth at home, the con­tinuing problems between Tokyo and.the United States, the difficulties involved in the emergence of a new political role for Japan and the on-again, off-again courtship of ASEAN. How quickly and in what manner these are approached does lead to disagreement.

42. Children demonstrating outside the Belgrave Children's Hospital
in South London at the weekend marched to Downing Street to hand in a
petition as part of a widely supported campaign which was launched in
South London to keep the children's hospital open and persuade the local
area health authority to improve facilities there.

The hospital's once thriving out-patients department is already being reduced, and staffing problems are getting worse. At weekends, one stu­dent is often left in charge of a ward.

But the hospital now faces a threat to close all the beds meaning that the only children's operating theatre in the district will shut down despite recent modernisation.

43. The worsening economic problems of the country derive ulti­
mately from causes which no party or government can readily cure, even
if it knew what to do. A century and more of industrial underinvestment,
export of capital, low growth, failure to exploit innovation richly but
vainly provided by British science (U.S. industry has done well out of
British inventions neglected at home), — these are at the root of Britain's
contemporary troubles. Labor did not cure them, but neither have the Tories.

44. His distinctly high-profile leadership conflicted with the ideas of
other chiefs as to how an operation of this kind should be carried out.

45. The Chancellor of the Exchequer impressed on the House that all
that was needed was that everyone should behave sensibly and realize
that if the country threw away this opportunity it might be long before it
got another anything like so favourable. Stable prices could be assured
only by price reductions in the field where progress was fastest and if the
benefits of progress for which the whole community was responsible
were shared by the whole community.

46. That view will gain ground because a new shock awaits the Par­
liamentary Labour Party and the Labour movement. The Prime Minister
appears to have won the case, and carefully calculated leaks are coming
from Cabinet Ministers to prepare us all for yet one more reversal of policy.

47. It is not the critics of the Minister of Economy who are cynical.
That is a word which could be more accurately applied to a Minister who
says he is for prices being kept down, and then supports a Budget which
puts them up.

48. If the staff at Labour Party headquarters get the 12 1/2 per cent pay
rise which it is reported they are to be offered, or the bigger increase they
may ask for, they will no doubt congratulate themselves not only on their
own efforts, but on having employers prepared to stand up to the Gov­
ernment and defy the pay freeze.

49. The argument about whether the motor companies should release
workers to the rest of the labour market rather than put them on short time
reveals once again the great divide between economic ideas in the ab­
stract and the way the British economy works at present.

50. The big question in industry today is security of employment. As
redundancy and short-time working spread throughout the car industry
and the many industries wholly or largely dependent upon it, as the same
process operates in the other sections producing consumer durable goods
of all kinds, like furniture and refrigerators, and as the programme of pit
closures gets under way, workers everywhere must be worried about their
own jobs even if they are not in one of the immediately hard-hit industries.

51. It is a thorough disgrace that a Labour council should be acting in
this way. A Labour council should set an example as a model landlord,
not as peacemaker for the avaricious, grasping private landlords. The rea­
son for the increase in rents is the usual one — the council is in the red on
its housing account. But that is not the fault of the tenants. It is the fault
of the Government, which has failed to keep its election manifesto prom­
ise to «introduce a policy of lower interest rates for housing». It is also
the fault of the council for not insisting that the Government honour its
pledge. Instead of an increase in rents, the council should insist that inter­
est on housing loans should be cut. This is something the Government
could do.

52. It was he who with the Prime Minister turned the scales against
having a snap election in November without making even the pretence of
coping with the dollar crisis. It was he who threw his weight in favour of
February as the best moment to send the Labour machine into action; and
it is he who will profit most among the party's leaders if Labour wins.

53. In his speech to newspaper editors yesterday the Paymaster Gen­
eral named monopoly and big commercial advertisers as a threat to Press
freedom and democracy. But having revealed many of the things that
were wrong, unfortunately he did not assist us by making proposals
which would help to put things right. The Government itself has helped
the «process of concentration and monopoly» which, the Paymaster
General said yesterday, he regarded as a danger not only to Press free­
dom, but to democracy itself. By giving the Press tycoons all this adver­
tising, and depriving the independent press of a fair share, the Govern­
ment is helping to increase the danger to democracy.

54. It is time it was understood that history does not develop according
to the formulae of those who would like to conserve it, those who would
like to arrest the movement of the people along the road of progress.

55. The Prime Minister has done the right thing in ending speculation
about a summer election. He had pretty well forced an announcement on
himself. Irritating the Labour party with his cat-and-mouse tactics did not
matter; the fact that he was teasing the public as well did. The announce­
ment is also timed. To have made it earlier might have taken any zest
there was out of the local government elections; to have made it later
would have invited the charge that the Prime Minister had been influ­
enced by their results. The new Cabinet shows significant changes, both
personal and constructional, from the old one. Naturally it will be looked
at most searchingly in the Ministries which touch the home front, and
particularly its economics. It was the failure either to coordinate these
Ministries successfully or to present an intelligible picture of their activi­
ties to the electorate, which was the chief weakness of the previous Cabi­
net. The Prime Minister's own record is here at its most untried. He will
have to show that his capacity for government is not overestimated to
make him as successful on the home front as he has been on the overseas.

56. The real need is for the Western powers not only to maintain their
basic objectives, but to be more supple in applying them in the search for
unity, and the beginning should be in a recognition that unity is more
likely to come in a relaxation of general European tension. Complete ri­
gidity is in danger of defeating the ends it has in view.

57. The Black revolt has many causes, but its basic power is that of
the force of economic wretchedness. It is this wretchedness that techno­
logical change is threatening to exacerbate beyond endurance by auto­
mating out of existence many of the unskilled and skilled jobs Blacks
hold. That the Black community is in the throes of profound economic
crisis is evident from the unemployment figures.

58. Although military aviation can be said to have started in 1870
when balloons were used during the siege of Paris, it was not until the
First World War that it became of substantial importance.

59. It may be unprecedented, but it is not illogical for the Chancellor
of the Exchequer to have used his Budget speech for announcing the
Government's intention of hustling through Parliament an Act designed to
shackle the trades unions. The Budget, like the preceding ones of this
Government, has as its main objective to devalue our wage packets. The
decision to rush through the anti-TU legislation is aimed at disarming the
working people, and hampering them in their struggle to retain the real
value of their hard-earned wage packets. It is a policy aimed at ensuring
that any increase in either productivity or output should lead not to more
wages, but to more profit... There can be no other explanation for the
Chancellor's moan that increased production and productivity rose only
four times as much as wages.

60. The Congressman was deprived of his seat last month by vote of
the House pending investigations by the special committee on the
grounds that he had put taxpayers' money to his own use, flouted the law
by refusing to pay libel damages, and evaded jail sentences imposed for
contempt of court

61 One cannot expect to see as yet, any decisive change in the pattern of the economy in these countries. The change from developing country to a developed one is a huge task.

62. If the capital needs of developing countries are particularly heavy, one must recognize that their absorptive capacity, on the other hand, re­mains more limited than was the case of Europe in the nineteenth century.

Часть III

1. ТЕКСТЫ ДЛЯ УСТНОГО ПЕРЕВОДА

Проанализируйте тексты, определите задачу автора (ин­формация, обзор, критическое выступление и т.д.). Сделайте устный перевод, а затем дайте краткую аннотацию текста.

1. Hong Kong Won't Dollarize As Way to End Speculation

Hong Kong — National pride appears to be preventing authorities here from using what may be their most potent weapon against specula­tors attacking the Hong Kong dollar.

That weapon is the threat to replace Hong Kong's currency with the US dollar, thereby removing any target for speculators to aim at. Already, Argentina has raised the possibility of dropping its own currency in favor of the dollar. The suggestion, put forward recently be Argentine Presi­dent, came in the wake of rising concerns that Brazil's decision to aban­don support of the real would lead to other currency collapses in Latin America.

In theory, Hong Kong — which has a US dollar-linked currency sys­tem almost identical to Argentina's — could make the same switch. And some currency watchers believe no move would be more effective at ending the speculative pressure against the Hong Kong dollar than taking steps to «dollarize» the economy.

Yet Hong Kong's government has instead declared publicly that it doesn't believe dollarization is a viable option. The reason, some analysts say, is chiefly political: Hong Kong is Chinese territory, and China wouldn't want to relinquish sovereignty over any aspect of Hong Kong's governance, including its currency.

Yeung Wai Hong, publisher of Hong Kong's most widely read weekly magazine, calls it «nationalistic pride.» A frequent commentator on monetary issues, Mr. Yeung says dollarization would be «a perfect solu­tion» to Hong Kong's recurring run-ins with speculators.

«From a tactical point of view, dollarization makes sense,» adds Dong Tao, senior economist at Credit Suisse First Boston (Hong Kong) Ltd., who has prepared a detailed report on the issue.

Not that Hong Kong hasn't looked at the issue. In April last year a government report examined the possibility of Hong Kong dollarizing, but concluded that it would be «draconian» and «may contravene» the Basic Law, the Hong Kong mini-constitution that governs its relationship with Beijing. The Basic Law says that «the Hong Kong dollar, as the le­gal tender (in Hong Kong), shall continue to circulate.» The report also highlighted that «huge legal problems» could arise as some contracts signed in Hong Kong would automatically become invalid. Mr. Tao and other analysts say that and other technical problems could be circum­vented by a gradual phasing out of the Hong Kong dollar, giving time for laws and contracts to be rewritten.

A government spokeswoman on financial issues states: «We have ex­amined the issue (of dollarization) and we find that it is not to be pursued in Hong Kong.»

2. The Olympic Sham

Is it cynical of me to ask if anyone was surprised at the scandal re­garding the state of Utah bribing Olympic officials in order to win the venue of the 2002 Winter Games?

The Olympic Games have become a sham. They are not only profes­sional now but also no longer independent of politics or chicanery or graft. Television income has ruled almost every aspect of the event, both Winter and Summer games.

Не нашли, что искали? Воспользуйтесь поиском: