T2 - Text 5 plus some English stuff page contents 2

T2 - Text 5 plus some English stuff page contents 2

Edward Martin
Universität Koblenz-Landau,
Institut für Anglistik
Campus Koblenz
T2 - Text 5 plus some English stuff
page
2
3
4
5 onwards
contents
German text
T-man's model translation with highlighted points
Language notes: articles and idioms
relevant excerpts from English newspapers
Edward Martin
Institut für Anglistik
T2: Staatsexamensklausurenkurs SS 2007
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Any alternative translations of individual words and phrases will be ignored.
Numbers and signs: numbers, signs (% € etc), words remain numbers, signs and words.
Questions about the meaning of the German text are not permitted. However, you may consult the
German dictionary provided by the person invigilating the exam.
Translation aids. You are allowed to use any two of the following monolingual English dictionaries (no
older editions are permitted):
plus
Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English (4th edition, 2003, revised 2005); Macmillan's English
Dictionary for Advanced Learners (2nd edition, 2007); Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (7th edition,
2005); Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (2003)
Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (2002)
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your name, the name of your dictionaries (eg OALD7 / DCE 4 + OCD), and the variety of English you
think you write (US, GB, AUS or CAN).
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Thank you very much for your cooperation.
Text 5, Type B:
(Note: please do not translate the passages in italics)
Hände hoch!
Die amerikanische Gegenwartsliteratur kennt drei ihrer großen Vertreter eigentlich nicht:
J.D. Salinger, der sich versteckt, Thomas Pynchon, der sich verleugnet, und Cormac
McCarthy, den man bislang höchstens aus einer Schießscharte [Wortangabe: embrasure]
blinzeln sah.
Wobei: vor gerade einmal fünfzehn Jahren hätte man McCarthy auf diese Liste gar nicht
gesetzt. Damals verkaufte keiner seiner Romane mehr als 5000 Exemplare. Das änderte sich
nach und nach mit dem Erscheinen seines Romans „All the Pretty Horses“, und das ändert
sich jetzt ganz und gar. Für „The Road“, seinen jüngsten Roman, ist McCarthy soeben der
renommierte Pulitzer-Preis verliehen worden, und das Tor zur „Hall of Fame“, das seit
Jahren leise, lauter werdend, in den Angeln quietscht, steht plötzlich sperrangelweit offen.
Und der alte McCarthy kommt aus der Deckung.
Ende März wurde bekannt, dass er einem Fernsehinterview mit Oprah Winfrey zugestimmt
habe. Mein Gott! McCarthys verschworene Fangemeinde konnte es kaum glauben: „Warten
Sie einen Augenblick, ich muss erst meinen Unterkiefer vom Fußboden klauben“, ließ ein
Professor verlauten. Schluss also mit der grimmen Einsamkeit? Ach was. Die Idee, dass der
Mensch sich ändern könnte, ist dem 74jährigen McCarthy wesenfremd. Fast jeder seiner
zehn Romane erzählt von der Verdammnis, und „The Road“, das späte Meisterwerk, tut das
entschlossener denn je.
In „The Road“ irren Vater und Sohn durch eine postapokalyptische Welt, und weil kein Tier
mehr lebt, kein Kraut mehr wächst, ist ihnen der Tod so sicher wie das Amen in der Kirche.
Zugleich jedoch war Cormac McCarthy nie hoffnungsvoller als in diesem Roman: Mit ungeheurer Zärtlichkeit erzählt
er diesmal von dem Bisschen Leben bis zum Tod, von der existentiellen Fremdheit des Menschen in der Welt und seiner
Hoffnung auf Erlösung. „Die Straße“ ist, auf Schriftstellerart, ein tiefreligiöser Roman – mit einem Messias im
Zentrum. Der Junge trägt die Last der Welt und erlöst sie von ihren Sünden. „Du bist nicht derjenige, der sich um alles
Gedanken machen muss“, sagt der Vater einmal. Der Junge blickt auf, sein Gesicht feucht und schmutzig: „Doch, das
bin ich.“
Die Welt Online, 17. April 2007
(193 words)
syntax and grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and spelling, discourse markers / idioms
Hands up!
The Contemporary American literature actually does not know
three of its great representatives: J.D. Salinger, who is in hiding,
Thomas Pynchon, who is in self-denial/ who denies what he is,
and Cormac McCarthy, who until now, if at all/ at best, has only
been seen blinking from behind/ out of an embrasure.
Mind you: only just / Only [AmE] just fifteen years ago,
McCarthy would not have been put on this list at all. In those
days/ Back then, none of his novels sold more than 5,000 copies.
That changed gradually/ That changed, little by little, with the
publication of his novel All the Pretty Horses, and now it is
changing completely. For The Road, his latest novel, McCarthy
has just been awarded the prestigious/renowned Pulitzer Prize,
and the door to the Hall of Fame, which for years has been
squeaking quietly in/on its hinges, getting louder, has suddenly
been blown wide open. And old McCarthy is emerging from his
cover/ breaking cover.
"Wait a minute until I can pick my jaw up off the floor," [actual
quote] / "Wait a moment, I have to pick my jaw up from the
floor," [translation] responded one professor. So is that the end
of the grim solitude? Oh no, of course not. The idea that a
person/ a human being could change is utterly alien to 74-yearold McCarthy('s nature).
In The Road, father and son wander/ roam through a postapocalyptic world, and because there are no more animals alive,
no more plants growing, their death is as certain as (sunrise and)
sunset.
Articles
No article with general reference to
plurals
abstracts
uncountables.
literature: uncountable
American literature
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general reference
the literature of the United States
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specific, through "of"
Idioms: tricky problems
my jaw dropped (in great surprise)
joke in the text: excuse me while I pick my jaw up from the floor
German: steht plötzlich sperrangelweit offen
English: is wide open (no corresponding idiom)
so add an intensifier
has been blown wide open
G: der Tod ist ihnen so sicher wie das Amen in der Kirche
E:
as certain as death and taxes (obviously not appropriate)
as sure as eggs is eggs (wrong register)
as certain as sunrise and sunset
as certain as sunset
(ok, especially sunset)
The Road (novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_(novel)
The Road
First Edition hardcover of The Road
Author
Cormac McCarthy
Country
United States
Language English
Genre(s)
post-apocalyptic fiction
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date
September 26, 2006
Media type Print (Hardcover)
Pages 256 pp
ISBN ISBN 0307265439
The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic
tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several
months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm which destroyed
civilization and most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and
was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection.
In his 2007 interview with Oprah Winfrey for The Oprah Winfrey Show, McCarthy said the
inspiration for The Road came during a visit to El Paso, Texas with his young son, about
four years prior. Imagining what the city might look like in the future, he pictured "fires on
the hill" and thought about his son. He took some initial notes, but did not return to the idea
until several years later while in Ireland. The novel came to him quickly, and he dedicated it
to his son, John Francis McCarthy.[1]
Contents
* 1 Plot summary
* 2 Geography
* 3 Reception
o 3.1 Awards and nominations
* 4 Film adaptation
* 5 References
* 6 External links
[edit] Plot summary
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months
across a post-apocalyptic landscape, several years after a great cataclysm (although
unspecified, it has some of the earmarks of a nuclear holocaust) has destroyed civilization
and most life on earth. What is left of humanity now consists largely of bands of cannibals
and their prey (refugees who scavenge for canned food or other surviving foodstuffs). In
imagery similar to prospective accounts of "nuclear winter", ash covers the surface of the
earth; in the atmosphere, it obscures the sun and moon, and the two travelers breathe
through improvised masks to filter it out. Plants and animals are apparently all dead (dead
wood for fuel is plentiful), and the rivers and oceans are seemingly empty of life.
The unnamed father, who is literate, well-traveled, and knowledgeable of machinery,
woodcraft, and human biology (when confronting and threatening a cannibal, he is able to
list several obscure portions of the brain, at which point the cannibal asks him if he is a
doctor), realizes that they cannot survive another winter in their present location and sets out
southeastward across what was once the Southeastern United States, largely following the
highways. He aims to reach warmer southern climates, and the sea in particular. Along the
way, threats to their survival create an atmosphere of terror and tension that persist
throughout the book.
The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his
son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he
sees as the son's own dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a
pistol with two bullets, meant for suicide should this become necessary; the father has told
the son to kill himself to avoid being captured. (The boy's mother, overwhelmed by this
nightmare world, has already committed suicide before the story begins.) The father
struggles in times of extreme danger with the fear that he will have to euthanize his son to
prevent him from enduring a more terrible fate—horrific examples of which include chained
catamites kept captive by a marauding band and prisoners found locked in a basement in the
process of being eaten, their limbs gradually harvested by their cannibal captors.
In the face of all of these obstacles, the man and the boy have only each other (McCarthy
says that they are "each the other's world entire"). Although the man maintains the pretense,
and the boy holds on to the real faith that there is a core of ethics left somewhere in
humanity, they repeatedly assure one another that they are among "the good guys" who are
"carrying the fire".
In the end, having brought the boy far south after extreme hardship but without finding the
salvation he had hoped for, the father succumbs to his illness and dies, leaving the boy alone
on the road. Immediately thereafter, however, the grieving and seemingly-doomed boy
encounters a self-sufficient and benevolent man who has recently been tracking the father
and son. This man, who has a family including children, is a manifestation of the "good
guys" the father and son had hoped for—possibly a member of one of the "communes"
which are referred to without elaboration in the story. He adopts the boy, and the narrative's
close suggests that the wife of this man is a moral and compassionate woman who treats the
boy well, a resolution which vindicates the father's commitment to stay alive and keep
moving.
[edit] Geography
The journey passes through towns and cities whose names are known but never named. The
travelers apparently set out on their journey north of Knoxville, Tennessee, crossing the
Tennessee River at that city. They notice sunken boats under the bridge there, a nod to
McCarthy's novel Suttree, in which the protagonist lives in a houseboat community in that
location.
They continue through Gatlinburg, Tennessee, across the Great Smoky Mountains—
probably over Newfound Gap (elevation 5,048 ft above sea level; see below)—and through
the Piedmont region of North Carolina. From there, they proceed southeastward to the coast,
perhaps that of South Carolina or Georgia.
One rare specific geographical indication in the book is a barn bearing the painted legend
"See Rock City". One published book review (that of the novelist William Kennedy, entitled
"Left Behind", the cover review in The New York Times Book Review for October 8,
2006), apparently not realizing how many barns in the upper South recommend seeing Rock
City, has relied on the reference to infer that the route in The Road must pass through
Chattanooga, Tennessee, but this is clearly impossible ("The pass at the watershed was five
thousand feet and it was going to be very cold," The Road, p. 25).
[edit] Reception
The Road has received numerous positive reviews and honors since its September 26, 2006
release. Critics have deemed it "heartbreaking", "haunting", and "emotionally
shattering".[2][3][4] The Village Voice referred to it as "McCarthy's purest fable yet."[2] In
a New York Review of Books article, author Michael Chabon heralded the novel, which he
insists is not science fiction but an "adventure story in both its modern and epic forms that
structures the narrative".[5]
[edit] Awards and nominations
The novel was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.[6]
On March 28, 2007, the selection of The Road as the next novel in Oprah Winfrey's Book
Club was announced. A televised interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show was conducted on
June 5, 2007 and it was McCarthy's first, though he had been interviewed in print before.[7]
The announcement of McCarthy's television appearance surprised those who follow him.
"Wait a minute until I can pick my jaw up off the floor," said John Wegner, an English
professor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, and former editor of the Cormac
McCarthy Journal Online, when told of the interview.[8]
On April 16, 2007, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[9]
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