Les textes
Ci-dessous, vous allez trouver tous les textes de thème et version à faire au fil des semaines. Vous avez trois possibilités : soit les télécharger en document Word soit en document PDF ou encore les copier-coller directement sur le site au cas où vous ne pouvez ouvrir les deux versions précédentes.
Textes supplémentaires
Corrigés
Textes en ligne
Les textes en ligne seront rajoutés au fur et à mesure des semaines selon les devoirs donnés en cours.
TEXT 1.1. Books - Death of a Murderer
By Rupert Thomson, Bloomsbury, £7.99The Guardian, Thursday February 07 2008
Such is the emotion evoked by the Moors murders that some might avoid a fictionalized version.
However, this is a stark, intelligent examination of the harm that runs like a black seam through society.
Billy is a policeman guarding Myra Hindley’s body in a mortuary. During the long night shift he conjures up images of Hindley interwoven with scenes from his past,
including childhood experiences near the moors. Awash with emotional exhaustion and disappointment, Billy reflects on the father he never knew and his hero worship
of a dangerous classmate. Other figures and events are remembered, such as his wife and their guiltily ambivalent feelings for their daughter with Down’s syndrome.
Exquisitely pitched – a brave, unforgettable book. CT
Notes de traduction :
La traduction du texte « Death of a Murderer » fait appel à une référence à l’histoire récente de la Grande-Bretagne : il s’agit d’une meurtrière en série, Myra Hindley. Pour plus d’informations vous pouvez consulter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myra_Hindley
TEXT 1.2. ATTENTION : Traduction instantanée – ne pas lire ce texte à l’avance
Congestion charging in London set to spread all over the world
New Scientist, November 2003NINE months after London started to charge motorists for driving in the city centre, the leaders of the world's cities are falling over themselves to see if they can repeat London's trick of cutting traffic jams. […] It is easy to understand the excitement. For nearly a hundred years the world's city dwellers have been trapped in a vicious circle. Every year more and more cars crowd onto the roads. The jams get worse. Buses get snarled up in the jams and become unreliable, so even more people opt to drive. […]
The success of the scheme has helped to silence critics. The charge has brought about a dramatic change in the way people travel in the city centre. There are now 50,000 fewer cars entering central London every day, a drop in traffic of 16%. Because traffic is moving more freely, car journeys in the zone are now 14% quicker than they were before the charge. Buses too are now more reliable. The extra time that people have to wait at bus stops has dropped by 60%. Most of the people who no longer drive in central London now take public transport, some are cycling and a few just don’t make the journey any more.
TEXT 2. Princes have no right to act like halfwits
Alexander Chancellor, The Guardian Weekly, February 22-28 2008It is odd that Prince Andrew who, thankfully, has seldom expressed an opinion in public at home, should have chosen the occasion of an official visit to America to stir up controversy. His way of promoting Anglo-American trade in his role as Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment was to imply in an interview with the International Herald Tribune that Americans were naïve in their handling of Iraq.
He told the newspaper last week that “those in responsible positions in the US” should have listened to the British and learned from our experiences as a colonial power before invading Iraq.
One would have thought it pretty obvious that this sort of observation was not likely to strike a responsive chord among “those in responsible positions in the US” or, indeed, to endear Britain to Americans in general, but this didn’t occur to the prince. In an interview with CNN, he said that he hadn’t considered his comments controversial at the time, though he had since come to accept that they could be interpreted that way. But he didn’t apologise, and he seemed to think that he was just being picked on. “You have to take the bashes with the good bits,” he said, manfully, “and I’ve got a thick skin.”
It’s not only his skin that is thick. Asked by CNN if he believed the situation in Iraq was improving, he replied that he could not answer because this was “almost a university PhD question”.
Then, remembering finally what he was in America for, he said, “Now I realise that what keeps us all going is international commerce, it’s global trade. In some cases, politics keep a lot of people thinking, but what actually makes the world go round is the commerce that goes on.” The dismissal of politics as inconsequential in the midst of the most gripping presidential election campaign in years might also have seemed insulting to the US if uttered by anyone else.
It is frankly embarrassing that Britain should be represented in any capacity by such a halfwit, and it is inconceivable that he would have been chosen as a trade ambassador had he not been a member of the royal family.
What we should do with our royals is an unresolved question. They are fine when confined to the armed services, but they get too old for that. The best answer is to treat all but the monarch and immediate heirs as ordinary mortals with no special rights or privileges.
Text A. In Capri, Love of Nature and Lust for Shopping
Tourisme. Ari Chen, The New York Times, 2005
Boats off Capri, which has been attracting seaborne visitors for centuries, possibly, according to tradition, since Odysseus.
Most people arrive at Capri by hydrofoil or ferry, usually from Naples or Sorrento. From a distance, the island, which is about four miles long and one and a half miles wide, looks like not much more than an outcrop, a sculptured rock dwarfed within a surreal panorama that spans Mount Vesuvius, Naples and the larger island of Ischia. Its precipitous profile and jagged peaks are haunting and forbidding, and the hazy Mediterranean air gives it the veil of fantasy. As one nears, shades of cerulean and turquoise emerge from the water. Seagulls swarm along the steep walls of the coastal rock, where stone and stucco villas cling as nimbly as the goats that also inhabit the island. Capri begins to look real, but no less spectacular.
A funicular whisks one up from the Marina Grande, where the ferries arrive, to Capri
town. Perched high above the water, it is the larger and more developed of the island's two
settlements. Anacapri, its lower-key sister, beckons from a plateau above. Their narrow
streets wind along hillsides, between whitewashed facades and among gardens scented
with juniper, myrtle and lemon trees. […]
Capri should also be explored from the water. A range of boat excursions and rentals are
available, but day-trippers with limited time can take hourlong tours around the island from
the Marina Grande.
On a recent boat tour, the guide pointed to two other houses, saying they belonged to
Sophia Loren and Giorgio Armani. The passengers became excited; too bad none of it was
true. But such are the celebrity obsessions that must be catered to.
The most famous name to have actually lived on Capri is, of course, Tiberius. And one
can walk among the ruins of the Villa Jovis, the largest of the 12 villas that the emperor is
said to have built for himself there. Nearby, a precipice called the Salto di Tiberio is
where, the story goes, he hurled wayward subjects into the sea. […]
Many will say that Capri is best in the evening, once the flood of day-trippers has receded.
It becomes a quieter paradise of simple pleasures derived from both its shimmering
artifice and its stunning natural beauty, whether it's for stars of the human kind or for
those that are celestial. "The moon from Capri is absolutely amazing," Ms. Swarovski said
this summer. "Especially around now, it comes up from between the Faraglioni and goes
from yellow to pale orange to white, white, white. It's difficult to describe, you have to see
it to believe it."
Texte B. Les croisières formelles
Tourisme – le transport maritimeLes croisières formelles incarnent tout le cérémonial de la croisière tel qu’on peut se
l’imaginer. Ce sont généralement des croisières transatlantiques, ou des croisières à bord de
yachts naviguant sept jours et plus. Elles évoquent l’époque où le simple fait de se déplacer en
bateau était déjà en soi un événement. Les repas sont servis dans une salle à manger luxueuse,
la cuisine est fine et abondante, les hommes doivent porter le smoking ou le costume-cravate,
les femmes des robes de soirée.
Le soir vous pourrez assister à des spectacles de cabaret, écouter un orchestre, ou un
pianiste. A terre, pendant les escales, certains organisent des parties sur la plage avec
champagne et spectacles d’artistes locaux. Des excursions sont parfois incluses dans le prix
du billet, avec visite de musée, activités culturelles, expositions, etc.
TEXT 3. Our challenge is to restore faith in the power of global liberty
The Observer, Sunday December 30 2007The belief that democracy is the best form of government is unarguably true. But confidence that liberal values are spreading with unstoppable momentum around the world could prove dangerously misplaced, as a number of trends in recent years show. They are set to accelerate in 2008.
1. The rise of authoritarian capitalism. Russia and China have growing leverage over global affairs. They have introduced market forces selectively, generating wealth but keeping the power that flows from it firmly under state control. They are challenging the view that increased wealth leads societies inevitably to demand political pluralism.
Russia's energy resources give it massive economic influence over its former Soviet satellites and, increasingly, over the European Union. China is rivalling the West as a source of foreign capital in Africa, where it attaches no liberalising conditions to its investments. The benefits of Western-style globalisation might have looked lopsided in the developing world, to say the least. But globalisation on Chinese terms is no recipe for political freedom.
2. The rise of illiberal democracy. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a demagogue and a despot. He is also the popularly elected President of Iran. Hamas is a terrorist organisation with an electoral mandate in Palestine. Even if Vladimir Putin did not rig elections, his nationalistic authoritarianism would win the backing of a majority of Russians. The West has no strategy for coping with situations where democratic structures favour forces hostile to democracy; when the 'right' system yields the 'wrong' result. That is a big problem as Islamist movements increasingly seek power through the ballot box.
3. The rise of economic nationalism in the US. A recent poll found that only 28 per cent of Americans think globalisation has been good for the US. That is extraordinary given that, around the world, many people think globalisation is a US conspiracy. Candidates from across the political spectrum vying to be the country's next President are pandering to this constituency. Pledges to protect US jobs and to fence the country off from outside influence, whether immigration or foreign competition, will be common currency in next year's election campaign. America is drifting into isolation.