Переведите следующие предложения, обращая особое внимание на передачу фразеологических оборотов, употребленных в данных предложениях в обновленной форме.

1. Indoor air pollution at work has become a serious health concern. Yet the remedy may be as simple as cultivating a green thumb. Can a plant a day keep the doctor away?

2. For rough digging he had no peers. Only keep him from planting what he dug. He had black fingers.

3. Komisar is an accomplished hi-tech hand with 15 years' experience, something in short supply in Silicon Valley.

4. Procrustes in modern dress, the nuclear scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie and if mankind doesn't fit —well, that will be just too bad for mankind.

5. Governments are realistic about the extreme difficulty of restraining their citizens' green house-gas emissions and so err on the conservative side.

6. What on earth is going on in the buy-to-let market? It is now cheaper to take out a buy-to-let mortgage than a regular residential home loan. Have we buy-to-let gone of our senses?

7. I've vowed that I'd rather leave my fruit trees to their own devices. But that was before peachgate.

8. That was a dumb stunt and I should have set some bells ringing earlier that I did.

9. He'll always have fingers in enough pies to keep you busy.

10. "So there was something!" said Abby. "A skeleton in our respectable cupboard! I wish I could know what it was!"

11. Few careers have sailed through the recession, but some have toughed it out better than others. In fact, if there's a silver lining to the economy's dark cloud, it's the power of a downturn to test a career's mettle.

12. To prevent floods millions of pounds must be spent on improving drainage and protecting infrastructure. "You either pay upstream to prevent, or you pay downstream to mop up but you've got to pay," says Young. "Climate change is coming home to roost."

13. Every offender is a potential repeat offender. But with young Angus the leopard really did change.

14. How much work is healthy for you? All work and no play can cause health problems.

15. Sexual harassement is a tricky territory: one person's joke is another's lawsuit.

16. Old Etonian Andrew Spicer, whose mouth had been stuffed with silver on the day he was born, was never going to suffer that kind of discrimination.

 

Переведите следующие тексты.

Текст 1

France Denies Losing out on Brussels Jobs

It is claimed in some quarters that France, a founder member of the European Union, has had the grass cut from under its feet by Britain, the "slowcoach" of the community, which this week scooped up most of the good jobs in the upper echelons of the Brussels administration. And all with the blessing of the European Commission's very Anglophile Italian president, Romano Prodi.

But then Britain, although it has decided to position itself on the outer reaches of European construction, has nevertheless been extremely active in the Belgian capital. Britons play a leading role in the lobbying firms that have proliferated in Brussels, and have placed themselves in key positions within the EU administration with a professionalism that contrasts sharply with the amateurishness and individualism that often typify the French approach.

So has France really suffered some kind of Waterloo in the battle to secure key EU jobs? Neither the Elysee Palace, nor the prime minister's office, nor the foreign ministry seem to think so — though their official reaction may be partly motivated by the need to put a brave face on events.

The prime minister's office stresses that it would be a big mistake to put the appointment of EU directors general on the same plane as that of advisers. "As regards advisers. Prodi laid down clear rules of 'multinationality' so as to strengthen the commission and bring in new blood," says one of Lionel Jospin's aids. "France respected those rules, our partners less so."

Does France need to worry about mounting Anglophilia within the commission? Prodi's spokesman, Ricardo Levi, prefers to play down the issue: "We have to look at this from a broader, worldwide perspective. French has undeniably lost ground to English. A few years ago only French was spoken in the pressroom here. Now you hear both English and French."

As for the alleged loss of French influence in the upper echelons of the ELI administration, Levi stresses Prodi's desire to carry out reforms that France fully supports: "We had to make a break with the habits of the past, which allowed certain countries to 'own' some directorates-general. The criteria we have followed are based on the need to ensure job rotation, maintain a balance and base appointments on merit. It so happened that the British had some excellent candidates. But in the longer term the French presence remains predominant."

Текст 2

Gordon's Early Decisions

Even before he became Prime Minister, Mr. Brown signed up to renewing Trident missiles, which will leave Britain dependent on American military technology for decades to come. Some weeks ago, I predicted that Mr. Brown would give the green light to the construction of two new aircraft carriers. He did just that last week.

These carriers will be the largest warships that Britain has ever put on the oceans. Sir Alan West, the former First Sea Lord, who is now Mr. Brown's security supremo, has described the carriers as "four acres of British sovereign territory that you can move anywhere in the world" in order "to project power". British sovereign territory they may be, but the carriers will be equipped with American Chinook helicopters and Joint Strike Fighters, also made in the U.S. of A.

Congress is controlled by the Democrats, George Bush's Iraq pol icy is disowned even by members of his own party, and he will be gone from power in 18 months. There are voices telling the Prime Minister that he should keep his distance from this toxic President while crossing his fingers that Americans elect a Democrat in 2008.

Mr. Brown is certainly taking an immense interest in the race for the White House. In private, he can rattle off detailed assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of each contender. I am sure he would love to have a Democrat in the Oval Office. But Mr. Brown has told friends that it's a complete misreading of his position to think that he can keep an arm's length relationship with Washington.

Britain's relations with Russia arc in deep freeze over the Litvinenko murder. Gordon Brown is still at the getting-to-know-you stage with Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. Like it or loathe it, for the next 18 months Brown will have to deal with Bush. Even a lame-duck President has enormous power to do good and had in the world.

To coin an old phrase once beloved by his predecessor, Gordon Brown is looking for a Third Way which is neither shoulder-to-shoulder nor cold shoulder. He just has to pray that George Bush doesn't greet him with, "Yo, Brown!"

 

Текст 3

Diplomatic Language

The expression "diplomatic language" is used to denote three different things. In its first sense it signifies the actual language (whether it be Latin, French, or English) which is employed by diplomatists in their converse or correspondence with each other. In its second sense it means those technical phrases which, in the course of centuries, have become part of ordinary diplomatic vocabulary. And in its third, and most common, sense it is used to describe that guarded understatement which enables diplomatists and ministers to say sharp things to each other without becoming provocative or impolite.

"Diplomacy", as it was once said, "is the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states." The need of intelligence is self-evident, but the equally vital need of tact is often disregarded. It is this latter need which has led diplomatists to adopt a paper currency of conventionalized phrases in place of the hard coins of ordinary human converse. These phrases, affable though they may appear, possess a known currency value.

Thus, if a statesman or a diplomatist informs another government that his own government "cannot remain indifferent to" some international controversy, he is clearly understood to imply that the controversy is one in which his government will certainly intervene. If in his communication or speech he uses some such phrases as "His Majesty's Government view with concern" or "view with grave concern" then it is evident to all that the matter is one in which the British Government intend to adopt a strong line. By cautious gradations such as these a statesman is enabled, without using threatening language, to convey a serious warning to a foreign government. If these warnings pass unheeded he can raise his voice while still remaining courteous and conciliatory. If he says, "In such an event His Majesty's Government would feel bound carefully to reconsider their position," he is implying that friendship is about to turn into hostility.

 

Текст 4

Gerald Durrell

Gerald Durrell books were a part of popular British culture throughout the Sixties — huge bestsellers that financed collecting trips and enabled Durrell to realize his ambition of setting up his own zoo. His productivity is dizzying — 37 books in all. And yet no author more nicely fits the Johnsonian adage: he wrote for money, found the process a fearful grind and probably would never have bothered had it not been the providential means to an end.

"He was a vivid writer; at his best, quirky, exuberant and with a gift for the sparky phrase — a black-and-yellow striped snake "like an animated school tie", the Great Barrier Reef as "an enormous biological firework display". There is something reassuring about a person who discovers his bent at an early age and never deviates.

The breeding of endangered species was Durrell's ambition from a very early age. The Jersey Zoo that he founded in 1959 lurched from one financial crisis to another in the initial years. It emerged flourishing and secure in the Eighties, alongside the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, thanks to generous patronage and, above all, to Durrell's own efforts. Although he was initially cold- shouldered by the zoo establishment, his ideas and beliefs became orthodoxy and he himself a leading figure in the zoo and conservation worlds.

He cannot have been easy to work with. But his charismatic charm and vigour shine out, along with a kind of innocence. His friend David Hughes observed him at first hand — "a simple man of unshakeable conviction".

In his intensity of outrage about species extinction Durrell was ahead of his time. The partnership between television and such persuasive advocates as Durrell, Desmond Morris, David Attenborough and others has meant an entire revolution in the past 40 years in the way that animals are perceived. Their presentation in zoos has changed radically — from spectacles to be gawped at, to sources of information and objects of respect. Durrell was a conservation pioneer, although the debate about methods of conserving endangered species continues.

He has to be admired for his obduracy in the face of setbacks, let alone for the physical defiance that saw off potentially fatal snakebites and an array of tropical ailments. His biographer sees him as "a latter-day St Francis", while admitting to certain deficiencies in saintliness.