2009年9月29日 星期二

try one's patience, spare a thought




《中英對照讀新聞》’I can’t take it!’ cried Kadhafi interpreter 格達費的口譯員高喊「我受不了了」!
◎魏國金
If Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s rambling, podium-hogging speech at the United Nations tried the patience of many UN delegates, spare a thought for his simultaneous interpreter.
如果利比亞領袖格達費在聯合國上隨意漫談、霸住講台的演說令許多聯合國代表失去耐性,那麼想一想他的同步口譯員。
The Libyan’s interpreter managed to hang on for the first 75 minutes of Wednesday’s epic before crying: "I just can’t take it anymore!" reported the New York Post daily.
這位利比亞領袖的口譯員勉力撐了週三這場長篇大論的前75分鐘之後,大呼「我真的再也受不了了」,據紐約郵報報導。
Spotting the emergency, the UN’s Arabic section chief, Rasha Ajalyaqeen, took over for the final 20 minutes.
聯合國阿拉伯語口譯科主管拉沙.阿加亞金發現這件緊急狀況,接手最後的20分鐘。


新聞辭典

try the patience of a saint(Job)︰即使聖人(約伯;聖經中備受命運捉弄的義人)也無法忍受,意即令人受不了。本文的句子衍生自此句,意指許多聯合國代表失去耐性。

try one's patience

Put one's tolerance to a severe test, cause one to be annoyed, as in Putting these parts together really tries my patience, or Her constant lateness tries our patience. This idiom uses try in the sense of "test," a usage dating from about 1300.

spare a thought︰片語:想一想、思及。例句︰We should educate the children to spare a thought for those in need.(我們應教育孩子們多為需要的人想一想。)

save/spare sb's blushes
British & Australian

to do something to prevent someone feeling embarrassed

Granger saved the team's blushes by scoring the only goal in the last five minutes of the game.
The audience's blushes were spared because the censors had removed all the explicit sex scenes from the film.

2009年9月26日 星期六

goods bearing the Fair Trade label

Is the economic crisis giving Fair Trade a fair go?

When you shop for groceries in your local supermarket, do you spare a
thought for producers in poorer countries? If you do, it’s likely that at
one time or another you’ve bought goods bearing the Fair Trade label.

The DW-WORLD Article
http://newsletter.dw-world.de/re?l=ew1vacI44va89pI3

2009年9月25日 星期五

counterinsurgency, Replacing a four-star commander of a warzone,

The Afghan Imperative
By DAVID BROOKS
Fighting the Afghan war the easy way hasn’t worked. Only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success.




The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with the firing of the top American commander in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced yesterday that he had requested the resignation of Gen. David McKiernan, who had been in the job for less than a year, because the Pentagon needs "fresh thinking" and "fresh eyes" on Afghanistan. McKiernan will be replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff who recently ran the secretive special operations forces in Iraq. McChrystal has lots of experience in counterinsurgency operations and is widely expected to quickly institute changes to U.S. and NATO strategy in Afghanistan. Replacing a four-star commander of a warzone is exceedingly rare, and several papers mention that it looks like it's the first time this has happened since President Harry Truman removed Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.

counterinsurgency
n.

Political and military strategy or action intended to oppose and forcefully suppress insurgency.

counterinsurgent coun'ter·in·sur'gent n.

capital position, leftward, tug of war





 tug of war, white or colored holiday light
A Tug of War, With Strings of Lights
The origins of the debate over white or colored holiday light are vague, but the battle is renewed every year.


tug of war
n., pl., tugs of war.
  1. Games. A contest of strength in which two teams tug on opposite ends of a rope, each trying to pull the other across a dividing line.
  2. A struggle for supremacy: a political tug of war between those in favor of the proposal and those against it.

MF Global Fights to Stay Afloat After Two Credit Downgrades MF Global, the commodities and derivatives brokerage house, was in a fight for its life Thursday night after the firm drew down its main credit line and two major credit ratings agencies cut their ratings on the firm to junk.

MF Global is scrambling to sell some or all of itself. The firm has enough assets to survive for at least the next few days, said a person outside the firm who was briefed on its condition.

The pressure on MF Global is mounting even as a deal over Greece's debt has provided market relief to other American financial institutions. Investors have grown increasingly worried about MF Global's capital position, given its exposure to $6.3 billion in debt from Italy, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and Portugal.



Merkel's Leftward Shift Positions Her to Win
When German voters go to the polls, Angela Merkel is almost assured re-election -- not for keeping the campaign promises she made four years ago, but for breaking most of them.



leftward
adv. & adj.
To or on the left.
━━ a., ad. 左の方の[へ].
left1

2009年9月20日 星期日

general counsel, put someone on notice

應該注意法律用語

"Some principals raised the issue, so we included a provision saying sending, receiving, possessing sexually suggestive messages is forbidden," said Hans Graff, assistant general counsel at the Houston Independent School district.

「部分校長提出這個問題,因此我們納入了一條規定指出,不允許寄發、接收、擁有性暗示訊息。」漢斯.葛拉夫,休士頓獨立學區助理主委說。


按: general counsel 法務主任等
A general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation or government department. The term is most used in the United States. The status and prominence of the general counsel has grown much over the past 10 years as is evidenced by the large number of lawyers who come into the role from private practice.


"We want to put them on notice that it’s just not something that really belongs in school."

「我們想叫他們注意,這不是學校裡該有的事情。」



put someone on notice:片語,提醒某人、讓某人注意。例句︰I had put you on notice about these risks.(我提醒過你注意這些風險。)


notice: West's Encyclopedia of American Law (Full Article) from ...
When a party is "put on notice" that they are in violation, continued action in
violation may be sufficient to evidence knowledge. ...

2009年9月19日 星期六

crayon, giro, hoofbeat, insaissable,

8日前から連絡がとれなくなっている人気漫画「クレヨンしんちゃん」の作者が向かったとみられる群馬県の荒船山のがけの下で、男性の遺体が見つかりました。警察は20日遺体を引き上げて、身元の確認を進めることにしています。

蠟筆小新」在日本被定位為「成年漫畫」,因此漫畫版早期有許多性暗示的描述,動畫版才修正為適合閤家欣賞的尺度。在漫畫分類不如日本精細的台灣,「蠟筆小新」卻被包裝成





The Art Newspaper
The French have a word for it, insaissable, impossible to catch. So why is he
setting up in London, and why now? “I've always loved London, I love England,


hoofbeat
n.

The sound made by each hoof of a hoofed animal as it moves.

giro
Electronic payment system widely used in Europe and Japan for consumer bill payments. Unlike the Check system in the United States, which is a debit-based system, giros are credit transfers. In giro systems, a payment order automatically transfers funds from the consumer's account to the creditor's account and notifies creditors when the transfer is made. Multiple payments from a single giro are also possible.
...

クレヨン 2 [(フランス) crayon]


  • パラフィンに顔料をまぜ、蝋(ろう)などで固めて棒状にした絵の具。クレオン。
  • コンテ


  • ◆アクセント : クレヨン 2

conservancy , landmark feasibility study, aboriginal

Oil giant Shell and Dutch utility Essent agreed to study the feasibility of a 1,000-megawatt power plant in the Netherlands that would capture CO2 emissions.




landmark (STAGE) Show phonetics

noun [C]an important stage in something's development:
The invention of the silicon chip was a landmark in the history of the computer.
In a landmark case/decision, the Governor pardoned a woman convicted of killing her husband, who had physically abused her.

比較 milestone



feasible Show phonetics
adjective SLIGHTLY FORMAL1 able to be made, done or achieved:
With the extra resources, the scheme now seems feasible.
[+ to infinitive] It may be feasible to clone human beings, but is it ethical?

2 possible or reasonable:
It's quite feasible (that) we'll get the money.


feasibly Show phonetics
adverb SLIGHTLY FORMAL

feasibility Show phonetics
noun [U]whether something is feasible:
We're looking at the feasibility of building a shopping centre there
.to carry out/conduct a feasibility study

Arts Minister Peter Garrett said the money would be spent on translation services, tests for children and a feasibility study for a national centre for Aboriginal languages.

藝術部長賈瑞特表示,這筆經費將用於翻譯服務,為兒童進行測驗,並研究成立國家原住民語言中心的計畫是否可行。

aboriginal
aboriginal:形容詞,原始的,土著的;名詞,原住民。例句:There are many aboriginal descendant families living here.(這裡住有很多原住民後裔家庭。)

fea・si・bil・i・ty

━━ n.
feasibility study 【コンピュータ】実行可能性[採算性,企業化]調査.
feasible



The noun conservancy has 2 meanings:
Meaning #1: (British) a commission with jurisdiction over fisheries and navigation in a port or river
Meaning #2: the official conservation of trees and soil and rivers etc.


wsj

BEIJING -- China is expected to sign an agreement soon for a landmark feasibility study of an alternative way to manage the Three Gorges Dam, essentially allowing more water to pass through, the latest move to address development pitfalls with the world's biggest hydropower project.
中國即將與美國環保組織──大自然保護協會(The Nature Conservancy)簽署合作協議﹐對控制三峽大壩下游灘區風險的問題進行可行性研究﹐這是中國為解決這個全球最大水利項目的缺陷採取的最新舉動。

The state-owned company that owns and manages the dam, China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp., is in the process of finalizing an agreement with the Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based environmental group, for the study to help minimize the ecological impact of the massive dam on the Yangtze River, the Nature Conservancy said.
中國長江三峽工程開發總公司(China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corp.)目前正在和大自然保護協會敲定這份具有里程碑意義的協議。據大自然保護協會表示,研究的目的在於將三峽大壩的生態影響降至最小程度。長江三峽工程開發總公司是一家國有企業,代表中國政府擁有並負責管理三峽大壩。

2009年9月18日 星期五

Wrests Title Of Sleeping Giant, wake-up call, wrestle

France Wrests Title Of Sleeping Giant

When he won the presidential election two years ago, Nicolas Sarkozy urged the French to get up early and work more to earn more.

A study released Monday suggests they missed the wake-up call.

France is the industrialized country where people spend the longest periods sleeping, according to a series of surveys on social habits conducted by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.

The French sleep a daily average of 530 minutes, compared with 518 for Americans and 469 for Koreans -- the OECD's 'most awake' nation, according to the study.

In an era of globalization, the amount of time spent at work has been declining gradually in the OECD's 30 member nations over the past three decades, according to the surveys, which were conducted in 2006.

The report shows, however, that sharp cultural differences remain in how people spend their time when they don't work.

True to the cliche, the French spend more than two hours eating every day -- about twice the time Americans devote to swallowing their breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Who are the couch potatoes of the OECD?

Mexicans spend 48% of their leisure time watching television or listening to the radio, compared with 44% for Americans and 28% for German people, the OECD report shows.

In contrast, Spaniards are the most addicted to sports: They spend 12% of their leisure time practicing sports, compared with 5% for Americans and 2% for Turks.

When they don't sleep or eat, the French hold another OECD record: They have 30 annual days of mandatory paid leave. That compares with 20 in the U.K. and 10 in Japan.

There is no mandatory paid annual leave in the U.S.

As for overall leisure, Norwegian men and women have about the same amount of free time each day.

In Italy, however, men have nearly 80 daily minutes more leisure time than women. On an annualized basis, that means 444 hours or 18.5 days.

'Much of the additional work of Italian women is apparently spent cleaning the house,' according to the report.

David Gauthier-Villars

法國勇奪“酣睡的巨人”稱號
年前﹐當薩科齊(Nicolas Sarkozy)贏得總統競選時﹐他督促法國人早點起、多工作、多掙錢。

但週一公佈的一項研究顯示﹐總統的號召被法國人當成了耳旁風。

Getty Images
據總部位於巴黎的經濟合作和發展組織(Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development)針對社會習慣所作的一系列調查顯示﹐法國是工業化國家中人們睡眠時間最長的一個。

研究顯示﹐法國人平均每天的睡眠時間為530分鐘﹐高於美國人518分鐘。而經合組織成員國中最警醒的國家要算韓國﹐人們的平均睡眠時間為469分鐘。

2006年開始進行的這個系列調查顯示﹐在全球化時代﹐經合組織30個成員國的人們過去30年來花在睡眠上的時間在逐漸減少。

不過﹐報告顯示﹐在如何消磨業餘時間方面﹐不同文化的人群存在著顯著差異。

也許是老生常談﹕法國人每天花在吃飯上的時間超過兩小時﹐大約是美國人的兩倍。

經合組織國家中﹐哪國人窩在沙發上看電視的時間最長﹖

經合組織的報告顯示﹐墨西哥人將48%的閒暇時間用來看電視或聽收音機﹐美國人這個數字是44%﹐德國則是28%。

相比之下﹐西班牙人對體育運動最痴迷﹐他們將12%的閒暇時間用於體育鍛煉﹐而美國人和土耳其人的這個比例分別是5%和2%。

除了吃飯和睡覺方面的紀錄﹐法國人在經合組織成員國中還擁有一項紀錄﹐那就是他們的強制帶薪年假有30天。英國和日本的帶薪年假分別是20天和10天。

美國沒有強制帶薪年假。

在總的休閒時間方面﹐挪威男性和女性每天可自由支配的時間相等。

而在意大利﹐男性每天比女性的閒暇時間多出近80分鐘﹐全年總計多出444小時﹐也就是18.5天。

報告稱﹐意大利女性的額外勞動有很大一部分顯然是花在打掃房間上面了。


Google Aims to Wrest Display Ads From Yahoo
By MIGUEL HELFT and STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
The company will introduce a long-awaited system that will instantly match ad buyers with ad sellers when a customer visits a Web site.



wrest
tr.v., wrest·ed, wrest·ing, wrests.
  1. To obtain by or as if by pulling with violent twisting movements: wrested the book out of his hands; wrested the islands from the settlers.
  2. To usurp forcefully: wrested power from the monarchy.
  3. To extract by or as if by force, twisting, or persistent effort; wring: wrest the meaning from an obscure poem.
    1. To distort or twist the nature or meaning of: wrested the words out of context.
    2. To divert to an improper use; misapply.
n.
  1. The act of wresting.
  2. Music. A small tuning key for the wrest pins of a stringed instrument.

[Middle English wresten, from Old English wrǣstan, to twist.]

wrester wrest'er n.

<– Back to results

wrestle PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Hide phonetics
verb [I or T]
to fight with someone (especially as a sport) by holding them and trying to throw them to the ground:
He has wrestled professionally for five years.
The police officer tackled the man and wrestled him to the ground.

wrestler PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Phonetic PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Hide phonetics
noun [C]
a person who wrestles as a sport

wrestling PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Hide phonetics
noun [U]
a sport where two people fight and try to throw each other to the ground
See picture .



2009年9月15日 星期二

self-effacing, thickset, amorous, V-J Day, Chest-beating

On V-J Day, Frank Sinatra appeared, along with Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Lionel Barrymore, Cary Grant and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.



By GRÉGOIRE BOUILLIER
Reviewed by CAROLINE WEBER With self-effacing humor, Grégoire Bouillier describes his amorous obsessions.





His voice grew louder as he recalled the bloody suppression and aftermath of the protests. I became nervous. Yu, a short, thickset man with bulging eyes, could easily pass unnoticed in a crowd of Chinese peasants and workers, but he does not exactly strive for self-effacement.


"Whatever advances American manufacturing has made in the last 30 to 40 years," Drucker said, "we owe to Joe Juran and to his untiring, steady, patient, self-effacing work."



Chest-beating is commonly used to illustrate that the subject is displaying
dominant or aggressive behavior by comparing them.

am・o・rous


━━ a. 好色の; 恋愛の; なまめかしい.
am・or・ist ━━ n. 好色家; 恋愛文学作家.
am・o・rous・ly ━━ ad.
am・o・rous・ness ━━ n.

thickset PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Hide phonetics
adjective
describes a person, especially a man, whose body is wide across the shoulders and chest and who is short; stocky:
A thickset young man appeared in the doorway.


self-effacing PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Hide phonetics
adjective ━━ a. 控えめな.
not making yourself noticeable; not trying to get the attention of other people; modest:
The captain was typically self-effacing when questioned about the team's successes, giving credit to the other players.


efface (REMOVE) PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Hide phonetics
verb [T] FORMAL
to remove something intentionally:
The whole country had tried to efface the memory of the old dictatorship.


efface yourself (MODEST) verb [R] FORMAL
to behave in a modest way and treat as unimportant the good things that you have achieved, often because you lack confidence