2013年12月5日 星期四

focus, diverging paths, stellar, take aback, interstellar debut

  At this point it is probably too late for even a stellar repair job on Obamacare to entirely undo the political damage its catastrophic debut has done to the Obama administration and the Democrats. The next question, then, is how Republicans will take advantage of this situation http://econ.st/187NIwA

 

 

To Keep Viewers Watching, New Ads Come With Varied Endings

By STUART ELLIOTT
The Mike's Hard Lemonade line of malt beverages is introducing a series of humorous commercials that begin the same way but then diverge to offer different endings.
Facebook's Revenues, Profit Slide

The company's less-than-stellar quarter comes as it preps for its much-hyped IPO next month.



Finally, Global Markets Are Going Their Own Ways
[The Journal Report: Quarterly Markets Review]
Tim Bower
Global stock markets are striking out on separate paths, in contrast to last year's universal collapse. There was a wide divergence in markets' performance in first three months of 2009, with results ranging from poor to middling to stellar.





"The biggest uncertainty surrounding China’s trade performance remains in the external environment,” he said “Despite potential tax cuts and stimulus measures in key overseas markets, the outlook for global consumption remains bleak. Exports are likely to remain lackluster until global consumers regain their appetite for consumption.”



Two Patent Paths for Tech Giants
IBM and H-P are taking diverging paths when it comes to intellectual property, with IBM generating 4,186 patents last year, significantly more than H-P.




Goldman, while its business has been stellar, has faced a public relations disaster. The firm announced late last year it would donate $200 million from its foundation along with creating a $500 million fund to help small businesses.
高盛儘管業績向來耀眼,卻面臨公關災難。該公司去年底宣布,將從其基金會捐出2億美元,並成立一個5億美元的基金來協助小型企業。

stellar:形容詞,傑出的;一流的。另外常見的意思是「恆星的」、「星球的」,例句:The central bulge of our galaxy is actually a stellar bar.(我們銀河系的中央突出部分實際上是一個恆星帶。)

stellar

Syllabification: (stel·lar)
Pronunciation: /ˈstelər/


adjective

  • of or relating to a star or stars:stellar structure and evolution
  • informal featuring or having the quality of a star performer or performers:a stellar cast had been assembled
  • informal exceptionally good; outstanding:his restaurant has received stellar ratings in the guides


Derivatives




stelliform


Pronunciation: /ˈsteləˌfôrm/
adjective

Origin:

mid 17th century: from late Latin stellaris, from Latin stella 'star'

diverge verb [I]
to follow a different direction, or to be or become different:
They walked along the road together until they reached the village, but then their paths diverged.
Although the two organizations have worked together for many years, their objectives have diverged recently.
NOTE: The opposite is converge.

divergence  
noun [C or U]
The divergence between the incomes of the rich and the poor countries seems to be increasing.
Recently published figures show a divergence from previous trends.

divergent 
adjective
They hold widely divergent opinions on controversial issues like abortion.




take aback

Surprise, shock, as in He was taken aback by her caustic remark. This idiom comes from nautical terminology of the mid-1700s, when be taken aback referred to the stalling of a ship caused by a wind shift that made the sails lay back against the masts. Its figurative use was first recorded in 1829.

reInside Europe | 16.08.2008 | 07:05

The Fight for South Ossetia

South Ossetia. Until a week ago most people have never heard of it. But the events of the last week have focussed the world’s attention on this tiny separatist region of Georgia at the crossroads of east and west, and north and south.

Tension between Georgia and Russia has been rising since the breakup of the former Soviet Union. The majority of the South Ossetian population want independence from Georgia and have been waging a separatist struggle for years. Last week, though, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sought to regain control of the region by force. Russia supports the separatists and responded by sending in tanks and troops. So why has such an impoverished, isolated part of the Caucasus resulted in what some analysts argue is causing a new Cold War? Sabine Freizer, Director of the European Programme at the International Crisis Group, told Inside Europe why it’s so important to resolve this crisis.

《中英對照讀新聞》Klingon opera made its interstellar debut 克林貢歌劇完成星際首演
◎俞智敏
DaHjaj ’oH Qaq jaj vaD bI’reS.
No, your screen is not broken -- that, for the uninitiated, is how one says "Today is a good day for opera" in Klingon.
不,你的螢幕沒壞──那句話,對門外漢來說,指的是克林貢語裡的「今天是唱歌劇的好日子。」
The invented language, spoken first by the fictional aliens of the "Star Trek" universe and later embraced by humans worldwide, is now being put to use in an opera making its debut recently in the Dutch city of The Hague.
這種人造語言一開始是由影集「星際爭霸戰」裡的虛構外星人首度發聲,後來被全世界的人類所接受,現在更被用於一齣剛剛才在荷蘭海牙市首演的歌劇中。
Opera is a cornerstone of the Klingon culture that is a major part of the "Star Trek" canon, which led to the creation of the show "U" (which means universe or universal).
歌劇是克林貢文化的基礎,而克林貢文化又是「星際爭霸戰」經典中的重要環節,因此才衍生出「U 」這部作品(意指宇宙或普遍的)。
The 90-minute show tells the story of Kahless the Unforgettable, said to be the first Klingon emperor. Audiences at the preview show were impressed. "It was really well interpreted, the music was really good, and the performance of the actors were fantastic," Dutch Klingon Erwin Slegers said.
這齣長90分鐘的演出描述的是首位克林貢皇帝「永遠的凱勒斯」生平。參加預演的觀眾們表示對演出印象深刻。「劇情詮釋得很好,音樂也很棒,演員們的演出也很了不起,」荷蘭克林貢人史雷傑說。
The "real" Klingon people have also been invited to see the show, via a message sent through a radio telescope in April to their home star, Arcturus. As it will take the message 36 years to reach them, however, they are not expected to make the opera’s debut or performances later this month in Frankfurt.
主辦單位也已在今年4月透過無線望遠鏡,向「真正的」克林貢人母星大角星發出邀請。但由於這項訊息要花36年時間才會抵達大角星,因此克林貢人應該無法參加歌劇的首演,或本月稍後在法蘭克福的其他場演出。


Language

Marc Okrand is the author of several books about the Klingon language, which he developed.
The Klingon have their own language that was developed for the feature films, often described as "guttural." For The Motion Picture, James Doohan, the actor who portrayed Montgomery Scott, devised the initial Klingon-language dialogue heard in the film.[33] For The Search for Spock, Marc Okrand, who created the Vulcan dialogue used in the previous film, developed an actual working Klingon language based on Doohan's original made-up words.[34]
Okrand was presented with a difficult task of contriving a language that sounded alien, while still simple enough for the actors to pronounce.[5] While most constructed languages or conlangs follow basic tenets of natural languages — for example, all languages have an "ah" sound — Okrand deliberately broke them. He chose the rarest form of sentence construction, the object-verb-subject form: the translation of the phrase "I boarded the Enterprise", would be constructed as "The Enterprise boarded I."[35] Okrand reasoned the language would be indicative of the culture, the Klingon's language focuses on actions and verbs. Adjectives do not strictly exist; there is no word for "greedy", but there is a verb, qur, which means "to be greedy".[36] The language does not contain the verb "to be", which meant Okrand had to create a workaround when director Nicholas Meyer wanted his Klingons to quote Shakespeare and the famous line "to be, or not to be" in The Undiscovered Country.[5] Initially, Okrand came up with "to live or not live", but Plummer did not like the sound of the line. Okrand went back and revised the phrase to "taH pagh, taHbe", roughly meaning "whether to continue, or not to continue [existence]".[5] The Klingon language has a small vocabulary compared to natural languages, containing around 2000 words.[20]
Okrand convinced Pocket Books to publish the The Klingon Dictionary in 1985; in it, Okrand elaborated on the Klingon language's grammar, syntax and vocabulary. While Okrand expected the book to only sell as a novelty item, eleven years after publication the book had sold 250,000 copies.[36] Dedicated Klingon enthusiasts, some but not all Star Trek fans, created the Klingon Language Institute, which publishes multiple magazines in the language. While Paramount initially tried to stop the Institute from using their copyrighted language, the company eventually relented. The Institute has since published Klingon translations of Hamlet and the Bible.[20] The Bible proved to be difficult to translate, as Christian concepts like atonement—and words like God (until the recent addition of Qun meaning "god")—are not found in the Klingon vernacular. From time to time, Okrand has amended the "official" list of Klingon vocabulary due in part to requests from the Institute and other groups.[37] Other Klingon groups include blood drives, bowling teams, and a Klingon golf championship.[38]
The Klingon language's prevalence is not limited to books; a three-disc video game, Star Trek: Klingon, requires players to learn the language in order to advance.[39] In May 2009, a joint collaboration between the KLI, Simon & Schuster, and Ultralingua launched the Klingon Language Suite for the iPhone concurrent with the release of the new movie. The popularity of the language meant that in 1996 it was considered the fastest-growing constructed language, ahead of other languages such as Tolkien's Elvish or Esperanto. While the language is widespread, mastery of the language is extremely uncommon; there are only around a dozen fluent speakers of the language. Okrand himself is not fluent, and the actors who speak the language in the Star Trek series are more concerned with its expression than the actual grammar.[36] According to the 2006 edition of Guinness World Records, Klingon is the most spoken fictional language by number of speakers,[40] Klingon is one of many language interfaces in the Google search engine,[41] and a Klingon character was included in the Wikipedia logo.[42]


regain 
verb [T]
1 to take or get possession of something again:
The government has regained control of the capital from rebel forces.
She made an effort to regain her self-control.

2 to reach or return to a place, especially after difficulty or danger:
The swimmers struggled to regain the shore.


focus
n., pl. -cus·es or -ci (-sī', -kī').
    1. A point at which rays of light or other radiation converge or from which they appear to diverge, as after refraction or reflection in an optical system: the focus of a lens. Also called focal point.
    2. See focal length.
    1. The distinctness or clarity of an image rendered by an optical system.
    2. The state of maximum distinctness or clarity of such an image: in focus; out of focus.
    3. An apparatus used to adjust the focal length of an optical system in order to make an image distinct or clear: a camera with automatic focus.
  1. A center of interest or activity. See synonyms at center.
  2. Close or narrow attention; concentration: “He was forever taken aback by [New York's] pervasive atmosphere of purposefulness—the tight focus of its drivers, the brisk intensity of its pedestrians” (Anne Tyler).
  3. A condition in which something can be clearly apprehended or perceived: couldn't get the problem into focus.
  4. Pathology. The region of a localized bodily infection or disease.
  5. Geology. The point of origin of an earthquake.
  6. Mathematics. A fixed point whose relationship with a directrix determines a conic section.

v., -cused or -cussed, -cus·ing or -cus·sing, -cus·es or -cus·ses. v.tr.
  1. To cause (light rays, for example) to converge on or toward a central point; concentrate.
    1. To render (an object or image) in clear outline or sharp detail by adjustment of one's vision or an optical device; bring into focus.
    2. To adjust (a lens, for example) to produce a clear image.
  2. To direct toward a particular point or purpose: focused all their attention on finding a solution to the problem.
v.intr.
  1. To converge on or toward a central point of focus; be focused.
  2. To adjust one's vision or an optical device so as to render a clear, distinct image.
  3. To concentrate attention or energy: a campaign that focused on economic issues.
[Latin, hearth.]


It's tricky to make a good film about a stellar director.

stellar[stel・lar]

  • 発音記号[stélər]
[形]
1 ((通例限定))星の
stellar light
星の光.
2 星のような, 星形の.
3 ((米))(映画・スポーツなどの)スターの, 花形の, 一流の;主要な
a stellar role
主役.
[ラテン語stēllāris(星の)←stēlla(星). △STAR, CONSTELLATION

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