Le sujet 2007 - Bac L - Anglais LV1 - Traduction |
Avis du professeur :
Attention la traduction est longue et dangereuse. Le style
est familier. Vous devez veiller à respecter ce niveau de langue sans tomber
dans la vulgarité. |
The waiting area grew colder
and emptier as dark fell, and he moved closer to the smoking
stove by the clerk's counter. Soon there would be
nothing left to do but knock on church doors and
seek lodging for the night. He brooded over other
possible avenues but came up only with cold
alleyways. Well, it was warmer by the stove at
least, and he stretched out his legs toward the heat.
5 He surprised himself suddenly with a
twitch - he'd been asleep. He looked to the far corner and
saw the clerk at the desk beckon at him.
"You. Yeah, you"
He had been called.
"Yes, sir." Hands on
thighs, optimism rising, he stood.
10 "You been here all day. Didn't you sign
in? Don't you realize we're closed?" He looked about
and saw that the other benches sat vacant and the
hall was empty but for himself and the clerk.
The optimism dwindled away. The man was just
kicking him out.
"Sorry. Sorry. I'll
go."
"No - wait. Turns out
you're lucky. See, I only let you snore because of the rotten weather, but
15 now it seems I'm lucky. You noticed the snow? Well,
someone at Street Cleaning only just looked
out the window, and they sent a boy over here
with an order for an overnight shoveling1 crew - just
in time for closing. So what about it? Shoveling
snow for the city. You want the job?"
It took him a moment to
follow. "Snow, a job, shoveling," he repeated, and then he
understood.
"Ja, danke, danke" he said.
20 "Is that a yes? You better stop speaking Dutch
and learn some English."
"Yes. Yes, sir."
"All right, good. You can
start now and go till the regulars show up at six, see? Anyway, you've
had your beauty sleep, and I think I can tell
from looking that you ain't got evening plans." Beauty
sleep? the stableman wondered. Evening
plans? He wasn't sure how he should respond.
25 "Or don't you want a night job? You want I find
some other lug2?"
"A lug? No... or, yes. I
mean, yes, I'll do it - and no, no one else.
"'You'll take the
job."
"I'll take it"
"Good. The thing of it is,
you're the only man left. You think you're man enough to shovel the
30 city alone?"
"The city, alone?" He
thought a moment. Perhaps it was a joke. "That would take a long time,
sir," he finally said. His English might
have been better if only the few people who talked to him
had made more sense.
"You're right, it would.
So, first thing you do is round up, say, twenty men and take 'em down to
35 the dock at Coffee House Slip, East River off of Wall Street.
You'll get the carts and shovels there
and sign up with the fellow at the office. The
others get paid for the time they shovel, you get paid
foreman's3 wages, starting right
now."
Foreman's wages.
"What's your name?"
40 "Geiermeier," he said, and leaning
over the clerk's ledger4, he saw it written out in the beautiful
Gothic script he'd learned as a boy and pointed
to the entry. "I signed in this morning."
"You got to be kidding. Is
that how you say that? I must have tried to call you five times today,
yesterday, too. I started to think it was
Chinese, all that up and down and curlicue around, no way
of knowing what letters is meant. Where'd you
learn to write like that anyhow? You don't know how
45 to give yourself a leg up, do you?
A leg up? Americans said
much that he didn't understand. He had listened almost obsessively
to the names being called. But then the clerk
uttered a strange, vaguely familiar word, and it
dawned on him: this was how the clerk had been
pronouncing his name, with the g misinterpreted
as h, the vowels collapsed, the m
transmuted, and the sounds and stresses generally so different
50 from the actual pronunciation that it hadn't even registered on
him. He frowned slightly with
frustration - how many opportunities had he
missed in the past two days because of this?
"That's a G," he said
weakly, pointing to the page. "I never realized you were calling me."
"What kind of writing is
that, Greek? You ain't Greek, are you?"
"It's German."
55 "Aw, jeez. Now, there's plenty of Germans
in New York, and they seem to get along. But where
are you going to get with a name no one can read,
and you can't even tell when they're trying to? It
just won't do, that name. Or the handwriting
either."
Adapted from Elizabeth Gaffney, Metropolis,
2005.
1 to shovel : déblayer
2 lug : gars
3 foreman : contremaître
4 ledger : registre
Translate into French from line 10 ("You been here all day...") to
line 17 ("...want the job?")
I - LES DIFFICULTES DU SUJET
Attention, traduction dangereuse au style parlé. Vous devez prendre soin de respecter ce niveau de langue familier sans tomber dans la vulgarité.
II - LES PISTES DE REPONSES
- "T'étais là toute la journée. Tu t'es pas inscrit ?
Tu vois pas qu'on est fermé ?" Il regarda autour de lui et s'aperçut que
les autres bancs étaient vides et qu'il n'y avait plus personne dans la salle à
part lui et l'employé du centre.
Son optimisme s'évanouit. Cet homme le jetait dehors.
- "Pardon. Pardon. J'm'en vais".
- "Non, attends. En fait, t'as d'la chance. Tu vois, j't'ai seulement
laissé ronfler à cause de c'temps pourri mais maintenant on dirait que c'est
moi qui ai d'la chance. T'as vu cette neige ? Et bien, un gars de la voirie
vient juste de regarder par la fenêtre et ils m'ont envoyé un jeune pour me
demander de monter une équipe de déblayage cette nuit—juste au moment de
la fermeture. Alors, qu'est-ce que t'en dis ? Déblayer d'la neige ? Le boulot
te tente ?".