Participles with active and passive meaning

МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ

НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКИЙ ЯДЕРНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ

«МИФИ»

 

 

 

О.Ф. Клочкова

 

 

ПРАКТИЧЕСКОЕ ПОСОБИЕ

ДЛЯ АСПИРАНТОВ

ПО ПЕРЕВОДУ НАУЧНО-ТЕХНИЧЕСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ

 

Москва 2010

УДК

ББК

 

Клочкова О.Ф. Практическое пособие для аспирантов по переводу научно-технической литературы. – М.: НИЯУ МИФИ, 2010. - 128 с.

 

 

Пособие предназначено для аспирантов физико-технических специальностей и ставит целью развитие навыков технического перевода и составление аннотаций, рефератов, а также написание собственных статей по специализации выпускающих кафедр факультетов ‘Т’, ‘Ф’, ‘К’, ‘А’, ‘Б’, ‘СФФ’. Материал пособие основан на аутентичных научных текстах оригинальных периодических изданий.

Пособие может быть использовано магистрантами, обучающихся по специальностям всех физико-технических кафедр НИЯУ МИФИ.

С его помощью аспиранты смогут проводить самостоятельную подготовку к сдаче кандидатского экзамена по английскому языку. Его можно также использовать в качестве учебного пособия при работе под руководством преподавателя.

 

 

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Национальный исследовательский ядерный университет «МИФИ».

115409, Москва, Каширское шоссе, 31.

Типография НИЯУ МИФИ

 

 

Оглавление

 

Введение ___________________ 4

LESSON 1 ___________________ 5

LESSON 2 ___________________ 10

LESSON 3 ___________________ 19

LESSON 4 ___________________ 28

LESSON 5 ___________________ 37

LESSON 6 ___________________ 44

LESSON 7 ___________________ 55

LESSON 8 ___________________ 69

LESSON 9 ___________________ 76

LESSON 10 ___________________ 86

LESSON 11 ___________________ 96

APPENDIX 1. ________________ 105

APPENDIX 2. ________________ 116

APPENDIX 3. ________________ 119

 

Введение

 

Данное учебное пособие предназначено для аспирантов, специализирующихся в различных областях физики, компьютерной технологии, информационной безопасности и разработке компьютерного программного обеспечения.

С его помощью аспиранты могут самостоятельно совершенствовать знания и практические навыки, необходимые для сдачи кандидатского минимума.

Тексты и примеры отобраны из англоязычных научных изданий и являются полностью аутентичными. При этом они не предполагают глубокого или всестороннего знания рассматриваемого предмета и будут понятны для всех аспирантов указанных специализаций.

Важной особенностью данного учебного пособия является его практическая направленность, что позволит в дальнейшем использовать полученные навыки не только для работы с английскими текстами, но и для самостоятельного написания аннотаций и статей на английском языке.

Пособие может быть также использовано для аудиторных занятий под руководством преподавателя.

 

 

Структура пособия

Пособие состоит из 11 уроков, каждый из которых включает несколько разделов.

Part one содержит отрывок оригинального научного текста, а также вопросы и задания, ориентированные на проработку основных грамматических конструкций.

Part twoвключает практические задания, предназначенные для закрепление грамматики.

В Part three основное внимание уделяется практической отработке некоторых наиболее часто встречающихся в научной литературе лексических структур, а также приводится отрывок текста, включающий рассматриваемые грамматические конструкции.

LESSON 1

Word Order

Remember the word order of the English sentence.

1 – Subject

2 – Predicate

3 – Object

0 and 4 – Adverbial Modifiers

 

0 1 2 3 4

Last year I published a paperin a scientific journal.

Time and Tenses

Part I

Grammar

 

1. Answer the questions.

What is AI?

Do you think human type AI is achievable?

If you were to build a thinking machine, what would it be like?

Is it important to have it look like a human being?

2. Read and translate the following.

The worldstands on the threshold of a second computer age. New technology now moving out of the laboratory is starting to change the computer from a fantastically fast calculating machines into a device that mimics human thought processes - giving machines the capability to reason, make judgments, and even learn. Already this "artificial intelligence'' is performing tasks once thought to require human intelligence...

Computers have emerged from back rooms and laboratories to help with writing, calculating

and play in homes and offices. These machines do simple, repetitive tasks, but machines still in the laboratory do much more. Computers can be made smart, and fewer and fewer people disagree. To understand our future, we must see whether artificial intelligence is as impossible as flying to the Moon.

Thinking machines need not resemble human beings in shape, purpose, or mental skills. Indeed some artificial intelligence systems will show few traits of the intelligent liberal arts graduate,

but will instead serve only as powerful engines of design. Nonetheless, understanding of how human minds evolved from mindless matter will shed light on how machines can be made to think. Minds, like other forms of order, evolved through variation and selection.

 

3. Answer the questions / do the tasks.

1. Do the parts in bold type refer to the present, past, or future?

2. Put a general question to each of them.

3. Put special questions to the first and last sentences.

4. Put questions beginning with when, where, why to other sentences.

5. What feature distinguishes questions in the Simple from those in other tenses?

6. Put questions to the subject of the sentences with parts in bold.

7. What makes the question to the subject different from other ones?

 

Part II

Practice

 

1. Complete the sentence with each of the suggested variants and answer the questions.

When the science adviser came to the lab…

- Max was checking the results.

- Steve checked the results.

- Andrew had checked the results.

Who is the most hardworking?

Who is the laziest?

Who will have a chance to listen to the comment of his chief?

2. Write three similar sentences.

 

3. Study the structure of the predicates in the following sentences.

1. When we checkedthe result we sawa mistake in our calculations.

2. The basic technique for such storage was proposed in 1963 by the scientist who was working on holographic technologies.

3. While experimenting with the passage of electric current in a tube from which most of the air had been removed, Roentgen made two observations.

 

4. Answer the questions.

1. Do the actions in the sentences happen simultaneously?

2. What grammar shows, that:

а) they are/were simultaneous?

б) follow each other in chronological order?

в) one of them happened earlier than the other?

 

5. Write three sentences dealing with some scientific facts, where the actions:

а) follow each other

b) happen at the same time

c) one action was before the other

6.Answer the question /do the tasks.

1. Why is the name of Bill Gates known to everyone?

2. Translate the paragraph from his article.

3. Explain the use of tenses.

 

When Allen and I launched Microsoft, big, expensive mainframe computersran the back-office operations for major companies, governmental departments and other institutions. Researchers at leading universities and industrial laboratories were creating the basic building blocks that would make the information age possible. Intel had just introduced the 8080 microprocessor, and Atari was selling the popular electronic game Pong. At homegrown computer clubs, enthusiasts struggled to figure out exactly what this new technology was good for…

Writing a paper

1. Write a short paragraph (150 words) dealing with some scientific facts or events.

Use sentences in different tenses.

 

Part III

Vocabulary

1. Discuss the following ideas:

a) One day machines will undertake all the routine work that humans do now.

b) Machines will never be as intellectual as humans.

 

2. Read the text and answer the question.

What are the most difficult things for robots to do?

Over the past century, anthropomorphic machines have become familiar figures in popular culture through books such as Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, movies such as Star Wars and television shows such as Star Trek. The popularity of robots in fiction indicates that people are receptive to the idea that these machines will one day walk among us as helpers and even as companions. Nevertheless, although robots play a vital role in industries such as automobile manufacturing — where there is about one robot for every 10 workers — the fact is that we have a long way to go before real robots catch up with their science-fiction counterparts. One reason for this gap is that it has been much harder than expected to enable computers and robots to sense their surrounding environment and to react quickly and accurately.

It has proved extremely difficult to give robots the capabilities that humans take for granted— for example, the abilities to orient themselves with respect to the objects in a room, to respond to sounds and interpret speech, and to grasp objects of varying sizes, textures and fragility. Even something as simple as telling the difference between an open door and a window can be devilishly tricky for a robot.

 

3. Think of the best way to translate the underlined words.

 

3. Translate the parts in bold.

 

4. Complete the sentences below with some facts from your field of specialization.

 

a) Over the past century…

Ex: Over the past century, scientists have learned a lot about nanostructures.

(Use the Present Perfect in your sentence)

Over the previous year…

Over the past decade…

Over that period…

 

b) The fact is that…

The truth is that…

The idea is that…

 

5. Read the following sentence.

And how would we be able totellif we were in a special place?

 

a) think of the meaning of the wordtellin this context

b) which is the correct way to translate the word if into Russian («если» or «ли» with the corresponding verb)?

c) Translate the sentence

 

6.Translate the sentences.

(Note: whether is the synonym ofif)

 

1. They are now looking to seeif using skeletal muscle instead of heart muscle could help the robots move more freely.

2. The new technology has a lot of potential, although it is difficult to know at this point iftheir approach will succeed.

3. It is a matter of debatewhether biological or social reasons caused the difference between the sexes.

4. The ethical debate about whether or not to use drugs to improve performance in normal schoolchildren and students will probably be resolved over the next 20 years.

 

7. Make sentences and write them down.

a)

Ex: We have a long way to go.

 

We have a long way to do

a lot of things to conduct

a number of problems to solve

several experiments to go

b)

Ex: The new technique will enable scientists to understand the structure of the substance.

 

The new method will enable us to investigate such phenomena in future/achieve…

This device enables (in general) the scientists to get…

This experiment has enabled (a resent achievement) them to understand...

The equation enabled (a historic event) the researchers to calculate…

 

c)

Ex: Scientists couldn’t tell if such matter existed.

 

We couldn’t tell we was correct

The scientists understand if they were something new

People say whether it exciting

 

8. Write a short paragraph (100 words).

Use as many words and word combinations from the text as you can.

 

LESSON 2

Passive

Part I

Grammar

1. Read and translate the passage. Find answers to the questions.

1. When did the measurement theory originate?

2. How many units were adopted within the SI system?

Measurement theory dates back to the 4th century BC, when a theory of magnitudes developed by the Greek mathematicians Eudoxus of Cnidus and Thaeatetus was included in Euclid's Elements. The first systematic work on observational error was produced by the English mathematician Thomas Simpson in 1757, but the fundamental work on error theory was done by two 18th-century French astronomers, Joseph-Louis, Count de Lagrange, and Pierre-Simon, Marquess de Laplace.

Now the standard system in most nations, the metric system, has been modernized to take into account 20th-century technological advances. In Paris in 1960 an international convention agreed on a new metric-based system of units. This was the Systeme Internationale (SI). Six base units were adopted: the meter (length),the kilogram (mass), the second (time), the ampere (electric current), the degree Kelvin (temperature), and the candela (luminosity). Each was keyed to a standard value. ………….

The problem of error is one of the central concerns of measurement theory. At one time it was believed that errors of measurement couldeventually be eliminated through the refinement of scientific principles and equipment. This belief is no longer held by most scientists, and almost all physical measurements reported today are accompanied by some indication of the limitation of accuracy or the probable degree of error. Among the various types of error that must be taken into account are errors of observation (which include instrumental errors, personal errors, systematic errors, and random errors), errors of sampling, and direct and indirect errors (in which one erroneous measurement is used in computing other measurements).

2. Answer the questions.

1. Do the subjects in bold perform the action expressed by the predicates?

2. What features make the predicates discussed different from each other?

3. In what tenses can the Passive Voice be used?

 

3. Ask several questions to the sentences with predicates in bold.

4. Find in the texts the examples of:

a) Present Simple Passive,

b) Past Simple Passive,

c) Present Perfect Passive,

d) Modal Verb + Passive Infinitive,

e) Negative Passive form.

Part II

Practice

I

1. Choose the correct variant.

 

X-rays can use/be used to build up a picture of the inside of the human body. When x-rays pass / are passed through the body, they absorb / are absorbedby some tissues more than by others. For instance, bone absorbs/ is absorbedmore X-rays than muscle. The information records / is recordedon film or screen so that it can be interpreted.. If photographic film exposes / is exposedto the X-rays, it becomes darker in areas where more X-rays have passed through the body.

 

2. Translate the descriptions of some processes.

A

The ones and zeros that make up the data set are first split into two-dimensional pages of data lines of light and dark pixels displayed on the screen. Individual pages are then illuminated from behind with a laser, producing a projection on the page known as a data wave.

 

B

The wafer is coated with a substance, called "photo-resist," and then exposed to a black-and-white pattern as if the pattern were being photographed and the coated wafer were the film in the camera. The white areas of the pattern correspond to the upper surfaces of the end regions of all N² transistors. Light hits the wafer in these white areas of the pattern and chemically alters the photo-resist there. The wafer is dipped in a solvent that dissolves away the chemically altered photo-resist, where the pattern had been white, but not the unaltered parts, where the pattern had been black….

 

3. Some specific features of using the passive forms in English

Compare the two beginnings (Russian and English) of the sentences.

1. В статье описывается… (passive)

The paper describes… (active)

 

2. На рисунке показано…

The figure shows…

 

3. В данном разделе рассматриваются…

This section discusses…

 

4. Translate the sentences.

 

1. The 17th century saw an unprecedented explosion of mathematical and scientific ideas across Europe.

2. .Figure 1 shows the type sig­nature of the instruction and instruction template formats.

3 .One practical method of separation uses a sequence of freezing, thawing and compression.

4. That century saw the development of two forms of non-Euclidian geometry.

 

5. Read the sentence in English and compare it with the Russian equivalent.

 

1. I was invitedto the meeting.

( I is the subject )

2. Меня пригласилина собрание.

( no subject )

 

6. Translate the sentences.

1 He was invited to lead the project.

2. Iwas shown at least one project that involved robotics.

 

 

7. Translate into English.

1. В прошлом месяце меня пригласили на научную конференцию. Меня попросили рассказать о результатах эксперимента.

2. На выставке мне показали новый прибор. Мне объяснили, как он работает.

3. Вчера мне сказали, что я должен написать отчет об исследованиях. Мне дали всю необходимую информацию и попросили закончить работу к концу недели.

4. Мне предложили работу в научно-исследовательском институте. Меня пригласили возглавить группу ученых.

5. Недавно мне дали прочитать статью по оптике. Меня впечатлили достижения коллег.

 

II

Participles with active and passive meaning

(Participle 1 vs. Participle 2)

1. Compare the use of the participles.

Scientists, conductingthe research…

The research, conductedby scientists…

 

Ving– active meaning (a reduced continuous form – are conducting)

 

Ved – passive meaning (a reduced passive form – is conducted)

 

2. Translate the sentences.

 

A

1. Devices, using this technology, will soon become common on our laboratories.

2. Nuclear weaponsare explosive devices, designed to release nuclear energy on a large scale, used primarily in military applications.

B

1. Holography is a technique that allows the light scattering from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to the recording medium as it was when recorded.

2. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object was still present, thus making therecorded image (hologram) appear three dimensional.

 

4. Answer the questions

Can you guess the meaning of the word microbots?

Where can they be used?.

Read the passages.

a)

Other microbots being created are not solely machines. Several institutes have been involved in incorporating organic living tissue with inorganic components to create hybrid devices that are part machine, part organism. The first such devices were self-assembling microbotspowered by living heart muscle, created by engineers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Each tiny robot is composed of an arch of goldconnected to a sheath of cardiac musclegrown from rat cells, and ifreleased in the body, it feeds off glucose in the blood to get energy to move.

b)

The use of solar energy as a power source is not a new one. But the panels developed in the 1970s were so bulky and large; that is why very few people could afford them, much less use them. Using technologydeveloped for the computer industry, cells usedin Photovoltaic solar collection systems are now thinner and more diversified.

Passive systems are considered to be the most reliable and most cost effective of the solar thermal systems because there are nomoving parts that can break down or will eventually need replacing

Many small things are solar powered. Some things have been used for awhile now - such as solar poweredcalculators.

Today it is commonplace to find solar panels attachedto emergency telephones along many major highways and to find traffic lights and school zone lights also attached to there systems.

 

4. Translate the sentences.

1. Wrapped by hundreds of rings, Saturn is the most beautiful planet in our solar system.

2. The rings, wrapping the planet are majestic.

3. The spacecrafts were only able to spend a few weeks collecting detailed data on Saturn and its 34 known moons.

4. The data, collectedby the spacecraft, were carefully analyzed.

5. Some answers and, no doubt, new questions will arise when the first spacecraft specifically designed to explore Saturn and its vicinity will reach its destination after a seven-year journey.

6. The team,designing the new system, has made a real break- through in this field.

7.Led by NASA and the European Space Agency, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn is an international enterprise that will conduct a four-year study of this fascinating planet.

8.Leading specialists of the country took part in the project.

 

III

 

Writing a paper

 

1. Write a short paragraph (4–5 sentences) describing some process.

2. Consider the following.

 

If you are writing an article about Columbus you begin your sentence like this:

 

Columbus discovered America.

 

If you are writing an article about America you usually

begin you sentence like this:

America was discovered by Columbus.

 

3. Write two sentences.

 

1. Shakespeare – Hamlet:

 

a) You write an article about Shakespeare;

b) You write an article about Hamlet.

2. Newton – the law of gravitation.

3. Einstein – the theory of relativity.

 

4. Develop one of your sentences in the Passive Voice in exercise 3 into a short paragraph (4–5 sentences).

 

Part III

Vocabulary

 

1. Answer the questions

1. What is Albert Einstein most known for?

2. What was he awarded the Nobel prize for?

 

1. Read the paragraph.

 

The modern concept of the photon was developed gradually by Albert Einstein to explain experimental observations that did not fit the classical wave model of light. In particular, the photon model accounted for the frequency dependence of light's energy, and explained the ability of matter and radiation to be in thermal equilibrium. It also accounted for anomalous observations, including the properties of black body radiation, that other physicists, most notably Max Planck, had sought to explain using semi- classical models, in which light is still described by Maxwell's equations, but the material objects that emit and absorb light are quantized. Although these semi- classical models contributed to the development of quantum mechanics, further experiments proved Einstein's hypothesis that light itself is quantized; the quanta of light are photons.

2. Translate the underlined words.

3. Find Russian equivalents of the word combinations in bold.

4. Translate the following sentences.

Note that if a verb has a preposition, you should look it up in the dictionary with that particular preposition.

a)

1. Electric utilities account for 40 percent of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas.

2. Since particle models cannot easily account for the refraction, diffraction and birefringence of light, wave theories of light were proposed by Rene Descartes (1637)and Robert Hooke (1665).

3. The Maxwell wave theory, however, does not account for all properties of light.

4. Theorists have determined that the earliest moments of the fiery big bang could have produced these particles in precisely the abundance to account fordark matter

5. Deforestation, largely driven by conversion to cropland, accounts for roughly 16 percent of global emissions of the carbon dioxide warming the atmosphere.

6. Crop diseases and insect pests will also thrive in a hotter or more humid climate, and the report does not take into account issues such as current agricultural lands swamped by rising sea levels.
b)

1. Particle models remained dominant, chiefly due to the influence of Isaac Newton.

2. It is probably due to the same principle that the drops of rain are so much larger in thunderstorms than in ordinary showers.

3. The variations in the resistance of metals in a finely divided state were shown to be due to the action of the electrical, waves.

c)

1. All these activities generate greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

2. We face ethical as well as scientific problems and our work should contribute to welfare of future generations.

 

5. Write some sentences of your own using the following word combinations.

§ account for,

§ contribute to,

§ due to.

 

Just for fun

 

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to create its own cyborg in 1961 in Operation Acoustic Kitty, in which a cat was cut open and fitted with an array of wires and a listening device that utilized its tail as an antenna. The project was disbanded as a failure in 1967 when the cat on its first mission (to eavesdrop on the Soviet compound in Washington, D.C.) was killedby a moving taxi sending more than five years of intensive training and $15 million down the drain.

LESSON 3

 

Perfect

Part I

Grammar

Perfect tenses

Answer the questions

1. Do you think that the human civilization is unique in the Universe?

2. Is there any hope that one day we will meet some intellectual aliens?

1. Read the text and answer the question.

What phenomenon proves the fact that our universe is expanding?

Look up in a dictionary and decide on the meaning of the word combinations :

at large; state-of-the art; borne out.

To entertain the notion that we may, in fact, have a special location in the universe is, for many, unthinkable. Nevertheless, that is exactly what some small groups of physicists around the world haverecently been considering.

Ironically, assuming ourselves to be insignificant has granted cosmologists great explanatory power. It has allowed us to extrapolate from what we see in our own cosmic neighborhood to the universe at large. Huge efforts have been made in constructing state-of-the-art models of the universe based on the cosmological principle - a generalization of the Copernican principle that states that at any moment in time all points and directions in space look the same. Combined with our modern understanding of space, time and matter, the cosmological principle implies that space is expanding, that the universe is getting cooler and that it is populated by relics from its hot beginning predictions that are all borne out by observations.
So why rock the boat? If the cosmological principle is so successful, why should we question it? The trouble is that recent astronomical observations have been producing some very strange results. Over the past decade astronomers have found that for a given redshift, distant supernova explosions look dimmer than expected. Redshift measures the amount that space has expanded. By measuring how much the light from distant supernovae hasredshifted, cosmologists can then infer how much smaller the universe was at the time of the explosion as compared with its size today. The larger the redshift, the smaller the universe was when the supernova occurred and hence the more the universe has expanded between then and now.

2. Read the text again paying special attention to the perfect forms.

 

3. Answer the questions.

1. Is the exact time of the action specified in the Present Perfect Tense?

2. Can we ask a question beginning with the word when in the Present Perfect?

4. Choose the correct time definition.

 

1. Physicists have struggled to marry quantum mechanics with gravity (for decades/in the twentieth century).

2. It is also significant to note that all of these improvements were implemented (in 1960/lately)
3. This has not been considered good (for many years/ at that time), because of the implications for program debugging.

4. Some things have been used (for a while| in the 90s)such as solar powered calculators.

5. (Recently/At the end of the 20^th century)astronomers have found that for a given redshift, distant supernova explosions look dimmer than expected.

5. Analyze the use of the perfect forms in the following passages

А

The quantum world is a place where matter behaves radically different from the macroscopic world that we perceive. In the past century, we have reached a point where we have begun to understand how to exploit these properties to perform useful tasks. Quantum computers represent the future of computing, and will very likely overtake classical computers within this century. Their size and speed will revolutionize every aspect of technology in the same way classical computers have. This is a time where the field is still in its infancy, but we have taken the first crucial steps in moving from theory to reality in several qubit systems, and progress from here will come rapidly.

B

Increasingly powerful atom smashers have as yet found no evidence of any additional fundamental forces beyond these four. But they have revealed four more species of quarks (whimsically called charm, strange, top, and bottom.

The photon concept has led to momentous advances in experimental and theoretical physics, such as lasers, Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum field theory, and the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. It has been applied to photochemistry, high-resolution microscopy, and measurements of molecular distances. Recently, photons have been studied as elements of quantum computers and for sophisticated applications in optical communication such as quantum cryptography.

C

If you’veever been curious about something, if you’ve ever wantedto know what caused something to happen, then you’ve probably already asked a question that could launch a science investigation.

 

6. Answer the grammar question.

1. Does the action in the Present Perfect refer to present time only or to both present and past?

2. Translate the sentences with parts in bold. Decide which tense, past or present, should be used

in each case.