Exercise 35. Translate the following extracts from English, define the function of the infinitive.

1). Today’s fashionable high heels are nor a modern invention. In the Middle Ages, to overcome the problem of walking through rubbish, people wore high heels on platform shoes, both soon becoming quite common.

In China high-ranking ladies would have their feet bound to make them as small as possible. Small feet were considered to be a sign of great beauty.

In Anglo-Saxon marriages, the bride’s father delivered her shoe to the bridegroom who touched the bride’s forehead with it to show he owned her.

2). At Xmas people decorate their houses with holly, ivy and mistletoe. The custom is to hang mistletoe from the ceiling, for people to kiss under.

3). In the Middle Ages the Moon was supposed to have a smooth crystalline surface like a mirror and the dark spots were considered to be mere reflections on the Earth. As to the Moon’s origin, none of existing theories has been proved to be either right or wrong, the truth remains to be investigated.

4). In sports activities an individual learns to give credit where credit is due, he learns how to take defeats as well as victories, how to react properly, and get along with people. In sports he must learn to play the game according to the rules and the spirit of fair play if he wishes to retain his self-respect and status among his fellow men and to be successful in sports. All this allows us to believe that physical education makes a significant contribution to education of an individual as any other subject.

It is not to be denied that to appreciate the full value of sports requires a certain amount of knowledge about sports: rules, strategy, terminology.

It is a purpose of physical education to teach students sports skills and sports interests that will become a permanent part of our everyday adult life.

5). It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest –– no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly over the shadows.

6). And we would all have to go down on our knees and grovel for it, while he would stand on the chair, and grunt, and want to know if he was to be kept there all the evening… And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different results, and sneer at one another.

 

Exercise 36. Translate the text given below, explain the functions of the infinitive.

…I got down the book, and read what I came to read; and then in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves and began to indolently study diseases, generally…

I came to typhoid fever –– read the symptoms –– discovered that I had typhoid fever I must have read for months without knowing it. Then I turned up St. Vitus’s Dance –– found as I expected, that I had that too –– began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom and so started alphabetically… Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, and so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with… The only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first.

I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view… Students would have no need to “walk the hospitals” if they had me. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

I tried to examine myself. I could not at first feel my pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to stat off.

I tried to feel my heart … I could not feel my heart… I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go… and tried to examine it. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.

I went to my medical man and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?”

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it –– a cowardly thing to do… After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in me pocket and went out…

(After J.K. Jerome)