style="font-size:15px;"> While we were talking, as I have said, we noticed a dark line, like a low cloud or fog-bank, on the seaward horizon. The day was a fine one, though cloudy, and a gentle breeze was blowing, but the sea was not rougher, or the breaker on the reef higher, than usual. At first we thought that this looked like a thunder-cloud; and, as we had had a good deal of broken weather of late, accompanied by occasional peals of thunder, we supposed that a storm must be approaching. Gradually, however, this line seemed to draw nearer, without spreading up over the sky, as would certainly have been the case if it had been a storm-cloud. Still nearer it came, and soon we saw that it was moving swiftly towards the island; but there was no sound till it reached the islands out at sea. As it passed these islands, we observed, with no little anxiety, that a cloud of white foam encircled them, and burst in spray into the air: it was accompanied by a loud roar. This led us to conjecture that the approaching object was an enormous wave of the sea; but we had no idea how large it was till it came near to ourselves. When it approached the outer reef, however, we were awe-struck with its unusual magnitude; and we sprang to our feet, and clambered hastily up to the highest point of the precipice, under an indefinable feeling of fear.
I have said before that the reef opposite Spouting Cliff was very near to the shore, while, just in front of the bower, it was at a considerable distance out to sea. Owing to this formation, the wave reached the reef at the latter point before it struck at the foot of Spouting Cliff. The instant it touched the reef we became aware, for the first time, of its awful magnitude. It burst completely over the reef at all points, with a roar that seemed louder to me than thunder; and this roar continued for some seconds, while the wave rolled gradually along towards the cliff on which we stood. As its crest reared before us, we felt that we were in great danger, and turned to flee; but we were too late. With a crash that seemed to shake the solid rocks the gigantic billow fell, and instantly the spouting-holes sent up a gush of water-spouts with such force that they shrieked on issuing from their narrow vents. It seemed to us as if the earth had been blown up with water.
2 . Find in the given text similes and define their forms, their function and appropriateness of their usage in the text.
Towards noon, as the floods of light fell more nearly to the perpendicular, the stark colours of the morning were smoothed in pearl and opalescence; and the heat – as though the impending sun’s height gave it momentum – became a blow that they ducked, running to the shade and lying there, perhaps even sleeping.
Strange things happened at mid-day. The glittering sea rose up, moved apart in planes of blatant impossibility; the coral reef and the few, stunted palms that clung to the more elevated parts would float up into the sky, would quiver, be plucked apart, run like raindrops on a wire or be repeated as in an odd succession of mirrors. Sometimes land loomed where there was no land and flicked out like a bubble as the children watched. Piggy discounted all this learnedly as a “mirage”; and since no boy could reach even the reef over the stretch of water where the snapping sharks waited, they grew accustomed to these mysteries and ignored them, just as they ignored the miraculous, throbbing stars. At mid-day the illusions merged into the sky and there the sun gazed down lake an angry eye. Then, at the end of the afternoon, the mirage submerged and the horizon became level and blue and clipped as the sun declined. That was another time of comparative coolness but menaced by the coming of the dark. When the sun sank, darkness dropped on the island like an extinguisher and soon the shelters were full of restlessness, under the remote stars.
3 . Compare the original and its translation. Define means of translation used by the translator.
4 . Translate the following sentences paying attention to the similes. Explain what means of translation you have used.
1. The fair boy stopped and jerked his stockings with an automatic gesture that made the jungle seem for a moment like the Home Counties [32].
2. The rock was as large as a small motor car [32].
3. For yards round the fire the heat was like a blow, and the breeze was a river of sparks [32].
4. All at once they were aware of the evening as the end of light and warmth [32].
5. One patch touched a tree trunk and scrambled up like a bright squirrel [32].
6. The flames, as though they were kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly towards a line of birch-like saplings that fledged an outcrop of the pink rock [32].
7. Sixty feet above Roger, a cluster of nuts, fibrous lumps as big as rugby balls, were loosed from their stems [32].
8. He abandoned the noiseless transparencies and pointed at the centre of the spreading ring like a setter [32].
9. The hunters sat, stuffing themselves with this easy meal, trying to convince themselves that they had got sufficient kick out of bananas and that other olive-grey, jellylike fruit [32].
10. The forest re-echoed; and birds lifted, crying out of the tree-tops, as on that first morning ages ago [32].
11. A great noise as of sea-gulls rose behind him [32].
12. His hair was full of dirt and tapped like tendrils of a creeper [32].
13. But the hunters had only sneaked into the fringes of the greenery, retrieving spears perhaps, and then rushed back to the sunny rock as if terrified of the darkness under the leaves [32].
14. The red rock that he could see at the top of the cliff vanished like a curtain, and he could see figures and blue sky. A moment later the earth jolted, there was a rushing sound in the air, and the top of the thicket was cuffed as with a gigantic hand [32].
15. Below him, someone’s legs were getting tired and the desperate ululation advanced like a jagged fringe of menace and was almost overhead [32].
5 . Translate the following sentences paying attention to the similes. Explain what means of translation you have used.
1. Огромные холмы с белым гребнем, с воем толкая друг друга, падают, опять встают, как будто толпа вдруг выпущенных на волю бешеных зверей дерется в остервенении, только брызги, как дым, поднимаются да стон носится в воздухе [26].
2. Вдруг в это время стало кренить на мою сторону.
– Вот, вот так! – учил он, опускаясь на пол. – Ай, ай! – закричал он потом, ища руками кругом, за что бы ухватиться. Его потащило с горы, и он стремительно домчался вплоть до меня… на всегда готовом экипаже [26].
3. Холмы, как пустая декорация, поднимались из воды и, кажется, грозили рухнуть, лишь только
