VOYAGES, TERRITOIRES, FRONTIÈRES

Annales

• Thème « Voyages, territoires, frontières »

   

  1^re partie. Synthèse en anglais (16 points)

  Prenez connaissance de la thématique ci-dessus et du dossier composé des documents A, B et C et répondez en anglais à la consigne suivante (500 mots environ) :

  Paying particular attention to the specificities of the three documents, show how they interact to address the following question: how does the choice of a vacation reflect one’s relationship to the rest of the world?

   

  2^e partie. Traduction en français (4 points)

  Traduisez en français le passage suivant du document A (lignes 6 à 10) :

  “These people look cheerful enough,” said Bernard, gesturing at the passengers waiting to board the flight to Honolulu. There were now quite a lot of them, as the time of departure neared: mostly Americans, dressed in garish casual clothes, some in shorts and sandals as if ready to walk straight off the plane on to the beach. There was a rising babble of drawling, twanging accents, loud laughter, shouts and whoops.

   

  Document A

  “I’m doing to tourism what Marx did to capitalism, what Freud did to family life. Deconstructing it. You see, I don’t think people really want to go on holiday, any more than they really want to go to church. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking it will do them good, or make them happy. In fact surveys show that holidays cause incredible amounts of stress.”

  “These people look cheerful enough,” said Bernard, gesturing at the passengers waiting to board the flight to Honolulu. There were now quite a lot of them, as the time of departure neared: mostly Americans, dressed in garish casual clothes, some in shorts and sandals as if ready to walk straight off the plane on to the beach. There was a rising babble of drawling, twanging accents, loud laughter, shouts and whoops.

  “An artificial cheerfulness,” said Sheldrake. “Fuelled by double martinis in many cases, I wouldn’t be surprised. They know how people going on vacation are supposed to behave. They have learned how to do it. Look deep into their eyes and you will see anxiety and dread.” [...]

  “Six million people visited Hawaii last year. I don’t imagine many of them found a beach as deserted as this one, do you? It’s a myth. That’s what my next book is going to be about, tourism and the myth of paradise. That’s why I’m telling you all this. Thought you might give me some ideas.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, it’s religion again, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose it is ... What exactly are you hoping to achieve with your research?”

  “To save the world,” Sheldrake replied solemnly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tourism is wearing out the planet.” Sheldrake delved into his silvery attaché case again and brought out a sheaf of press-cuttings marked with yellow highlighter. He flipped through them. “The footpaths in the Lake District have become trenches. The frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are being damaged by the breath and body-heat of spectators. A hundred and eight people enter Notre Dame every minute: their feet are eroding the floor and the buses that bring them there are rotting the stonework with exhaust fumes. Pollution from cars queuing to get to Alpine ski resorts is killing the trees and causing avalanches and landslides. The Mediterranean is like a toilet without a chain: you have a one in six chance of getting an infection if you swim in it. In 1987 they had to close Venice one day because it was full. In 1963 forty-four people went down the Colorado river on a raft, now there are a thousand trips a day. In 1939 a million people travelled abroad; last year it was four hundred million. By the year two thousand there could be six hundred and fifty million international travelers, and five times as many people travelling in their own countries. The mere consumption of energy entailed is stupendous.”

  David LODGE, Paradise News, 1991

   

  Document B - The staycation¹ is back: packed lunches, damp sand and all.

  When I was 12, or thereabouts, my granny took me, my brother and my sister to the seaside for the week. For her, this was a great treat; a widow since before we were born, she loved to be with us, and she loved the feeling she was treating us [...].

  We went to Whithernsea, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. This was not a glamorous place. At the time, I’d barely heard of it – why, I wondered, couldn’t we go to Bridlington? – and in the decades since, I’ve never met a single other person who has ever been to the town, let alone stayed there for a whole week. Google it, and you’ll find that its greatest claim to fame is the fact that it’s the birthplace of the actress Kay Kendall – and who’s heard of her, these days? [...].

  And yet, I’ve never forgotten that place, with its pier towers that look like the turrets of a castle. It’s always with me. I cherish the memory of my granny, who let us have ketchup with lamb chops, and I tend to hold it (meanly, perhaps) in my mind when I hear spoiled 21st-century children talking about their all-expenses paid holidays abroad with mummy and daddy, as if such things were a human right. Above all, though, it has for me become a kind of symbol; even, perhaps, an allegory. Those chilly, haphazard days, at once both quite boring and replete with illicit delights, are the British summer holiday of yore in microcosm: its absolute crumminess; its ineffable perfection [...]

  Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m on about. Especially in this moment. For haven’t our thoughts turned even more than usually to the past during this long, sad lockdown? My sense is that many of us, if not most, are retreating, to various degrees, into a certain nostalgia. In large part, this is because the future is so uncertain. There’s comfort in how things used to be; seeking it out is a perfectly natural thing to do [...] This summer, after five decades of package holidays and low-cost flights, most of us will be holidaying at home – just like we used to.

   

  1 Staycation: a holiday spent in one’s home country.

  Rachel COOKE, www.theguardian.com, July 2020

   

  Document C - WOOF: Working Weekends On Organic Farms https://fr-fr.facebook.com/WWOOF, March 2021

  

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