VOYAGES, TERRITOIRES, FRONTIÈRES

Annales

• Thème « Voyages, territoires, frontières »

   

  1^re partie - Synthèse

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

  Taking into account the specificities of the documents, compare and contrast the different experiences related to sea journeys and analyse the impressions conveyed.

   

  2^e partie - Traduction

  Translate the following passage from Document A into French. L’usage du dictionnaire unilingue non encyclopédique est autorisé.

  "In the end, Otoo saved my life; for I came to lying on the beach twenty feet from the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of cocoanut leaves. No one but Otoo could have dragged me there and stuck up the leaves for shade. He was lying beside me. I went off again; and the next time I came round, it was cool and starry night, and Otoo was pressing a drinking cocoanut to my lips.

  We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne."

   

  Document A

  For two days and nights, spell and spell, on the cover and in the water, we drifted over the ocean. Towards the last I was delirious most of the time; and there were times, too, when I heard Otoo babbling and raving in his native tongue. Our continuous immersion prevented us from dying of thirst, though the sea water and the sunshine gave us the prettiest imaginable combination of salt pickle and sunburn.

  In the end, Otoo saved my life; for I came to lying on the beach twenty feet from the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of cocoanut leaves. No one but Otoo could have dragged me there and stuck up the leaves for shade. He was lying beside me. I went off again; and the next time I came round, it was cool and starry night, and Otoo was pressing a drinking cocoanut to my lips.

  We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. [...]

  I never had a brother; but from what I have seen of other men's brothers, I doubt if any man ever had a brother that was to him what Otoo was to me. He was brother and father and mother as well. And this I know: I lived a straighter and better man because of Otoo. [...]

  For seventeen years we were together; for seventeen years he was at my shoulder, watching while I slept, nursing me through fever and wounds—ay, and receiving wounds in fighting for me. He signed on the same ships with me; and together we ranged the Pacific from Hawaii to Sydney Head, and from Torres Straits to the Galapagos. [...] We were wrecked three times—in the Gilberts, in the Santa Cruz group, and in the Fijis. And we traded and salved wherever a dollar promised in the way of pearl and pearl shell, copra, bêche-de-mer, hawkbill turtle shell¹, and stranded wrecks.

  It began in Papeete, immediately after his announcement that he was going with me over all the sea, and the islands in the midst thereof. There was a club in those days in Papeete, where the pearlers, traders, captains, and riffraff of South Sea adventurers forgathered.

   

  1 pearl and pearl shell, copra, bêche-de-mer, hawkbill turtle shell: various exotic products from the South Seas used for trade

  Jack London, South Sea Tales, 1911

   

  Document B

  Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms¹ where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp² and bait fish³ and sometimes schools of squid⁴ in the deepest holes and these rose to the surface at night where all the wandering fish fed on them.

  In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns⁵ that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, ‘The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows⁶ when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.’

  He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys⁷ as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as el mar which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.

  Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, 1952

  1 seven hundred fathoms: approximately 1,300 meters
  2 shrimp: crevettes
  3 bait fish: poisson-appât
  4 schools of squid: bancs de calmars
  5 tern: sterne (oiseau de mer)
  6 sea swallows: hirondelles de mer
  7 buoys: bouées

   

  Document C - Black and white engraving, Tate Gallery, London, J. M. W. Turner, The Shipwreck, c.1805

  

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