Адаптированный текст повести А. К. Дойла «Знак четырех» на английском языке с транскрипцией и видеопрезентацией. Учебное пособие

© Александр Александрович Левкин, 2020

ISBN 978-5-0051-5830-7

Создано в интеллектуальной издательской системе Ridero

ВВЕДЕНИЕ

Пособие предназначено для изучающих английский язык с использованием текста произведений зарубежной классики, его транскрипции и соответствующих аудиокниг, озвученных носителями языка. Пособие подготовлено по материалам канала YouTube «Аудиокниги с субтитрами и транскрипцией. Зарубежная классика на английском языке» (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG77GXpWfinzTjwT8g7dCzw). Канал осуществляет презентацию аудиокниг с синхронизированным текстом и транскрипцией, а также способствует распространению идей изучения языка с помощью аудиокниг.

На канале YouTube опубликована аудиокнига по повести А. К. Дойла «Знак четырех» (The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) на английском языке с синхронизированным текстом и транскрипцией. Для подготовки видеороликов использованы бесплатная аудиокнига с публичного сайта Librivox (https://librivox.org/the-sign-of-the-four-version-3-by-sir-arthur-conan-doyle/), озвученная носителем языка (David Clarke), и бесплатная электронная книга с публичного сайта Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2097). Транскрипция, записанная символами международного фонетического алфавита, выполнена с помощью онлайн-переводчика английского текста в транскрипцию. Автор онлайн-переводчика – Дмитрий Янс (https://tophonetics.com/ru/).

Адреса опубликованных на канале YouTube видеороликов соответствующих глав аудиокниги с синхронизированным текстом и транскрипцией приведены в списке.

Адрес плейлиста: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqKdJ953tqIfaIpxCdk6RjYqJ03YNRwU8

В пособии приводится адаптированный текст повести А. К. Дойла «Знак четырех» на английском языке с транскрипцией. Текст повести разбит на небольшие фрагменты. Перед каждым фрагментом вставлена иллюстрация с изображением этого же текста с транскрипцией.

Иллюстрации снабжены номерами соответствующих фрагментов текста. Номер имеет следующий вид: ГГ_ФФФ, где ГГ – двухзначный номер главы, ФФФ – трехзначный порядковый номер фрагмента текста в данной главе. Для каждого фрагмента создан видеоролик – презентация данного фрагмента текста. Видеоролик имеет то же имя, что и номер фрагмента. Видеоролики помещены в папку с адресом:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rSn2A-yq86Dt6tra5F1kLDLA87WRcAgK?usp=sharing

Для удобства поиска все видеоролики сгруппированы по главам повести в подпапки 01, 02, …, 12.

Таким образом, чтение каждого фрагмента текста повести производится дважды – с «подсказками» в виде транскрипции, просмотром и прослушиванием видеоролика, а второй раз – без них.

Chapter I. The Science of Deduction

01_001

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case.

01_002

With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks.

01_003

Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

01_004

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest.

01_005

Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty.

01_006

His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

01_007

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.

«Which is it to-day?» I asked, – «morphine or cocaine?»

01_008

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. «It is cocaine,» he said, – «a seven-per-cent. solution. Would you care to try it?»

01_009

«No, indeed,» I answered, brusquely. «My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it.»

01_010

He smiled at my vehemence. «Perhaps you are right, Watson,» he said. «I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.»

01_011

«But consider!» I said, earnestly. «Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you.

01_012

Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed?

01_013

Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable.»

01_014

He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tips together and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.

01_015

«My mind,» he said, «rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

01_016

That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, – or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.»

«The only unofficial detective?» I said, raising my eyebrows.

01_017

«The only unofficial consulting detective,» he answered. «I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson or Lestrade or Athelney Jones are out of their depths – which, by the way, is their normal state – the matter is laid before me.

01_018

I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward.

01_019

But you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case.»

01_020

«Yes, indeed,» said I, cordially. «I was never so struck by anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure with the somewhat fantastic title of „A Study in Scarlet.“»

01_021

He shook his head sadly. «I glanced over it,» said he. «Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.

01_022

You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.»

«But the romance was there,» I remonstrated. «I could not tamper with the facts.»

01_023

«Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes by which I succeeded in unraveling it.»

01_024

I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings.

01_025

More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion’s quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg.

01_026

I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.

01_027

«My practice has extended recently to the Continent,» said Holmes, after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. «I was consulted last week by Francois Le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service.

01_028

He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of his art. The case was concerned with a will, and possessed some features of interest.

01_029

I was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this morning acknowledging my assistance.»

01_030

He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray «magnifiques,» «coup-de-maitres,» and «tours-de-force,» all testifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman.

01_031

«He speaks as a pupil to his master,» said I.

«Oh, he rates my assistance too highly,» said Sherlock Holmes, lightly. «He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of observation and that of deduction.

01_032

He is only wanting in knowledge; and that may come in time. He is now translating my small works into French.»

01_033

«Your works?»

«Oh, didn’t you know?» he cried, laughing. «Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one «Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.»

01_034

In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with colored plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue.

01_035

If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search.

01_036

To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird’s-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato.»

01_037

«You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae,» I remarked.

«I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses.

01_038

Here, too, is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers.

01_039

That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective, – especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents of criminals. But I weary you with my hobby.»

01_040

«Not at all,» I answered, earnestly. «It is of the greatest interest to me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practical application of it. But you spoke just now of observation and deduction. Surely the one to some extent implies the other.»

01_041

«Why, hardly,» he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his arm-chair, and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. «For example, observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there you dispatched a telegram.»

01_042

«Right!» said I. «Right on both points! But I confess that I don’t see how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I have mentioned it to no one.»

01_043

«It is simplicity itself,» he remarked, chuckling at my surprise, – «so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction.

01_044

Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep. Just opposite the Seymour Street Office they have taken up the pavement and thrown up some earth which lies in such a way that it is difficult to avoid treading in it in entering.

01_045

The earth is of this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I know, nowhere else in the neighborhood. So much is observation. The rest is deduction.»

01_046

«How, then, did you deduce the telegram?»

«Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I sat opposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk there that you have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of post-cards.

01_047

What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire? Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.»

01_048

«In this case it certainly is so,» I replied, after a little thought. «The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest. Would you think me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?»

01_049

«On the contrary,» he answered, «it would prevent me from taking a second dose of cocaine. I should be delighted to look into any problem which you might submit to me.»

01_050

«I have heard you say that it is difficult for a man to have any object in daily use without leaving the impress of his individuality upon it in such a way that a trained observer might read it. Now, I have here a watch which has recently come into my possession.

01_051

Would you have the kindness to let me have an opinion upon the character or habits of the late owner?»

01_052

I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement in my heart, for the test was, as I thought, an impossible one, and I intended it as a lesson against the somewhat dogmatic tone which he occasionally assumed.

01_053

He balanced the watch in his hand, gazed hard at the dial, opened the back, and examined the works, first with his naked eyes and then with a powerful convex lens. I could hardly keep from smiling at his crestfallen face when he finally snapped the case to and handed it back.

01_054

«There are hardly any data,» he remarked. «The watch has been recently cleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts.»

«You are right,» I answered. «It was cleaned before being sent to me.»

01_055

In my heart I accused my companion of putting forward a most lame and impotent excuse to cover his failure. What data could he expect from an uncleaned watch?

01_056

«Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely barren,» he observed, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes. «Subject to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to your elder brother, who inherited it from your father.»

01_057

«That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?»

«Quite so. The W. suggests your own name. The date of the watch is nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: so it was made for the last generation.

01_058

Jewelry usually descends to the eldest son, and he is most likely to have the same name as the father. Your father has, if I remember right, been dead many years. It has, therefore, been in the hands of your eldest brother.»

01_059

«Right, so far,» said I. «Anything else?»

«He was a man of untidy habits, – very untidy and careless. He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died.

01_060

That is all I can gather.»

I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room with considerable bitterness in my heart.

01_061

«This is unworthy of you, Holmes,» I said. «I could not have believed that you would have descended to this. You have made inquires into the history of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this knowledge in some fanciful way.