| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: being English, it should also be perfectly intelligible in itself without
reference to the Greek, the English being really the more lucid and exact
of the two languages. In some respects it may be maintained that ordinary
English writing, such as the newspaper article, is superior to Plato: at
any rate it is couched in language which is very rarely obscure. On the
other hand, the greatest writers of Greece, Thucydides, Plato, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Pindar, Demosthenes, are generally those which are found to be
most difficult and to diverge most widely from the English idiom. The
translator will often have to convert the more abstract Greek into the more
concrete English, or vice versa, and he ought not to force upon one
language the character of another. In some cases, where the order is
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: bit, and see if she is a steady sort."
This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
recognize. During the first year she took the nom de guerre of
Aquilina, one of the characters in Venice Preserved which she had
chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face
and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain
of which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as
well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he
manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she
took the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely as
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: pealing of thunder.
Before Abdallah marched off to the wars he and the princess were
married, and for a whole fortnight nothing was heard but the
sound of rejoicing. The city was illuminated from end to end, and
all of the fountains ran with wine instead of water. And of all
those who rejoiced, none was so happy as the princess, for never
had she seen one whom she thought so grand and noble and handsome
as her husband. After the fortnight had passed and gone, the army
marched away to the wars with Abdallah at its head.
Victory after victory followed, for in every engagement the
Emperor of India's troops were driven from the field. In two
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