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Compréhension/traffic jam
Message de maude67 posté le 19-09-2011 à 14:15:33 (S | E | F)
Bonjour,
je travaille sur le texte suivant, et j'aurais besoin de votre aide s'il vous plaît.
Merci pour vos réponses.
Source: Lien Internet
Jam today
Mathematicians make headway in understanding traffic congestion
Sep 9th 2010
JUST as London drivers steeled themselves on September 6th for traffic chaos in the wake of a strike by workers on the Tube, as the city’s underground railway is called, Britain’s pre-eminent scientific academy published a slew of timely papers. A special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was devoted entirely to understanding and preventing road congestion.
These insights are welcome. At current rates, the number of cars and light trucks worldwide is set to double over the next 20 years, from today’s estimated 900m. Bashing out new cars is relatively easy; building new roads to accommodate them is anything but. Figuring out how to use the available road space more efficiently will thus be necessary to keep ever more cars from languishing in jams, and spewing out prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide as they do.
Scientists have been trying to bring order, or at least predictability, to motorway mêlées for decades. They assumed the familiar “stop-and-go” waves of congestion were due to the sheer volume of traffic. More recently, mathematical models have suggested they may actually be down to drivers’ behaviour. With cars moving fluidly in a tight pack even a seemingly innocuous change of lanes may cause a tiny disruption which is propagated backwards for many miles.
Now, in one of the Royal Society papers, Jorge Laval, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in America, and Ludovic Leclercq, of Université de Lyon in France, finger timid and aggressive driver behaviour as the main culprit. To arrive at their conclusion they looked at actual traffic on a 600-metre (a third of a mile) stretch of freeway lanes in Los Angeles, and another near San Francisco, and created a model to match the observed data. They found that vehicle speeds drop to zero if just a few drivers accept shorter distances between their car and the one in front, and a handful of others in the same lane prefer a greater gap, relative to the “equilibrium spacing” which in theory ensures a steady ride.
One way to maintain this ideal gap would be more widespread deployment of adaptive cruise control (ACC), which enables partly automated driving. Some of these systems use radar to keep a car at a set distance from the one in front. In another paper, Arne Kesting, of Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, and colleagues calculated that a 1% increase in the number of ACC-using vehicles would free up 0.3% of road capacity. Such systems have been around since the late 1990s but many motorists remain leery of relinquishing control to a computer. Until that changes they had better steel themselves for more jams.
je n'arrive pas à traduire certaines expressions :
-steeled
-wake of a strike
-Bashing
-figuring out
-bring order
-sheer
-seemingly innocuous change of lanes
-stretch of freeway lanes
-widespread
-------------------
Modifié par lucile83 le 19-09-2011 14:27
Message de maude67 posté le 19-09-2011 à 14:15:33 (S | E | F)
Bonjour,
je travaille sur le texte suivant, et j'aurais besoin de votre aide s'il vous plaît.
Merci pour vos réponses.
Source: Lien Internet
Jam today
Mathematicians make headway in understanding traffic congestion
Sep 9th 2010
JUST as London drivers steeled themselves on September 6th for traffic chaos in the wake of a strike by workers on the Tube, as the city’s underground railway is called, Britain’s pre-eminent scientific academy published a slew of timely papers. A special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was devoted entirely to understanding and preventing road congestion.
These insights are welcome. At current rates, the number of cars and light trucks worldwide is set to double over the next 20 years, from today’s estimated 900m. Bashing out new cars is relatively easy; building new roads to accommodate them is anything but. Figuring out how to use the available road space more efficiently will thus be necessary to keep ever more cars from languishing in jams, and spewing out prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide as they do.
Scientists have been trying to bring order, or at least predictability, to motorway mêlées for decades. They assumed the familiar “stop-and-go” waves of congestion were due to the sheer volume of traffic. More recently, mathematical models have suggested they may actually be down to drivers’ behaviour. With cars moving fluidly in a tight pack even a seemingly innocuous change of lanes may cause a tiny disruption which is propagated backwards for many miles.
Now, in one of the Royal Society papers, Jorge Laval, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in America, and Ludovic Leclercq, of Université de Lyon in France, finger timid and aggressive driver behaviour as the main culprit. To arrive at their conclusion they looked at actual traffic on a 600-metre (a third of a mile) stretch of freeway lanes in Los Angeles, and another near San Francisco, and created a model to match the observed data. They found that vehicle speeds drop to zero if just a few drivers accept shorter distances between their car and the one in front, and a handful of others in the same lane prefer a greater gap, relative to the “equilibrium spacing” which in theory ensures a steady ride.
One way to maintain this ideal gap would be more widespread deployment of adaptive cruise control (ACC), which enables partly automated driving. Some of these systems use radar to keep a car at a set distance from the one in front. In another paper, Arne Kesting, of Technische Universität Dresden in Germany, and colleagues calculated that a 1% increase in the number of ACC-using vehicles would free up 0.3% of road capacity. Such systems have been around since the late 1990s but many motorists remain leery of relinquishing control to a computer. Until that changes they had better steel themselves for more jams.
je n'arrive pas à traduire certaines expressions :
-steeled
-wake of a strike
-Bashing
-figuring out
-bring order
-sheer
-seemingly innocuous change of lanes
-stretch of freeway lanes
-widespread
-------------------
Modifié par lucile83 le 19-09-2011 14:27
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de lucile83, postée le 19-09-2011 à 14:31:20 (S | E)
Bonjour,
Merci de faire un double clic sur le mot clé et vous obtenez un dictionnaire en ligne qui vous donnera toutes les informations.
Vous pourrez déjà trouver certains mots
Cordialement.
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de dolfine56, postée le 19-09-2011 à 14:58:05 (S | E)
Hello,
Here is what I found:
-steeled = s'armer de courage.
-wake of a strike = à la suited'une grève
-Bashing = dénigrant
-figuring out = trouvant; arrivant à comprendre.
-bring order = mettre de l'ordre
-sheer = uniquement grâce à
-seemingly innocuous change of lanes = un apparemment inoffensif changement de file.
-stretch of freeway lanes = tronçons d'autoroutes
-widespread = généralisé.
...it's up to you...it's a piece of cake.
-------------------
Modifié par lucile83 le 20-09-2011 22:41
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de sherry48, postée le 19-09-2011 à 14:59:56 (S | E)
Hello maude67.
I checked the dictionary here with a double click. If I didn't see the definition, I included it below.
wake of a strike- wake can mean the track you see in the water after something passes through; therefore synonyms are aftermath or result
-Bashing-banging is in the dictionary, but that doesn't help much, since it's informal usage -think manufacturing, making
-bring order-maybe it's the word bring that's a problem-just think of order, or a logical system
-sheer - can increase the effect of the word which follows-enormous amount of traffic in this case
I think you will "figure out" the other words easily with the dictionary. Sherry
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de sherry48, postée le 19-09-2011 à 15:04:59 (S | E)
Hello again, maude and dolfine.
Dolfine has given a lot of help, but for bashing, that is the usual definition of the word, which doesn't make sense in this context. Peace dolfine! And you can eat my piece of cake!
SherryRéponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de maude67, postée le 19-09-2011 à 15:10:30 (S | E)
Merci beaucoup pour toutes ces réponses qui m'ont beaucoup aidé
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de dolfine56, postée le 19-09-2011 à 15:11:01 (S | E)
Bonjour,
Je trouve que "dénigrer"convient assez bien:
le sens est: il ne suffit pas de dénigrer; de se plaindre; d'accuser...le nombre de voitures nouvelles...
don't you think so?
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de sherry48, postée le 19-09-2011 à 15:54:48 (S | E)
Hi dolfine.
I initially rejected denigrate as a synonym, as I was thinking of it in the terms of slander. As I read it again, with that word in mind, I see what you mean. I had understood it another way, and thought it was
/ 
differences. You're probably right!
SherryRéponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de dolfine56, postée le 19-09-2011 à 16:00:11 (S | E)
Hello Sherry,
So all is well that ends well...
see you.
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de gerondif, postée le 19-09-2011 à 17:55:44 (S | E)
Hello,
I would have thought too that "bashing out new cars" meant "producing", making with great haste and without thinking, it would make me think of Charlie Chaplin and all those machines on the conveyor belt spitting out their cars noisily....
all the more so as there is a parallel between "bashing out" new cars and "building" new roads
to bash out is translated in line as expédier son travail, le bâcler.....
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de dolfine56, postée le 19-09-2011 à 18:28:05 (S | E)
Hi, Gerondif,
Thanks for your comment!
the sentence is
At current rates, the number of cars and light trucks worldwide is set to double over the next 20 years, from today’s estimated 900m. Bashing out new cars is relatively easy; building new roads to accommodate them is anything but.
It looks like there is a problem with the too big number of cars on the roads!
so, it's easier to denigrate the new cars than to built new roads.
ou pensez-vous à quelque chose du genre:
construire de nouvelles voitures à tire-larigot est relativement facile, alors que construire des routes pour les accueillir ne l'est pas du tout.?
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de brettdallen, postée le 19-09-2011 à 19:01:23 (S | E)
Hello,
It's funny how you can read a passage with a particular and definite understanding and suddenly be full of doubts! For me too, "bashing out" obviously meant "making cars/letting out new cars from factories (in a particular way: "bash"), but Dolphine's reading sounds good as well. Then, the "usual" meaning of "bash out" is kept and here is closed to "critisizing the making of so many new cars", and it makes sense! It seems like the only way to make sure is ask the writer...
Bye!
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de gerondif, postée le 19-09-2011 à 19:07:29 (S | E)
Hello,
the "to keep ever more cars from languishing in jams,"seems to imply that they won't stop making cars, but as Brettdallen said, it can be interpreted different ways.
I keep thinking that if I had wanted to blame the cars, I would have said it differently and clearly: taking it out on, blaming....
For me, "bash" is a noisy verb meant to criticize the making of ever more cars....
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de sherry48, postée le 20-09-2011 à 04:46:48 (S | E)
Hello again everybody.
I've decided that I stand behind my original opinion.
Here are my reasons. Bashing a person means to make denigrating comments about them. Bashing an object usually means to bang or hit, as with a hammer. In this case, it is bashing OUT, which also has the sense of banging. I think of the machine descending (probably noisily) to cut and shape a piece of metal into a door or a fender, and eventually into a car. I think the key here is the word out.
Beyond this, there seems to be some evidence in the context. The topic sentence of the paragraph seems to be...At current rates, the number of cars and light trucks worldwide is set to double over the next 20 years...so the production of all those cars seems to fit with that sentence. Sherry
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de notrepere, postée le 20-09-2011 à 05:12:16 (S | E)
HelloI agree that "bash out" in this context refers to "producing". Remembering that French students learn British English, the meaning of "bash out" in British English is:
to produce something very quickly and without working very hard (Macmillan) Lien Internet
bash something out
(informal) to produce something quickly and in large quantities, but not of very good quality (Cambridge) Lien Internet
This is definitely a distinctively "British" use of this verb.
Hope this helps.
Réponse: Compréhension/traffic jam de lucile83, postée le 20-09-2011 à 08:28:49 (S | E)
Hello,
Le sens de' bashing out' ici est bien le fait de produire; la particule 'out' est importante.
Lien Internet
et ce verbe n'est pas noté comme étant familier dans le dictionnaire que j'ai indiqué.
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