Anglais - 2005

MANAGEMENT
Année 2005
Concours d’entrée en 1ère année
Epreuve d’Anglais
Durée :
4 heures
Coefficient :
6
Traitez les trois exercices suivants :
I - VERSION :
II - THEME :
III - QUESTIONS :
III - A :
III - B :
5 points
5 points
5 points
5 points
N.B.: Ce document comporte 6 pages.
I – VERSION (5 points)
Traduisez le texte suivant en français.
I WANT MY P2P
Record labels are trying to do deals with file-sharing networks
Major record labels have spent years fighting tooth and nail, through courts, legislatures and
on the airwaves, to destroy music file-sharing networks on the internet. But they now seem to
have accepted that they cannot stop people using such networks and have decided instead they
may as well find a way to profit from them.
Universal Music group, owned by France’s Vivendi, is reported to have struck a deal to
license its catalogue to a new firm called Snocap, run by Shawn Fanning, who founded
Napster, the first big file-sharing network. Snocap’s technology would allow Universal to
recognise songs swapped on a network and send its users a bill – if the service agrees to
include the software. Sony-BMG is in talks about a similar venture with Grokster, another socalled peer-to-peer service. The aim is to woo people into paying for music which they have
been downloading for free.
If it works, the recorded-music industry could reverse its falling sales. But what is in it for
file-swapping sites like Grokster, eDonkey, or Morpheus? A respite from music-industry
lawsuits is the main draw. File-sharing networks also want the music industry to stop
‘spoofing’ them with fake files. And they, too, are not averse to making more money from
their users, who spend little now.
Both sides will claim a moral victory once more deals are announced in the next few months.
Music companies will boast that they have turned the networks into law-abiding corporate
citizens. The peer-to-peer community, on the other hand, will argue that the music industry
has finally recognised that file-sharing is a powerful promotional tool that does not stop
people buying the music they really like.
From The Economist, November 20 2004
2
II – THÈME (5 points)
Traduisez le texte suivant en anglais
Gordon Brown appelle à l’annulation de la dette des pays africains
Devant dix-huit de ses homologues africains réunis au Cap, le ministre des finances
britannique a affirmé que l’objectif de l’ONU d’en finir avec la pauvreté d’ici à 2015
devrait être repoussé de plus d’un siècle sans une aide massive pour l’Afrique.
A l’issue d’une tournée qui l’a mené dans quatre pays d’Afrique, le ministre des finances
britannique, Gordon Brown, s’est réuni, lundi 17 janvier, avec dix-huit de ses homologues
africains au Cap, en Afrique du Sud, afin d’examiner le rapport préliminaire de la commission
pour l’Afrique du premier ministre du Royaume-Uni, Tony Blair, qui doit être publié en mars.
A cette occasion, il a appelé à l’annulation de la dette « impayable » des pays africains et a
présenté l’ébauche d’un plan général contre la pauvreté, plan qui a déjà reçu le soutien de
l’ancien président sud-africain Nelson Mandela.
La Grande-Bretagne entend mettre à profit sa présidence du groupe des huit nations les plus
riches (G8) pour soutenir la mise en œuvre d’un nouveau « plan Marshall pour le monde en
développement », visant à un allègement de la dette et à une révision de l’aide financière des
pays pauvres.
M. Brown a, en outre, appelé à une ouverture des marchés aux produits africains et estimé que
les subventions agricoles dans les pays riches entravaient les efforts de l’Afrique pour se sortir
seule de la pauvreté .
Extrait d’un article paru dans Le Monde, le 17 janvier 2005
3
III - Lire attentivement le texte suivant et répondre aux questions.
Only collective action can overcome the climate crisis
Neither markets nor personal choices can deal with the biggest threat of all
Future generations will be puzzled that we failed to grasp the urgency of climate change and
may be furious at the environmental calamity we bequeathed to them. They may reasonably
feel that we were given plenty of warning signs of the stress which our lifestyle was putting
on the ecosystem, one of which is almost within sight of the Docklands home of much of the
British press. When it was first constructed the Thames Barrier was closed only once every
two years, but rising sea levels have required it to be deployed six times on average in the past
five years.
Part of the reason why such alarm bells provoke no urgent response from even those who hear
them is the widespread belief that climate change is a gradual, incremental process which still
leaves us a long time to get round to dealing with it. This could turn out to be a tragic
delusion. The US National Academy of Sciences has warned that climate change may turn out
to be gradual in the same way as the slowly increasing pressure of a finger on a switch, but
when it flips the result is revolutionary, not incremental. In the case of Britain, the switch that
may get flipped could be the Gulf Stream, which delivers as much heat to our land in winter
as the sun. Its disappearance would leave us with the same climate as Hudson Bay, with
which we share the same latitude.
Those who find themselves living in the freezing environment we bequeath them will be
perplexed at the preoccupations of the current political agenda. Earlier this year the
government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, was ignominiously forced to retreat
from his observation that climate change was a bigger threat than terrorism. But, good
scientist that he is, he had the facts on his side. Last year 20,000 more people died in a record
heat wave than in all the acts of terrorism around the globe. Increased flood and drought,
which are the twin extremes of climate change, are the most lethal weapons of mass
destruction of our time. Even the CIA has warned that climate change will stimulate an
increase in conflicts over diminishing water and food supplies and proposed seven steps in
response which, oddly, did not include a single measure to halt climate change.
All of this makes more depressing the admission this week that Britain looks set to miss the
government’s target of a 20% cut in greenhouse gases by the end of the decade. True, we are
comfortably going to meet our obligations under the Kyoto protocol, but that is largely
because of history and the drop in coal generation in the early 90s. The total level of carbon
emissions has stayed stubbornly stable over the past eight years.
In any case Kyoto is too modest a benchmark. The threshold was kept low, ironically, to get
on board the US, but the net result was a set of targets that only delay the rate at which
matters get worse. To stop climate change we must cut emissions by 60%, which is the
government’s target for 2050. The beauty of the government’s interim target of a cut of 20%
by 2010 was that it promised to get us a third of the way within a third of the time from the
base year of 1990.
4
We miss the point though if we simply berate the government for missing “its” target. The
reality is that it is our target and we are all – or at any rate most of us – responsible for the
failure to meet it. Government and industry have both delivered cuts of 20% in their carbon
emissions. By contrast domestic households and private transport have produced large
increases in greenhouse gases. On average each of us now produces over five tons of carbon
emissions a year. Imagine the equivalent of two tons of coal dumped on your doorstep; and
then multiply it by each member of your household.
Government could, of course, do a lot more. All departments need to give the same strategic
priority to halting climate change that Margaret Beckett has dinned into the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. A good start would be for the Department of Transport
to abandon its aviation policy of expanding capacity to meet demand. Carbon emissions
released above cloud level have doubled the impact on climate change, but bizarrely
emissions from international air travel do not count in the Kyoto targets for cuts in greenhouse
gases.
There is, however, justice in ministers throwing back the problem to the public in a hundred
pages of consultative document. There is no prospect of Britain meeting its long-term targets
unless the population is willing to sign up to the necessary changes in lifestyle and
consumption, or to accept a price for fuel and transport that reflects its environmental cost.
It is a paradox that Margaret Thatcher was one of the first political leaders to accept the
science of climate change but was also the foremost proponent of the politics of
individualism, which both exacerbated the problem and made it difficult to resolve. Hers was
an ideology in which greed was the approved agent of economic progress. But climate change
brutally exposes the limits of such material individualism. It is simply impossible for all of us
to pursue a lifestyle that maximises carbon emissions without in turn rendering our own and
everyone else’s environment unsustainable.
Climate change is a classic example of a common problem that individuals cannot solve by
acting independently. No family can opt out of climate change or buy their own little patch of
retro weather. It is also a spectacular case of market failure as the seismic changes in weather
patterns will only produce a shift in the price signal when it is too late to reverse them.
The solution to climate change will be collective and the result of democratic intervention. It
will require investment in public transport. It will need common regulation and state subsidy
to enforce good standards of energy efficiency and a higher proportion of renewables. It will
demand the use of taxes to reflect the real cost to society and its environment of individual
consumption. And it brings the bonus of an added argument for equality as extravagant
consumption by a few imposes not just a financial cost on themselves but an environmental
burden on everyone else.
All this should be meat and drink to a party of social democracy which believes in solidarity,
partnership and working together. Labour is well placed to rise to the political challenge of
halting climate change. But it first needs to rediscover the ability to talk about collective
provision for the common good with at least as much skill and passion as it has recently
adopted the rhetoric of personal choice.
Robin Cook The Guardian December 10, 2004
5
QUESTIONS
III – A (5 points)
a.
What reason does Robin Cook give for the lack of an urgent response to climate
change?
(20-40 words)*
b.
Why is a comparison made between terrorism, war and climate change?
(30-60 words)*
c.
Explain the sentence: “In any case Kyoto is too modest a benchmark.”
(20-40 words)*
d.
Summarise Robin Cook’s ideas for halting climate change.
(40-60 words)*
NB! Do not copy out complete phrases from the text. You may re-use certain words but
the copying of whole phrases will be sanctioned.
III – B - RÉDACTION ( 5 points)
Do you think people are ready to accept the “necessary changes in lifestyle and
consumption” the author says are necessary? Is it not too late for our planet to recover?
Discuss your views.
You may refer to the above article but credit will be given to candidates who express their
own ideas.
Write 200-250* words.
* Le non-respect de ces normes sera sanctionné.
6
CORRIGE DE LA VERSION
JE VEUX MON P2P
Les maisons de disques tentent de nouer des accords avec les réseaux de partage de
fichiers
Cela fait des années que les plus grandes maisons de disques luttent bec et ongles dans les
tribunaux, par la législation et sur les ondes, pour éliminer les réseaux Internet de partage de
fichiers de musique. Mais il semble qu’elles ont fini par comprendre qu’il est impossible d’
empêcher les gens d’utiliser de tels réseaux et ont décidé, à la place, qu’elles feraient mieux
de trouver un moyen d’en tirer profit.
Le groupe Universal Music, qui appartient à la société française Vivendi, aurait conclu un
accord autorisant une nouvelle société nommée Snocap, gérée par Shawn Fanning, le
fondateur de Napster, premier grand réseau de partage de fichiers, à exploiter leur catalogue.
Grâce à la technologie de Snocap, Universal
pourrait savoir quelles chansons ont été
échangées sur un réseau et envoyer la facture à ses utilisateurs –à condition que le service
accepte de joindre le logiciel. Sony-BMG est en pourparlers à propos d’un projet similaire
avec Grokster un autre service soi-disant Peer to Peer. Le but est d’amener les gens à acheter
la musique qu’ils téléchargent gratuitement pour l’instant.
Si ça marche, l’industrie du disque parviendrait à réviser ses ventes à la hausse. Mais qu’estce que ça rapportera à des sites d’échange de fichiers comme Grokster, eDonkey, ou
Morpheus ? L’intérêt principal est d’interrompre la série de procès intentés par l’industrie du
disque. Mais les réseaux de partage de fichiers veulent également que l’industrie du disque
arrête de les inonder de faux fichiers. Eux non plus, ne sont pas contre l’idée de tirer plus de
bénéfices de leurs utilisateurs, qui, pour le moment, ne dépensent pas grand-chose.
Les deux camps vont déclarer qu’ils ont gagné une victoire morale dès que seront annoncés
de nouveaux accords dans les prochains mois. Les maisons de disques vont se vanter d’avoir
transformé les réseaux en groupes de citoyens respectueux de la loi. Par ailleurs, la
communauté P2P, elle, va répliquer que l’industrie du disque a fini par admettre que le
partage de fichiers est un outil de promotion considérable qui n’empêche pas les gens
d’acheter la musique qu’ils aiment vraiment.
CORRIGE DU THEME
Gordon Brown calls for Africa’s debts to be cancelled
At a meeting in Cape Town with eighteen of his African fellow ministers, the British
Chancellor of the Exchequer declared that the UN’s target to eradicate poverty by 2015
would have to be postponed by more than a century without massive aid for Africa.
At the end of a tour which took him to four African countries, the British Chancellor, Gordon
Brown, had a meeting, on Monday 17 January, with eighteen of his counterparts in Cape
Town,
South Africa, to examine the preliminary report of the United Kingdom Prime
Minister’s (Tony Blair) African Commission, which is due to be published in March.
On that occasion , he called for the cancellation of the ‘unpayable’ debt of African countries
and presented the outline of a general plan against poverty, which has already received the
support of the former South African president, Nelson Mandela.
Great Britain intends to take advantage of its presidency of the G8, the group of the eight
wealthiest nations, to back the setting up of a new ‘Marshall Plan for the developing world’,
which aims to reduce the debt and review financial aid for poor countries.
Furthermore, Mr Brown called for markets to open up to African products and considered that
the agricultural subsidies in rich countries hindered Africa’s attempts to do away with poverty
on its own.
CORRIGE DES QUESTIONS
a. What reason does Robin Cook give for the lack of an urgent response to climate change?
(20-40 words)
People think that as the climate is changing and evolving only slowly, there is still time to
find solutions and take action. (23 words)
4 marks
b. Why is a comparison made between terrorism, war and climate change?
(30-60 words)
The statistics show that terrorism is less dangerous than climate change.
2 marks
More people died in extreme heat caused by climate change last year than in any acts of
terrorism anywhere in the world.
2 marks
Flooding and drought are far more serious threats than weapons of mass destruction, and
they will certainly be the cause of future conflicts. (56 words) 2 marks
c. Explain the sentence: “In any case Kyoto is too modest a benchmark.”
(20-40 words)
The Kyoto protocol fixed levels of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions so low they are
simply putting off the inevitable. Emissions need to be reduced by 60% in order to halt the
process of climate change. (36 words) 4 marks
d. Summarise Robin Cook’s ideas for halting climate change.
(40-60 words).
Collective action is necessary, the individual cannot solve the problem alone. 1,5 marks
More money for public transport is a priority, and the government must encourage people
to use energy more efficiently and invest in the development of renewables.
3 marks
The tax system must be used to make those who use energy extravagantly and wastefully
pay.
(53 words) 1,5 marks
( if one of the above ideas is missing but replaced by ‘the department of transport should