TRANSLATION - CARRIED FROM ONE SIDE TO THE OTHER

I thought that I would have a little fun with my friends this evening.
I just came off a translation project that covered 35 pages of French legalese and actually I had quite a bit of pleasure doing it.  The most entertaining part of the project is that I had time to make it happen and to make it appealing.
The appealing part doesn't happen much.
We translators are just like other professionals.  We have job descriptions that are sugar and spice and everything nice on the top front of the blog article.  But, at the core of the reality it is rings and dings and no time to sing.  Look at that picture and you'll see what I mean.  Anything up there about being able to read the original text as well as the old time pharmacist could read doctor scratchings on prescriptions?  How about trying to decipher blurry scanned images submitted from a country in a handwriting style that makes you wonder how many ways there are in the world to write the letter "a"?  That never gets any press...or any verbal credit.  All this is one side of the abilities that a translator has to have.  Check out the picture below and you'll get another side of the "skills wanted" sollicitation for help...
Yep, I want it yesterday.  Sorry, lady, this is today.  One hour is the best I can do for you.
"Oh, thank you. This shouldn't be too hard, it's a Power Point show that only has 30 slides.  Not too many words."
Ha, Ha, Ha,  One hour eh?  And I have to keep the formatting, right?
"Oh, yes, please."
Hey, lady, what about the fact that the there are 30% more words needed in the language that you want in the show and you want to keep the formatting.  Hmmm, and now we have been talking for 15 minutes and the clock is running.  Yikes, lady, you gotta cut me some slack.
So the translator gets friendly, no, not THAT friendly. So he gets friendly and he gets some background about the purpose of the translation, the real deadline that she has and the audience for whom it is intended. As it turns out, it is still tight on the clock, but it is doable.  So we get friendly enough that I charge her for the minimum one hour and she agrees to come back at opening time in the morning instead of insisting on the hour.
They don't teach you that in school.
The hidden talent that doesn't get any press is the ability to be laser accurate in the art of carrying the meaning from one language to the other in the shortest time possible. This is a constant part of my life.  I translate many very interesting documents from many countries, for many different reasons and in many different variations of the same language but I rarely get the opportunity to enjoy what I am reading because I have one eye on the project and one on the clock.
So, this past week I had the whole week to do the 35 pages.  The challenge was that the English had to be exactly what the French was.  But I had a week! I actually had time to read it, think about it, translate it, read the translation, go back and read the French, reread and edit the translation, compare the two side by side (thank God for computers) and take 8 hours away from it to let it "ferment" a bit in cranium juice.  Come back, sip it a little bit, add a pinch of pizazz here and there and the first thing you know, you like it and you still have two hours before the deadline.  Now, that is the kind of work that a translator just plain loves.
Too bad there isn't too much of it around.
Now you know some of what I do in my old age.

"SCIENTIFIC" OBSERVATION BY A 30 YEAR OLD PhD

Taken from "Time" Feb. 3, 2014
"The Mindful Revolution" by Kate Pickert

It's been a month since I have had any fun with you on these pages.  I could tell you a lot of stories about why it has been that long, but then again, I would have to waste your time and mine with MINDLESS drivel.  Oh yes, I have been busy, so busy that I really haven't much time to read the magazine by the same name. The other day I went to the mail box and there was the latest copy.  It was staring at me with the cover shouting out, "The Mindful Revolution: The Art of Being Mindful" .

Is that an art?  If it is I am sure that it was invented by Dali.  In a way that makes it nice because then you can tell everyone what it means whether you really know or not.
Actually, it can't really be an art.  If it were, then when I lost it I would have missed it.  But I have to tell you that being mindless is also a lot of fun.  It is more fun that being mindful because you don't have enough memory to feel guilty over what it is that you just did.  I mean, it's great.  It's actually a Mary Poppins flying umbrella ride.  I actually spend a lot of time cultivating mindlessness.  I practice it about every moment of every day.  I lose track of my phone, my earphones, my glasses, my shoes, my pants, my postage stamps, my passwords, my wallet and of course, my coffee cup.  Actually, my coffee cup is no problem.  It occupies the least of my time.  That's because there are about 20 of them in the cupboard and I never forget where the cupboard is.  Besides, the cupboard is where the coffee pot always is, too.
The situation gets more complex for me since I also have to spend time looking the fruits of mindlessness of the Voice from the Kitchen.  Since she never loses her voice, I never have to spend time looking for that treasure.  But there are a lot of elements to her mindlessness too. Have you seen my keys?  Hmmm...How about my USB flash drives?  My red scarf?  My "KindleFire?"  My slippers?  etc...  Actually, I measure my productivity by the actual number of minutes that are left for me to Shower, Shave, Shampoo, S--- and Shine.  Usually about 10 or 15 just before bed time.  Now, where did I put my Chamomile?

So, actually that Time magazine article was useless for me, as you can see.  Except for one thing. 
This young lady, child she must still be, doesn't remember that it was disrespectful and grossly impolite to check your wrist watch in public.  LOOOONG before cell phones.  In fact, if I don't abuse my feeble memory too much, a certain presidential candidate lost an election for checking his watch publicly during a debate.  So, sweetheart, wrist watch or smart phone, an insult is an insult, 20th century or 21st --- a loser is a loser.  Mindful or mindless, a loss is a loss.
Do you remember who that wrist watch candidate was?  Don't Google it before you answer.

Wow, I liked doing this.  I'll do it again some time.

WHAT'S "NEW"IN A NEW YEAR?

RESOLVE TO ACHIEVE THIS IN 2012

Now, there's a question?  There are many things afloat in the ethersphere these days, but not too many of them are really original.  For me the "NEW" in a new year is the day to day experience of  the passage of time.  Since I was about 32 years old, passage of time has interested me.  It is not a preoccupation with age, it has everything to do with the inner responses that I experience along the course of time.  It is mysterious to me how my reactions, intellectual and emotional vary from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour.  It hasn't been a New Year's thing for me, it has been more a time flow thing.  I have noticed that as time flows, so flow I, if that can pass for comprehensible language construction.  I, for instance, consider myself to be a fairly open-minded person.  Just as I am patting myself on the pat for that virtue, I find myself reacting negatively to a new behavior on the streets of the urban area in which I live.  Or, I find myself being insulted at the idiot who is texting when listening and learning from immediate contact with intelligent people in a sincere conversation.  I doubt that I will change in the coming twelve months.
Milestones are what we make them out to be.  They make it easier for us to comprehend the life we lead.  Nothing really changes rapidly enough for us to really make perceptible changes in ourselves to accommodate the changes that happen on a day to day basis.  Everything stays so much more the same that to change into something different on a day to day basis that it takes a long time for us to realize that we have fallen behind.  I must say that it is nice to have some markers though.  They tend to make life more interesting.
Here, therefore is a list of "sames" for me:
I am not Anglo Saxon and I am proud of it.
I am Catholic, and have stood up for it in some dangerous situations.  I would do it again.
Because of that, I am not leaving just because of some idiot priest(s).
I hate unions.  That hasn't changed and never will.  
I am not a "politician" and I choose not to respect them.  I am convinced that they are all immoral beings.
I am "anti abortion", and I am not pro-life at all costs.
I do not believe that changing "sex" to "gender" makes any sense at all.


I do have a list of changes...I have to be fair, right?
I like the electronic revolution.  Like so many other things, it gets abused.
I like the medical advances.  Imagine, human spare parts.  There too there are huge abuses.
I like the speed of travel.  
I think that the United States as a society is too stupid to admit that it could make things better in many areas, like travel and like in electronics.
Yep, I used to think that we were the BEST.  Now I know different.  Not from the TV.  I've been there.
I have come to the conviction that we have too much easy credit for our own good.
I no longer support capital punishment to the extent that I once did.
I now know that the Latin Language has absolutely no place in the prayer life of the Catholic Church.  


That's enough.  You got the point.  So, we all officially one year older now than we were ten minutes ago.  Some of you reading this are already about 24 hours older than the rest of us at this point.  Oh, well, time marches on, as we used to say.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!
CLICK HERE FOR SOME FUN

PUNCTUALITY (;-)=[=< -- WHAT'S THAT?

Punctuality is a rather rare commodity in some areas of our lives here in the United States.  It is very strange to us who are accustomed to making fun about people from cultures who do not have the same appreciation of time that we think we do.  We talk very easily in disparaging terms about "Mexican time;" "Filipino Time" and other such "times" many of which escape me for the time being.  I am here to tell you that we, fauna of the United States of America, have no right to talk trash about the lack of on-time habits in other countries.  For a country, or is it a culture, who has as an axiom, "time is money" I am here to tell you that it is now clear to me why we are in the midst of hard times.  It's because we squander so much of our "money."  It seems as though we have more lateness than we have punctuality in our daily lives.  If it is true that "time is money" and if it is true that we believe in what we say about time, then we are sorely lacking in respect for our "money."  In fact It strikes me that we must be nearly bankrupt.  I can vouch for some of the disregard for punctuality in segments of our dear country.  I have experienced bus schedules that are a farce.  Not only are the buses late, but the people in customer service blithely announce to the inquisitive soul who wonders where the vehicle is, "Oh the buses on that line are never on time."  Yes, boys and girls, that is a direct, true to fact quote.  Trains?  What few we have are also more late than on time.  I don't dare to visit the airline situation.  I'm am trying to keep this light and humorous.  In that vein, let me tell you a funny(?) story.
We were going to take a bus from Boston, MASS to Springfield, MASS.  The conveyance was to leave the dock at 9:55 AM.  Promptly at 9:50 AM the driver fired up the engine, closed the door and disappeared inside the terminal.  Promptly at 10:05 he returned, let three stragglers on the bus, came in, strapped himself meticulously into his captain's chair and started to roll at 10:08 sharp.  Between then and the arrival in Springfield the clock had surpassed our sick, lumbering whale by another 25 minutes making our loving relatives waiting for our arrival for an extra 33 minutes.  I will let you do the math about the amount of money that was squandered in that situation.  Oh, by the way, six days later on the return trip, the scenario replayed itself out again, but this time the waste was 40 minutes...the engine ran for 12 minutes while the behemoth sat in dry dock.  At that rate, even though we had three and one half hours before our plane was due to leave, we were worried about whether or not we would make it to the airport on time.  We didn't have to worry, because that conveyance was not in any mood to be punctual anyway.
See you tomorrow, anytime, sharp.

W-A-Y TOO MUCH TIME ON MY HANDS HOW?? TIME FLIES !!

By the way.  I somehow touched the wrong button with my senseless fingers and caused the underlines that you see here.  I do not know how to get rid of them, and I do not have enough time to investigate the matter further.  So this clownish disclaimer will have to suffice, for now.  Hopefully, it won't happen tomorrow.
As to the title, it comes froom a comment made by Anna May.  You can see it at the bottom of yesterday's post.  Actually, the one before this one.  So, I respond...
Oh, thank you for saying that.  I wondered where all the time had gone.  The sweet kindness of Anna May has made it so clear, all of a sudden.  It is right here, in my hands, right where it belongs.  I mean, I keep looking at the clock and it keeps telling me that there just isn't enough time left on ITS hands to share some with me. That really burns me up because I thought thatclocks were invented to give us the time.  When that didn't work I turned to the calendar, and that was even worse.  I have a calendar on my computer that really has time down to a science.  It has the date and the hour and the minute, right there clutched closely to its cold hearted breast.  Do you think that I get to dip into that reserve? Mmmm?   HAH!  No way.

So now, here I am with time on my hands but NO time on the clock because the flies have it.  No time on the calendar either because it is all too week.  (Grrooaaannnn!)

The one think I think about is the saying  that we all have the same 24 hours in every day.  Ever hear that one?   I disagree.  I know that mine are shorter than those that I observe with other people.  I know it because I see them walking around the park like time has stood still.  They are just there making sure  that they capture all the droppings of their Dachshund in their little plastic bag.  I know this because I see it outside my window while I am busting a gut working for the success of the owner of the transportation company that pays me.  Hey, if their time were as short as mine, they wouldn't have the long hours to follow a long dog along a long path with time added for collecting excrement that the dog takes the time to leave behind every now and then.  Now tell me, that has to be "stretch time."
So, see.  The time that people have from the clock or the calendar is a lot longer than the time I have on my hands because neither the clock nor the calendar is taking care of me.  If I had the friendship of the clock and the calendar I could  be building model airplanes for fun instead of working for a living with this short time business.
Finally, I leave you with this silly thought: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."


HEY, GOT TIME ON YOUR HANDS?  VISIT MY FISH POND.  IT'S ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN.  PLAY WITH THE FISH BY PASSING YOUR MOUSE OVER THE FISH "POND"  CLICK YOUR MOUSE TO LEAVE THEM SOME "FOOD"