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alexpgpA major part of an item due Monday was a frustrating blast from the past, an article from the Soviet-era journal Физика твердых тел, which was one of the translated journals I was responsible for putting to press (Soviet Physics - Solid State) back when I worked at Plenum.
The article actually predated my tenure at Plenum, but not by much, and since I can find references to translated articles from the same journal and same time period, it's safe to say that a translation - and a pretty good one, if the quality of the work I handled was any indicator - already exists of this article.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to uncover any copies on the Internet, and a call to an old contact came up cold, so there was nothing left to do but translate the thing from scratch. For a moment, I felt the way I did back when I started in this racket, and that feeling became particularly intense when I got to the end of the article and started working on the bibliography.
In fact, my eyes were getting moist, as I had forgotten just how polished those old journals were before they went to press! These days, it's as if nobody anywhere has ever heard of a "style manual" outside the context of afternoon television or fashion magazines.
Yesterday, I committed what turned out to be one medium-weight error with some repercussions: in order to plan the weekend, I did an eyeball word count of the article pages, using the per-page figures I used to use back in the day (some things you never forget). For planning purposes, I added 30% to my estimate, ending up with a figure of 1850 source words to be translated.
The actual target count is 3200 words, which suggests the actual source word count is closer to 2800 words (gee, my initial estimate was only 50% off!). Furthermore, I must conclude the following:
(a) I won't be translating an additional 1,000 words of the long-term assignment that I need to start working on today, which is bad, because I promised the project coordinator 3,000 words for Monday morning, yet I have another part of this job to complete by then, too;
(b) in retrospect, we poor freelancers almost certainly shortchanged ourselves mercilessly back in the day, as we charged on the basis of a source word count performed the way I did it for this article.
* * * Natalie came by today and brightened up the joint. We went out for lunch to a Japanese place in Kemah called "Ichibon," where I had the Nabeyaki Udon, which was very good.
* * * I achieved what might be described as a Zen-like state this morning as I was walking Shiloh around the neighborhood. I had begun to mentally compose an outline for the LJ Idol "empty gesture" essay when I started imagining emptiness that wasn't empty, and vice versa.
I remained in that state until some guy in a van almost ran us over, which I thought was an unkind gesture when you consider just how wide the road was at that point and the fact that Shiloh and I were walking on grass.
Anyway, I failed to reboard that Zen-like train of thought, but I have to tell you, it was an interesting trip.
Cheers...
The article actually predated my tenure at Plenum, but not by much, and since I can find references to translated articles from the same journal and same time period, it's safe to say that a translation - and a pretty good one, if the quality of the work I handled was any indicator - already exists of this article.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to uncover any copies on the Internet, and a call to an old contact came up cold, so there was nothing left to do but translate the thing from scratch. For a moment, I felt the way I did back when I started in this racket, and that feeling became particularly intense when I got to the end of the article and started working on the bibliography.
In fact, my eyes were getting moist, as I had forgotten just how polished those old journals were before they went to press! These days, it's as if nobody anywhere has ever heard of a "style manual" outside the context of afternoon television or fashion magazines.
Yesterday, I committed what turned out to be one medium-weight error with some repercussions: in order to plan the weekend, I did an eyeball word count of the article pages, using the per-page figures I used to use back in the day (some things you never forget). For planning purposes, I added 30% to my estimate, ending up with a figure of 1850 source words to be translated.
The actual target count is 3200 words, which suggests the actual source word count is closer to 2800 words (gee, my initial estimate was only 50% off!). Furthermore, I must conclude the following:
(a) I won't be translating an additional 1,000 words of the long-term assignment that I need to start working on today, which is bad, because I promised the project coordinator 3,000 words for Monday morning, yet I have another part of this job to complete by then, too;
(b) in retrospect, we poor freelancers almost certainly shortchanged ourselves mercilessly back in the day, as we charged on the basis of a source word count performed the way I did it for this article.
I remained in that state until some guy in a van almost ran us over, which I thought was an unkind gesture when you consider just how wide the road was at that point and the fact that Shiloh and I were walking on grass.
Anyway, I failed to reboard that Zen-like train of thought, but I have to tell you, it was an interesting trip.
Cheers...
