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Oh, is it Daylight Savings already?
I have been pacing today's progress completing the remaining 4600 words of the current assignment against a dumb-as-sawdust wall clock that, up until just a few moments ago, was lying its fool face off and displaying the same time as it did 24 hours ago (instead of the same time as 23 hours ago, thanks to the DST change <spit>).
Now the beast is showing the right time, and I have about 900 words and one graphic (a letter) left to translate.
It's not as bad as all that. I've actually hand-translated the letter (it's not very convenient to use a magnifier while standing at my work desk, so I went upstairs to the dining room), so all that's left is to type it, and all of the 900 words need to be only edited, not translated.
Then again, some time yesterday, I realized that much of what I'm doing can be considered "back translation," which requires me to translate the Russian text—itself a translation of a previous English document—back into English.
Blindly following "pretranslated" segments in this case does nobody any favors. Consider a hypothetical document where "Cinco de Mayo" is incorrectly translated "Fourth of July." Knowing how the original should read makes it tempting to render "Fourth of July" back as "Cinco de Mayo," but that's how the foundations for world-class snafus are laid.
This last chunk of assignment text (a table) has already presented me with a couple of items that were not correctly translated into Russian (and which, therefore, will not match the previous English once I'm through with it). Which is a roundabout way of saying that this last chunk of the document is not exactly a slam dunk.
I've literally lost an hour in the past five minutes. I need to get active.
Cheers...
Now the beast is showing the right time, and I have about 900 words and one graphic (a letter) left to translate.
It's not as bad as all that. I've actually hand-translated the letter (it's not very convenient to use a magnifier while standing at my work desk, so I went upstairs to the dining room), so all that's left is to type it, and all of the 900 words need to be only edited, not translated.
Then again, some time yesterday, I realized that much of what I'm doing can be considered "back translation," which requires me to translate the Russian text—itself a translation of a previous English document—back into English.
Blindly following "pretranslated" segments in this case does nobody any favors. Consider a hypothetical document where "Cinco de Mayo" is incorrectly translated "Fourth of July." Knowing how the original should read makes it tempting to render "Fourth of July" back as "Cinco de Mayo," but that's how the foundations for world-class snafus are laid.
This last chunk of assignment text (a table) has already presented me with a couple of items that were not correctly translated into Russian (and which, therefore, will not match the previous English once I'm through with it). Which is a roundabout way of saying that this last chunk of the document is not exactly a slam dunk.
I've literally lost an hour in the past five minutes. I need to get active.
Cheers...