Time sure does fly...

Wow. Been up since 11:30 pm last night (big deal, two and half hours!) and decided to unlimber the new Intel PC Camera before tackling the editing that's been hanging over my head like a block of stale provolone for the past couple of weeks...

At any rate, I'm thoroughly impressed with the unit so far, and really appreciate its portability. One thing I am noticing about my Sony VAIO is that 64 MB of RAM falls short somewhat when it comes to doing video-intensive stuff. It's likely time to start paying attention and try to catch one of the periodic sales at CompUSA or something.

But now...I really must apply myself to these miserable documents.

Cheers...

25,000 down - 20,000 to go...

No, I didn't just edit 25,000 words, but when I count up all that I've done in the "dead" time over the past couple of weeks (and there has been precious little of that), and add it to the 12,000 or so words I've done in the last 11 hours...it adds up.

Translation editing combines the less-attractive qualities of the whole translation process. First of all, the work is more complex than simple translation. When you edit, you read the original, grok it, then read someone's translation, and finally, decide what (if anything) needs to be changed - and change it.

This is inherently harder work than translating, which involves reading the original, grokking it, and then expressing it in another language. For one thing, editing requires you to put aside your ego, which is hard enough for some people to do. Second, it requires a large dollop of good judgment, else it's easy to fall into the trap of changing everything to what you think it should read (and to heck with what the translator wrote).

I'm not sure, but I think I just said "put aside your ego" two different ways.

The second downer is that the rate of pay for this work is typically much lower than for doing the original translation, and is based on the translator being pretty competent to begin with. Latch onto a poor translation, and you end up effectively retranslating the document for much less than you would have gotten had you been assigned the work to begin with.

On the other hand, someone has to edit all this stuff (can't translate all the time). So it may as well be me!

Time to quit this computer and go for a walk before hitting the sack. 'night, all.

Cheers...