A snag in the flow...

Resting between Excel (ugh!) files.

We didn't watch Enemy at the Gates yesterday, because the DVD player would not send a good signal to the TV. I suspect the nausea-inducing display - which occurred only when the Enemy at the Gates DVD was in the machine - must be more Hollyweird "magic" designed to keep entertainment-industry execs happy and calm, seeing as they have already relieved me of $15 or so, leaving me bereft of the capability to...what? Make a million pirate copies of the film? That must be the first use they must think I'd put the disk to, since they feel it's more important to prevent me from copying it than to let me watch it in peace. The fact I cannot view the film is an issue of little consequence when compared to their bottom line, apparently.

Instead, we watched Ronin, a John Frankenheimer film starring Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno. I enjoyed the film when I saw it the first time and enjoyed it again last night, albeit in near-silent mode, as we didn't want to wake up the baby. I liked the chemistry between DeNiro and Reno all through the film.

Talking about the baby, Huntur was helping me work the other day...



Cheers...

More ProZ...

I spent probably more time than I should have today looking around the ProZ site, but I think in the long run the time will have been well invested.

Apparently, when folks look for translators on ProZ (say, working from Russian into English in the technical field), the first page to be displayed consists of so-called "Platinum Members" (people like me who paid a premium for that level of participation). After some observing, it appears that - among the Platinum members - the entries in the list are ordered by the number of so-called "KudoZ" that they've accumulated, after which I'm not sure what factors become important.

A "KudoZ" is earned if you respond to a terminology query on the ProZ site and if your response is selected as the "best" by the person who originally asked the question. If nothing else, the whole mechanism for entering and commenting on responses is well thought out (which is to say, I found it easy to understand, with no additional instructions).

It turns out that today was a very thin day for Russian-to-English questions (zero), and not too much better for the other direction (three, by 2:45 pm). In any event, it would appear you really have to be lucky to have unanswered queries appear when you check for them, since most are answered (and generally correctly) within minutes.

Out of curiosity, I checked out the French queries and found a fresh one asking the meaning of "virelangues." On a whim, I hit the French Google site and had the answer - tongue twister - within about 30 seconds. 'Twas my first KudoZ, and it had the effect of raising me in the list of translators I spoke of a few paragraphs back. Later on, I was lucky enough to find an unanswered R->E query, which I dispatched for another KudoZ score.

These two responses put me in the top quarter of the Platinum members who work from Russian to English, which I view as more of a marketing coup than anything else (people looking for help will start reading from the top of the list, you see...). Of course, the proof of the pudding will be in any jobs that I get on the strength of my listing with this site.

My Houston client contacted me today, asking me to help out with an overload of telecons tomorrow morning, so now I have to make sure I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by 6 am, and up on communications and tracking terminology.

Then it's back to translating Excel files.

Cheers...