Apropos of International Women's Day...

When I scrawled "Happy International Women's Day" on the white board in the store this morning, I was faced with the question: "Is it 'International Woman's Day' or 'International Women's Day'?" It's perhaps a minor point, but the kind of thing I can't leave alone, so despite my suspicions that the proper version was the former, I turned to Google, and searched for:

international woman's day

This turned up about 5.9 million results (and up there at the top of the list was a page with that title from the United Nations, apparently a typo, as we'll see below).

Now, most people, faced with almost 6 million results and a URL that points to the UN might decide, at that point, that they'd found the flow and that the best course would be to go with it. However, for better or worse, I'm not most people. On some kind of mad roll, I searched for

international women's day

This showed 5.6 million results (and - surprise! - again, up at the top of the list, was another page with that title from the UN).

I was momentarily confused at the fairly even distribution of results, until I realized I was searching for individual words. When I enclosed the phrase in quotes, the results were a lot more lopsided (and indicative):

"international women's day": 451,000
"international woman's day": 4,500

I would venture to guess that the even distribution when searching without quotes was caused by the common use of both singular and plural forms of "woman" on any page where either form appears.

Having done this exercise, Happy International Women's Day to all for whom the holiday was instituted!

Cheers...

If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con', then the opposite of 'protract' is...

Contract! As in:

... The Contractor’s Representative is responsible for the Contractor’s Personnel and is considered to have full authority to represent the Contractor in the resolution of routine issues that may arise between the Contractor and the Customer...

(The sound you heard was that of the translator's head striking his keyboard!)

Seriously. So far, so good. Sharpening my pencil (since it's hard to sharpen an HP 48C), I find I need to translate 3750 source words per day until Friday, when the document is due at COB.

Back to the face of the salt mine.

Cheers...

1790 was a good year...

It's also the number of words I have remaining in today's self-assignment.

... Unless otherwise specified in the Work Order, the Contractor assumes full responsibility, including financial, for conformance to all requirements of Current Legislation with regard to Contractor’s Personnel, including, but not limited to, the granting of visas and work permits, provision of living accommodations, transportation, food, medical care, vacations and compensatory time off, travel allowances, and other services and payments...

(Thunk!... Aaargh!)

Drew will need some relief in a little bit... he's off to see a therapist about his knee. It'll be a welcome break.

Cheers...

Coming up for air...

I don't really recall what I had for lunch... some potato chips? a bowl of solyanka? (Dinner, I know about: none yet!)

I've been on the go since 6 am, roughly, and I am pretty beat. I've exceeded my translation goal for the day by a good 10%, and I don't really feel like doing the Stakhanovite thing. (Upon reflection, if truth be known, I've not included the two short items in my tally for the day - a scrub/review of one document translated in draft mode yesterday and one translation done this morning - so I've actually done more than I intended without really intending to... go figure.)

Blyeah!

So I am going to go upstairs, use the last of my diet tonic to make a middle-strength gin-and-tonic, and make dinner and wash dishes until I get sick of the procedure.

Then I'm going to go to bed and try to develop a theme for possible presentation at the ATA conference in Seattle later this year.

Cheers...