A pox on it!

Surely there is no more fearsome thing for a translator than a PowerPoint file compiled by someone who is really into all the bells and whistles the program has to offer and has no earthly idea that someone else is going to have to wade through their work of genius (read: fecal drivel) and turn it into something that can be understood by people who speak a language other than that of the originator.

Take this file I'm trying to work on now. (Please!)

First off, the farblegargling thing is 55 MB big (although, to be fair, there are 81 slides in the presentation). Among other things, that means I've already invested about an hour of my time gratis while I downloaded the thing. No matter.

I just sent the following email to my project manager on the job:

My VAIO (600-MHz CPU, 512-MB RAM, 1-GB available virtual memory) has been brought to its knees by this monster of a file. Clicking on most text boxes results in a 8-10-second wait before it shows ready to be edited. Typing in said box shows up about 10-seconds later. Sometimes a click does nothing, so I end up clicking a second time after about 10 seconds have passed to get the box to go into edit mode. Once I'm finished typing, clicking elsewhere on the screen may or may not cause the text box to close, which I'll learn about 8-10 seconds later.

Thus, assuming perfect, near-instantaneous typing, a one-word text box will take between 30 seconds and a minute (or more) to take care of. If I have to relocate the cursor, delete something I've typed, or see whether I mistyped something, add 8-10 seconds for each such action.

There is a slide with about 40 such text boxes (slide 7, if memory serves) containing less than 100 words on it that I have not finished, but on which I know I have spent over an hour (and have not finished).

There are also a number of very ugly-looking slides where it appears that graphics are sitting atop one another, with captions peeking out here and there. I did not understand what was going on with these slides until I noticed, in the slide-sorter view, how some slides have a little shooting star next to them. Something clicked in my head and I came up with the hypothesis that said slides have some kind of animation effects in place.

I was right.

So, for example, there is one slide where a graphic (and its caption) fly in from the left, another flies in from the right (partially covering the first), and a third creeps up from the bottom of the screen, all but covering the first two.

How in the name of all that's holy do you translate that? Well, it turns out you relocate all the parts so you can get at the "guts," and then try to put everything back where it belongs. Each time I grab an object and move it, it "costs" about 8-10 seconds and there is no hint of where, exactly, the part is while you're moving it, so while it takes one move to get something out of the way, it generally takes about 2-3 moves to put an item back where it was.

In order for the animation to work, some items are grouped. One such group includes a text box reading ДО (meaning BEFORE). Because the English word is longer than the Russian word, it disappears under the graphic it describes. To fix this requires: ungrouping the group, _figuring out/writing down what's in the group_ (because there's other things on the slide that are part of a subsequent animation sequence), moving the text box so the contents can be read, reselecting the group objects, and turning them into a group again.

This is not translation, it's design work, and unfortunately, I do not appear to have the right hardware at hand for the job, so I don't know how much more I can do.

Current status, after 6 hours: Slides 1-6 are complete, along with 11-13, 15 and 16. Slide 7 is 80% complete; I'll go finish it when my blood pressure goes down. Call it two slides an hour, on the average. Since I can only work about 8 hours per day on this, I obviously won't be able to complete all 81 slides.

If I'm lucky, I'll be able to translate the text embedded (!) in the graphics on slides 8, 9 and 14 by the end of the day, so that at least I'll be able to send the first 16 slides. Frankly, I haven't had a chance to look at all the rest of the slides (it takes time for the slides to appear on my screen), so I don't know how much more I can do tomorrow. I suspect it's not much.

I hate like anything to start back off with you guys so poorly, because you know that generally, nothing stops me, and I can usually deliver a 4,000-word assignment in one day. This PowerPoint file, though, is an exceptionally difficult monster.

Cheers...

Still on a rampage...

I'm sorry, but this PowerPoint file is just so far past unreasonable in its construction, I can't let go of it.

The Big Issue™ is the fact that several slides really contain enough graphical information for 3-4 slides. When you print out this misbegotten collection of data, the result is pretty near unusable. That means that the only possible function this presentation can serve is as an actual sit-and-bend-your-eyes-and-ears presentation.

Heaven help us.

We're talking 81 slides! (I've managed to translate just over 24 slides between work and visiting the mater.) If we assume a conservative figure of 2 minutes per slide during a presentation - that might sound like a lot, but in reality, it's a pittance - we're talking nearly 3 hours of a near-death-by-boredom experience reviewing a huge amount of data (if you're into oil wells). If you print the farblegargling thing out, all of the animated slides print out in fully-complete form, which means a tantalizing number of diagrams are printed out only in part.

Frankly, I do not know how I am going to finish it all. PowerPoint is still taking 6-8 seconds to do anything, which is becoming a major annoyance. I have settled on trying to translate text boxes in place and keying any embedded text in a Word file. It definitely sucks, but it's better than wasting cycles trying to make PowerPoint do my bidding.

* * *The option we have been discussing around here involves transporting my mom out to Colorado, where there are more and younger people around to help take care of her. Frankly, I get the feeling I don't know what I am getting into, but can't imagine what the "gotchas" may be. This is nothing new for me, as I have embarked on more important journeys with less information. The basic theme is that taking care of my mom in Colorado has got to be less expensive than the same care in New York, not to mention that having a family member involved ought to mean something in terms of quality control.

The big sticking points are two: first, it would be nice to get her doctor's take on the idea, except that you'd have a better chance, I think, of calling the White House and leaving a message for the President to have hime call you back than we do of actually having my mom's doctor call us. My dad has been trying for three days now - this time - with no results. I, personally, have never met my mother's doctor, or even heard his voice.

The second item is exactly how to do the deed. One alternative is a charter aircraft, as people in my mother's condition are - as I understand - not capable of traveling via commercial airlines. I priced one outfit in the local phone book, and they quoted a five-figure price. Another alternative is motor vehicle, except that most reputable car rental agencies don't do one-way rentals to Colorado from New York. This issue remains a conundrum; meanwhile, I have a flight back on Sunday afternoon.

I need to get some sleep. I got up today at 4:30 am to start translating, and I feel a mite tuckered out. I hope I can at least get up to slide 40 of 81 by the time I send what I have in the middle of the morning. (A call to the local library confirmed (a) they do not support sending files over the Internet, and (b) they have no idea where that can be done.)

Cheers...