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Glide path...
Jun. 2nd, 2007 11:31 pmLast night had its tough moments, and perhaps the toughest of all was the fact that a report that normally comes in at around midnight for translation arrived closer to 7 am (and still needed to be translated). Fortunately, I've developed a system for handling this report, involving a comparison against the report for the previous day, which at least shows me where the deltas are.
The tactic isn't foolproof, because if for some reason an error creeps into the translated version of the report and the original text containing the translated error doesn't change for some number of subsequent reports, then unless you review the entire document (i.e., if you simply rely on the comparison), you're going to keep propagating the error. Still, the comparison does a marvelous job of focusing one's attention, and is very useful in situations where time is of the essence.
I showed up back at the house with some goodies from the Einstein bagelry, and Galina, Natalie, and I had a nice breakfast. Afterward, we scooted up to Natalie's place to fill up the van and Natalie's car with her stuff. I only found out later that Natalie's roommate had agreed to let her leave the apartment (for which 30 days notice has been given) early, prorating her part of the rent based on how long her stuff remained in the joint.
* * * Unfortunately, I had agreed to do about 6,000 words for a client this weekend, and I wanted to get going on that work (due in batches, as I could manage them, ASAP). So, we loaded up the van with furniture and I headed home. Once home, I couldn't get a good head of steam up on the translation, electing to go nap (sleep?) instead, but as of a few minutes ago, despite the fact that the document originator had generated pages of tables typed using spaces and drawing characters (i.e., uneditable), I am down to less than 800 words in the assignment.
Part of my "efficiency" had to do with those miserable, godforsaken, farblegargling, armpit-sniffing, crotch-scratching tables, because once I got rid of the vertical line characters between columns, the assignment word count immediately dropped to about 5,000 words.
Apropos of those tables, I suspect that they are the result not so much of some assiduous, if clueless, typist's efforts as they are the output from some program, say, line-printer output of some antediluvian FORTRAN routine. Something like that could, someday, come in handy, actually, if you know what I mean <wink, wink, nudge, nudge>, both from the point of view of developing a macro to convert such typographic cow pies into something usable, and from the do-unto-others point of view of providing something printable (but not easily editable) to Certain Parties.
But I digress... and I am keeping myself from finishing the translation.
Cheers...
The tactic isn't foolproof, because if for some reason an error creeps into the translated version of the report and the original text containing the translated error doesn't change for some number of subsequent reports, then unless you review the entire document (i.e., if you simply rely on the comparison), you're going to keep propagating the error. Still, the comparison does a marvelous job of focusing one's attention, and is very useful in situations where time is of the essence.
I showed up back at the house with some goodies from the Einstein bagelry, and Galina, Natalie, and I had a nice breakfast. Afterward, we scooted up to Natalie's place to fill up the van and Natalie's car with her stuff. I only found out later that Natalie's roommate had agreed to let her leave the apartment (for which 30 days notice has been given) early, prorating her part of the rent based on how long her stuff remained in the joint.
Part of my "efficiency" had to do with those miserable, godforsaken, farblegargling, armpit-sniffing, crotch-scratching tables, because once I got rid of the vertical line characters between columns, the assignment word count immediately dropped to about 5,000 words.
Apropos of those tables, I suspect that they are the result not so much of some assiduous, if clueless, typist's efforts as they are the output from some program, say, line-printer output of some antediluvian FORTRAN routine. Something like that could, someday, come in handy, actually, if you know what I mean <wink, wink, nudge, nudge>, both from the point of view of developing a macro to convert such typographic cow pies into something usable, and from the do-unto-others point of view of providing something printable (but not easily editable) to Certain Parties.
But I digress... and I am keeping myself from finishing the translation.
Cheers...
