Translation humor...

From my current document:

Среднее количество дней со снежными метелями в месяц около 39, максимальное - 69.

The mean number of days of snow storms per month is around 39; the maximum is 69.

Man, the snow must really wail in that part of the world!

Cheers...

Evening wrapup...

My "office" here in Pagosa is in our former kitchen, which - having been removed, along with the wall that used to separate the kitchen from the living room - is now represented by the stove (no longer surrounded by an island), a table located next to the stove, and a hutch next to the refrigerator, which stands in what used to be the dining room. Our dining room table now sits where the sink used to be, and all my junk is set up on it.

So it turns out this whole end of the house is one big room, clear of any visual impediment except for a column of nailed lumber that stands forlornly in the middle of the room, keeping the floor and ceiling asunder. (Go, column!) In the end, it turns out that when Galina watches her television shows, I either listen along or stuff earphones into my ears.

And so it was that today, as I struggled to make up for time lost to various sinks, I caught the rather lengthy segment on the Oprah show, whose subject today was death and dying, devoted to Dr. Randy Pausch, whom I wrote about one month ago, after having seen his Carnegie-Mellon farewell lecture. Today's presentation was a streamlined version of the lecture, and when he was finished, there wasn't a dry eye in the audience (or at home, for that matter - at least this home).

My translation progress for the day so far has been utterly dismal. First, I spent entirely too much time earlier in the day trying to generate a usable TM file from the previous version and its translation. This, on the off chance that the "new" material in the file isn't really new, just moved around so much that Word's comparison algorithm can't grok it.

I eventually succeeded, but not without encountering some strange Word behavior that caused the program to throw a series of fatal exceptions whenever I closed one of the source files (in RTF format). On the verge of success in this venture, I then got a callback - finally - from the lawyer in New York, and after suffering through the sticker shock of his telling me what his services will cost, I dealt with the doctor's office in Durango.

So here I am, having started at around 9300 words, with about 7300 words left. I figure if things go my way, I'll put another 1500 words or so under my belt before I go to sleep. Tomorrow will have to be a 4000-word day (or better), which will leave something short of 2000 words for Wednesday morning.

Time is a-wastin'.

Cheers...

UPDATE: I'm down to 6000 words as of about 8:15 pm. I may try for another 500 words; I may not. It's been a long day.