I can't bear it!

Via LJ friend mkay422, who relates a one-liner of recent popularity in Russia (my translation beneath):

По словам Центризбиркома, попытки избирателей исказить результаты выборов не увенчались успехом

According to the Central Elections Committee, attempts by voters to corrupt the outcome of the elections have failed.

Hmmm.

Cheers...

Wow...

I don't mind listening to audio books, and the people at audible.com have a fairly nice selection and good sales from time to time, but their devotion to DRM makes it difficult to enjoy the product without a number of concessions.

First of all, if you want to listen to their stuff on an iPod, you have to use iTunes. If you have some other player, it must be one of the advanced models that support their digital restrictions (so my Sansa e260 is useless). The only alternative is to use something like Total Recorder to "play" the audio in such a way that it goes direct-to-disk, but even if your typical file is played at 4x speed, that will eat up about 2 hours for a typical book. (I hear audible.com has been sold. Maybe I'll write a letter...)

Anyway, I had started this process with a book I bought yesterday, but it turns out that I can't work very effectively in Word while this process is ongoing, so I sat down with proust (in Linux) and did a bit more work with a chess utility I found called "jose", which combines the features of a chess playing program (with the ability to plug in various "engines") and a chess database. While I was waiting, I downloaded and installed a database of about 1.7 million games, which weighed in at 130 MB for the archive file and put a serious dent in my /usr partition.

With 4 real-time minutes left in the conversion, I noodled around with the search function and called up games played with my favorite opening, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit. In the list of games were names that I recognized of people that I had played, so on a whim, I stuck my own name in the search function and... four of my games popped up!

These were games that actually had been published (which is not a big deal for games played after 1980 or so), and while they have a certain charm (that's parental pride speaking), they are certainly not of the highest level. Still...

* * *Yesterday's progress was reasonable. I have somewhere between 3000 and 4000 words to do today to finish the assignment.

Daylight is burning, and the snow from late last night is melting.

Cheers...

Gray areas...

Yesterday's example of poor TM maintenance is one thing, but some of the TM segments I'm running into right now are smack in the middle of a gray area that makes me think that the associated segments might actually have been used in a real document. To wit:

{0>
Сводный отчет об имеющихся ресурсах
<}100{>
Spill notification form
<0}

Again, there's that "100" figure in the middle, signifying that - according to the TM database - the red text and the blue text are a 100% match, when the proper translation is "Available resource summary report." (Finagle it as you will - "Summary report on resource availablity," etc. - it's not a spill notification form.)

This brings to mind a conversation I once had with a long-ago former client, who began by telling me what the work was and then announced, or rather dictated, a schedule of rates to me - and believe me, there's no better way to get on my good side - in which I would receive my full rate for new text and a fraction of my rate to edit text for which a match had been found in their TM database, except for 100% TM matches, for which I would get nothing at all.

I carefully chose my words and asked, "So let me get this straight, I'm to translate the new material and edit the material that's presegmented, except for the 100% matches, which I ignore, right?"

The flack at the other end of the phone nearly had apoplexy. "Why, no! What do you mean? Of course we expect you to verify those segments, too!"

"But you're not paying for them," I said.

"But they're 100% matches!" came the response.

"Which would mean, since you're not paying for them," I said, "that I need not waste time eyeballing them."

It was like talking to a wall (though I'm sure my interlocutor felt the same way). In the end, this point was a show-stopper, as neither side would back down.

I may sound a bit heartless when I say this, but unless I'm working explicitly pro bono, I expect to be paid for my effort. I don't think you can be a successful freelancer and not think that way. Perhaps, if the client had offered a less oppressive payment structure, or a higher overall rate, or simply not have been so officious in telling me How Things Were Going To Be™, I might not have been so inflexible.

Progress continues apace with the item due tomorrow morning, but I have to tell you, I really need to get out of the house for a while. Maybe I'll take Shiloh for a walk.

Cheers...

Another in a continuing series...

Okay, I have taken a swing at stuff that's completely off the wall and wrong, and at segments of questionable quality. So, while I'm in the mood, let me take a third swing, at examples of translations that may look okay, but ought probably to be changed. Here's an example:

{0>
Форма отчета о наблюдении за разливом
<}79{>
Spill Observation Report
<0}

In this case, "Spill Observation Report" works fairly well as a translation. (The Russian "форма" is there because proper Russian requires it to be; there is no such requirement in English, but I digress...)

The document to be translated indicates the form's number is "IBF 200" which turns out to have a name in English: Initial Incident Report. The source of this information is an online Exxon document having to do with oil spill response. There is one little wrinkle: lacking additional information, there would appear to be is something of a mismatch between "spill observation report" and "initial incident report."

So what's it gonna be, punk? Keep the suggested translation, which works, or replace it with something of reasonable provenance that would not exactly be your first choice?

In this case, I'll go with the terminology used in the Exxon document. Doing so is, of course, no guarantee that it's right. In the past, I recall one egregious case where, in fact, the officially translated name of a document (published, by the way, in the document) was so off the wall that I refused to use it (but footnoted the fact). However, with the exception of such anomalies, it's best to keep in mind Damon Runyon's advice on how "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet!" Betting requires judgment, and in a lot of ways, that's what the translation racket is all about.

My, but I am feeling positively professorial today! And I have procrastinated enough to issue a generous ration of wasted time to each grunt in a Chinese infantry division. I must and I will put my head down and finish the assignment!

Cheers...