Hey! It's only 8 am...

I was awakened this morning by the usual suspect (Shiloh), and though it was too dark to see the clock on the wall, proust (which I had left on all night to download a bunch of podcasts) told me it was 6:30 am. I assumed it was dark owing to the cloudy sky, which was producing some small volume of rain.

Well, there is something to that theory, but in point of fact, proust's clock is an hour fast.

Anyway, Thursday is in full swing.

Hide the children and small animals.

Cheers...

The thought occurs to me...

...as I translate the next item on the plate, "Is this guy (writing in Russian, natch) channeling Bill Buckley?"

Indeed, without an electronic dictionary at hand, I'd be gasping for air by now.

Cheers...

What a day!

I've been struggling with this current translation for most of the day, and have only gotten about 1700 words through the thing.

The good news is that the writer - a professor who has turned to work for the government (or is it the other way around?) - likes to compose long sentences, so the work is being accomplished in fairly large chunks.

The bad news is that the writer likes to compose long sentences that leave me gasping with their complexity and - it must be said - their due fill of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Read what you will into that last crack.

My meeting next week has slipped a week, so my translation "horizon" has suddenly up and moved in a major way. I probably have enough work to last me through the weekend, but come Monday, I'm going to be one hurtin' freelancer if stuff doesn't start coming in.

I have about 600 words left of the current item, which isn't due until Sunday, so there's no major pressure there (except internal... it'd have been nice to have finished this chunk today).

Cheers...

I lied...

Just as I was about to close down my file, I hit the keychord to record the current segment and open the next one. And as much as I'd love to announce a long run of 100% matches with segments already in my personal translation memory database, it didn't happen.

Instead, I was looking at an, um,... sentence - defined as a series of words terminated by a period - of some 136 words. Piled in front of that lone, brave period were 2-1/2 expressions in parenthesis (one closing parenthesis was missing), two exclamation points, 6 words or phrases in quotes, two colons, several dashes, and enough commas to make me wonder if a proper environmental impact statement had been compiled.

In short, a nightmare. But it's done, and there are now just over 500 words left in the job.

And now, well and truly, I will can the work for the day and get some shuteye.

Verbcast, anyone?

Cheers...