Jun. 17th, 2009

alexpgp: (Corfu!)
I enjoy listening to the Daily French Pod from time to time, as the speaker takes great pains to enunciate words clearly (as opposed to the lecturers from the Collège de France that I download via iTunes, where mumbling is pervasive, but I digress...).

So as I was listening to the podcast on "le flic" ("the cop"), it occurred to me to wonder: What is the difference between a gendarme and a policier?

One of the great, yet vaguely annoying, things about the Internet is that quite a number of questions that have just occurred to you have already been asked online. And answered (your basic Mark 1, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose scenario).

I googled the question "Quelle est la différance entre un gendarme et un policier?" and got a pageful of hits in response. The first one, from Yahoo! France, did the trick: The police work in cities and operate under the Interior Ministry; gendarmes would appear to work outside of cities and draw pay from the Defense Ministry.

At least that appeared to be the consensus among several different answers.

I don't know how useful this information might be, but still, an itch has been scratched.

* * *
One question that I have not yet researched, but which occurred to me in concrete form yesterday is: "When memorizing, say, a poem, why do some lines lodge themselves in your head permanently and effortlessly, while others require much greater effort?"

I've no time to address that now, though. I'm over the hump as far as my current workload is concerned, but I am reminded of the old saw that goes, "After you finish the first 90% of the job, take a deep breath, exhale, and then continue with the second 90% of the job."

Cheers...
alexpgp: (Default)
Even under the best of circumstances, it's hard to maintain an "editing speed" of 1000 target words per hour over any length of time. And unlike translation, which can receive a computer assist from time to time via translation memory, editing remains an eternal, straightforward slog.

Even if the translation is good, it still takes time to (a) read the original, (b) grok it, (c) translate it, in one's mind, and (d) compare the translation in your mind with the one on the page, decide what - if anything - needs changing, and change it.

I got kind of a late start today, and have edited about 8,000 target words over the past 8 hours. I'm leaving about 1500 words for tomorrow, after which I will go into major despeckling mode.

Indeed, what despeckling I can accomplish tomorrow will not include an edit in the classical sense (the document is weighing in at about 50,000 words) but more of an effort to tighten things up, make sure terms are translated consistently, that grammar has a fighting chance of carrying the day, and anything else I can accomplish in the time I have.

Still, I'm feeling better now than I did this morning, and I'm sure I'll be floating on air at this time tomorrow.

Cheers...

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