Two short but urgent items came over the transom somewhere short of noon, and they kept me off the street until about 3 pm. Hopefully, more substantial projects will start flowing again soon.
In further support of that, I've created pages on my work web sites that allow visitors to request quotes for potential jobs. The job was made incredibly easy by the capabilities offered by the
JotForm web site.
While I was on this "improve my professional web presence" jag, I also made sure that the "About" page of the site no longer displayed the WordPress boilerplate, and replaced it with my contact information.
I also documented the first mini-case study for my proposed ATA presentation later this year on advanced search techniques. (I am going to assume—there's that word again!—that my proposal will be accepted.)
Apropos of quoting jobs, a prospective client (introduced to me directly by one of my clients who prefers to work with larger end clients) apparently suffered some kind of sticker-shock after I provided a sample translation but before I actually quoted a price to translate a 16,000 source-word job. The official word is that the author wants to go back and tighten the text. We'll see.
I've started quoting on other jobs, too, despite the fact that so many other translators are willing to work for much less than my standard rate and that so many clients are focused on price to the exclusion of virtually all other factors.
In writing the previous paragraph, I'm a little disappointed that I had stopped quoting on other jobs. Some time ago, I was able to convince a direct client that it was worth the extra cost to obtain a product that reads as if it was written by a professional writer whose native tongue was English. There must be other such clients out there, so I may as well go looking for them!
* * *In other news, while Galina was in Houston, I spent some of my spare time trying to improve my visualization skills. The two exercises I chose to work on were (1) blindfold replay of chess miniatures (a "miniature" is a short and typically aesthetically pleasing game, and "blindfold" is understood to mean "without having a physical chessboard and pieces in front of you"), and (2) performing a Knight's Tour (a series of 64 knight moves on a chessboard in which each square is visited only once).
I found both exercises to be fairly difficult—especially the Tour—but can report (after three weeks or so) that with practice, my visualization seems to be improving.
I undertook this effort after realizing that pretty much everything I really needed to know about mnemonics and similar memory aids I learned by reading my first book on the subject, written by Harry Lorayne and, oh, whatsisname? (just kidding... the other guy was Jerry Lucas).
Cheers...
