Getting a fire lit...

There are certain translation assignments I can't seem to get excited about.

Which is not to say that I get excited, particularly, when it comes to work, but I have identified a certain pattern over the past few years, of assignments where I just can't seem to achieve whatever it is I achieve to "put the pedal to the metal" the way it happens with, for example, The Routine Stuff™.

A large part of it, I think, has to do with the conversational nature of the text.

Technical text, you see, is impersonal. You don't see very many obscure idiomatic expressions or folk sayings embedded therein.

Which isn't to say that techies can't stray off the linguistic reservation, so to speak. They certainly can. I recall a meeting I interpreted for—at NASA/JSC—where, in answer to the very simple question "How's work progressing on <the hardware>?" The Russian team lead responded with "Ну... Скажу так: Солнце печет, река течет."

Literally, the answer was, "Well, let me put it this way: The sun bakes, and the river flows."

You can dress this up a bit more poetically, but in the end, it's the kind of answer you expect, say, from Kwai Chang Caine in an episode of Kung Fu, but I digress...

So on the one hand, while I did spend time away from the computer this morning, going to the fitness center with Galina, that does not explain why I managed to translate only 1800 or so words of what I shall call The Partisan Job™, which—granted—contains quite a number of quotes, expressed colloquially, from wartime correspondence about events on various Ukrainian fronts during the Great Patriotic War (often called the Eastern Front of World War II by Westerners). And while if I maintain such a pace, I should be able to complete the work on time, I fully expect to also receive a bunch of The Routine Stuff™ (in fact, I just checked and have 7 pages due tomorrow this morning at 10 am), which will complicate matters.

There's no backing out now. It's forward, only forward!

I must make sure to get up early tomorrow, and take command of the situation!

A habit formed early...

I did not quite understand just how much work was involved the day I agreed to undertake my first translation for pay.

The tale has been told before, but the short version is that a translation went missing in an issue of a journal that fell within my purview as "production editor" for Plenum Publishing Corporation. The technical editor turned his office upside-down looking for the missing article, to no avail. It was Friday, and too late to engage a new translator. I volunteered; my boss sneered, but gave me until Monday to come up with a translation, adding that if the technical editor didn't like it, I would not be paid.

I agreed. I delivered, and the technical editor said my work was actually better than what he usually saw from translators. It wasn't real "writing," but it paid money.

If you only knew what that first translation cost me, in terms of nervous energy.

I must have looked up every second word.

Twice.

I was reminded of this today, while working on The Partisan Job™, when I ran across a sentence in which a speaker is expressing himself in a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Slang.

That kind of thing helped today be a mere 1600 word day, although I did do some of The Routine Stuff™ as well.

Other factors contributed to my lack of productivity, including a comedy of errors that included a key ring—no, make that two key rings, and a hammer, among other implements of destruction. It's a tale that must be carefully expanded into something to be cherished and passed down through the family for generations to come. Then again, perhaps I will wake up tomorrow and decide otherwise, who knows?

Cheers...