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A real wild time...
Say that with Bogart's intonation, and you have an idea of what's been going on.
While waiting for the FedEx from client M to arrive, client S called with a rush-rush job. Of all my clients, S is probably the one with the head on straightest, as I was instructed to come up with a suitable surcharge for the rush rate, and add it to the bill.
Most other clients have migrated over to the philosophy of "Hey! They're all rush jobs, so there really isn't any "rush rate" anymore!"
Take client M, for instance. Around 1:30 pm, I get a call from one of their project managers, asking me to "take a look at" a translation. This is an unusual request, as it's generally pointless for me to "take a look" unless I then do something as a result.
The vague request was clarified somewhat in the course of the conversation: I was to tell them about any serious problems in the translation.
Well, the first serious problem occurred when my printer went on the fritz (printing multiple pages on a single page, and then proceeding to print single characters on a large number of subsequent pages. Eventually, I gave up the attempt to print out the files (six of them, wouldn't you know), and simply did a light edit on them. It was obvious to me that the translator was a native Russian, but more to the point, he or she had not been careful enough when looking at documents containing very similar text..
One of the major hazards associated with translating "boilerplate" text is that quite often, there are subtle changes (and some not-so-subtle) lurking within. That's what makes tools like Trados and Déjà Vu worth their weight in gold; they'll analyze a text and either tell of or show the differences.
As in the job for client S, which is now halfway done. I translated the first file - I'll put a strain on my imagination and call it "file 1" - using a TM program called SDLX, but for some reason it wouldn't Do The Right Thing when it came to processing file 2. So, I took a chance and exported the SDLX database into something Trados could import, and by golly! Trados imported it.
Let me back up a little. It took me about 1.5 hours to do the lookover/edit for M, and then from about 4 pm to 8:30 pm (what? about 4.5 hr?), I translated file 1 for S. After exporting from SDLX and importing into Trados, I went to work on the next file, which I shall call... you guessed it... file 2. File 2 bears a strong similarity to file 1, but with a number of changes in the details.
I processed file 2 in less than two hours using Trados! If I can duplicate this performance with the remaining two files (and there's no reason why not... my initial examination shows them to be tantalizingly similar), then I ought to be able to start work on "El Humungo" for M tomorrow.
Of course, there's that geomorphology item hanging about too. Sulking, no doubt.
* * * For what seems like the third night in a row, it rained. Oh, but it rained! Steadily.
Until finally, the electrical substation down the road couldn't take any more and shorted out (or something equally dramatic). When I got up this morning, 'onegin' was dead - the victim of a UPS that ran out of juice waiting for the lights to come back on. Upon firing up the machine this morning, the lights went out again, causing me to have to shut down the machine without benfit of a monitor (which is not connected to the UPS).
After three days of sizeable volumes of rain, I really wanted to go out looking for mushrooms, but now, my work schedule won't permit it. Any time I don't spend translating, I really should spend in the "paper chase" in the next room. (But I don't doubt I'll sneak out anyway... it'll be good for my health, at any rate.)
It's getting late, but I want to install and try FineReader 5.0 and see just what kind of problems might be associated with scanning the assignment from M. The pages look quite literally as if they've been cut from a book, and they are unusually legible (probably an aberration... the ink probably will fade by tomorrow morning... I've hardly ever seen an original this good, unless it's come off a printer).
Cheers...
While waiting for the FedEx from client M to arrive, client S called with a rush-rush job. Of all my clients, S is probably the one with the head on straightest, as I was instructed to come up with a suitable surcharge for the rush rate, and add it to the bill.
Most other clients have migrated over to the philosophy of "Hey! They're all rush jobs, so there really isn't any "rush rate" anymore!"
Take client M, for instance. Around 1:30 pm, I get a call from one of their project managers, asking me to "take a look at" a translation. This is an unusual request, as it's generally pointless for me to "take a look" unless I then do something as a result.
The vague request was clarified somewhat in the course of the conversation: I was to tell them about any serious problems in the translation.
Well, the first serious problem occurred when my printer went on the fritz (printing multiple pages on a single page, and then proceeding to print single characters on a large number of subsequent pages. Eventually, I gave up the attempt to print out the files (six of them, wouldn't you know), and simply did a light edit on them. It was obvious to me that the translator was a native Russian, but more to the point, he or she had not been careful enough when looking at documents containing very similar text..
One of the major hazards associated with translating "boilerplate" text is that quite often, there are subtle changes (and some not-so-subtle) lurking within. That's what makes tools like Trados and Déjà Vu worth their weight in gold; they'll analyze a text and either tell of or show the differences.
As in the job for client S, which is now halfway done. I translated the first file - I'll put a strain on my imagination and call it "file 1" - using a TM program called SDLX, but for some reason it wouldn't Do The Right Thing when it came to processing file 2. So, I took a chance and exported the SDLX database into something Trados could import, and by golly! Trados imported it.
Let me back up a little. It took me about 1.5 hours to do the lookover/edit for M, and then from about 4 pm to 8:30 pm (what? about 4.5 hr?), I translated file 1 for S. After exporting from SDLX and importing into Trados, I went to work on the next file, which I shall call... you guessed it... file 2. File 2 bears a strong similarity to file 1, but with a number of changes in the details.
I processed file 2 in less than two hours using Trados! If I can duplicate this performance with the remaining two files (and there's no reason why not... my initial examination shows them to be tantalizingly similar), then I ought to be able to start work on "El Humungo" for M tomorrow.
Of course, there's that geomorphology item hanging about too. Sulking, no doubt.
Until finally, the electrical substation down the road couldn't take any more and shorted out (or something equally dramatic). When I got up this morning, 'onegin' was dead - the victim of a UPS that ran out of juice waiting for the lights to come back on. Upon firing up the machine this morning, the lights went out again, causing me to have to shut down the machine without benfit of a monitor (which is not connected to the UPS).
After three days of sizeable volumes of rain, I really wanted to go out looking for mushrooms, but now, my work schedule won't permit it. Any time I don't spend translating, I really should spend in the "paper chase" in the next room. (But I don't doubt I'll sneak out anyway... it'll be good for my health, at any rate.)
It's getting late, but I want to install and try FineReader 5.0 and see just what kind of problems might be associated with scanning the assignment from M. The pages look quite literally as if they've been cut from a book, and they are unusually legible (probably an aberration... the ink probably will fade by tomorrow morning... I've hardly ever seen an original this good, unless it's come off a printer).
Cheers...