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Heck of a weekend...
Drew brought Huntur to the store yesterday morning. He was intent on staying just long enough to pick up and sort the mail, after which he was going to take Shannon and Huntur into Durango to do some shopping. As it turned out, having Huntur at the store was a blast. Galina came by after a while and then went for a walk with the kid (to Drew's increasing chagrin, as he wanted to leave!).
So Galina and I tended the store together, until closing. (We are such romantics!)
The prospect of baby-sitting Huntur came up during the morning, and although I thought to myself "Gee, it'd be great to start a little earlier than 8 pm, so we don't take custody of a sleeping infant!" it never occurred to me to ask about the job. As it turned out, Galina and I went to the kids' place around 8, and Huntur was sleeping!
Drew and Shannon left to go to where some friends of theirs were playing in a band, while Galina and I watched the latest Star Wars epic (Revenge of the Clones? The Clones Strike Back? Attack of the Clones? I can't keep track anymore.) Afterward, it struck me that Huntur has more books than do her parents, as I scoured the bookshelves for something to read.
As it was, I laid down the outline of a fairly extensive essay on educational attitudes in this country and how they have affected our country's intelligence effort and laid the basis for a police state set forth in recent legislation. It's not exactly the Unified Field Theory, but it's close.
Eventually, the kids made it home... well past midnight.
Between closing the store yesterday and going to baby-sit, I read a bit of a book that I first read in 9th grade, titled I Owe Russia $1200, by Bob Hope. (I know it was 9th grade because that was the (in)famous Year of Junior High Public Speaking, and I remember stealing some one-liners from the book to add spice to my subject: an encounter with a shark, in which the fish almost died of fright.) It was interesting to look at the book from the perspective of the intervening several decades; some of what Hope - or his writers - wrote is still applicable today.
I also looked at one of the DVDs that Drew ordered via my account on Netflix, the first of the Band of Brothers disks, which featured the first two episodes of the HBO mini-series. I'd not seen the very first episode, and watching the second episode was still entertaining.
Anyway, once home, Galina and I went immediately to sleep. Ming, however, insisted on being let out every two hours, which was a royal pain in the butt. We all eventually rose at 8:30 or so, and I went to do grocery shopping (the better to make soup with).
* * * The rest of the day was nothing to write home about, particularly, but plenty in which to write translations. I worked on the job received Friday for most of the afternoon. The highlight of the text was having to deal with the concept of "собственной атмосферой космического аппарата."
Ignoring, for the time being, the adjective собственный, this term denotes some kind of spacecraft atmosphere, and in that context, "atmosphere" generally denotes the gas inside the spacecraft's compartments (as in: atmosphere revitalization system). I mean, it's not as if spacecraft have an external atmosphere, right?
In any event, I had not seen the collocation собственная атмосфера before, so I hit my dictionary resources.
I had no luck for the word pair, but the dictionary definition of собственный is along the lines of "own, proper, inherent, intrinsic, native, indigenous, proprietary" and so on. Not much help there, either, so I turned to Yandex.ru and found a Moscow University article on собственная внешняя атмосфера космических аппаратов, which is the same elusive word собственная now linked to "external spacecraft atmosphere." The page included a reference to Skylab, which perked me up.
But what's this about "external spacecraft atmosphere"?
Another page at the same site convinced me that the concept under discussion is, indeed, an external "atmosphere" that surrounds larger spacecraft (e.g., orbiting stations such as Skylab, Mir, and ISS). It turns out that, as a result of outgassing, sublimation, thruster firings, airlock depressurization, and so on, a gaseous cloud that is subject to gravitation effects forms outside of spacecraft. This cloud is very, very rarefied (on Skylab, the surface density at various points around the vehicle was on the order of 10-9 kg/m2, or about a thousandth of a milligram spread out over a square meter), but you wouldn't want to breathe it anyway (many components are toxic).
Anyway, by doing a little research on "Skylab," I found a history page at NASA, which mentions a project to measure the "external atmopshere" of Skylab. At that point in the procedure, I figure I'd flogged that particular question into insensibility. Spacecraft have their own atmospheres (small, but measurable), and the term I was looking for is "external spacecraft atmosphere."
's what I love about the job. You learn something new every day.
Cheers...
So Galina and I tended the store together, until closing. (We are such romantics!)
The prospect of baby-sitting Huntur came up during the morning, and although I thought to myself "Gee, it'd be great to start a little earlier than 8 pm, so we don't take custody of a sleeping infant!" it never occurred to me to ask about the job. As it turned out, Galina and I went to the kids' place around 8, and Huntur was sleeping!
Drew and Shannon left to go to where some friends of theirs were playing in a band, while Galina and I watched the latest Star Wars epic (Revenge of the Clones? The Clones Strike Back? Attack of the Clones? I can't keep track anymore.) Afterward, it struck me that Huntur has more books than do her parents, as I scoured the bookshelves for something to read.
As it was, I laid down the outline of a fairly extensive essay on educational attitudes in this country and how they have affected our country's intelligence effort and laid the basis for a police state set forth in recent legislation. It's not exactly the Unified Field Theory, but it's close.
Eventually, the kids made it home... well past midnight.
Between closing the store yesterday and going to baby-sit, I read a bit of a book that I first read in 9th grade, titled I Owe Russia $1200, by Bob Hope. (I know it was 9th grade because that was the (in)famous Year of Junior High Public Speaking, and I remember stealing some one-liners from the book to add spice to my subject: an encounter with a shark, in which the fish almost died of fright.) It was interesting to look at the book from the perspective of the intervening several decades; some of what Hope - or his writers - wrote is still applicable today.
I also looked at one of the DVDs that Drew ordered via my account on Netflix, the first of the Band of Brothers disks, which featured the first two episodes of the HBO mini-series. I'd not seen the very first episode, and watching the second episode was still entertaining.
Anyway, once home, Galina and I went immediately to sleep. Ming, however, insisted on being let out every two hours, which was a royal pain in the butt. We all eventually rose at 8:30 or so, and I went to do grocery shopping (the better to make soup with).
Ignoring, for the time being, the adjective собственный, this term denotes some kind of spacecraft atmosphere, and in that context, "atmosphere" generally denotes the gas inside the spacecraft's compartments (as in: atmosphere revitalization system). I mean, it's not as if spacecraft have an external atmosphere, right?
In any event, I had not seen the collocation собственная атмосфера before, so I hit my dictionary resources.
I had no luck for the word pair, but the dictionary definition of собственный is along the lines of "own, proper, inherent, intrinsic, native, indigenous, proprietary" and so on. Not much help there, either, so I turned to Yandex.ru and found a Moscow University article on собственная внешняя атмосфера космических аппаратов, which is the same elusive word собственная now linked to "external spacecraft atmosphere." The page included a reference to Skylab, which perked me up.
But what's this about "external spacecraft atmosphere"?
Another page at the same site convinced me that the concept under discussion is, indeed, an external "atmosphere" that surrounds larger spacecraft (e.g., orbiting stations such as Skylab, Mir, and ISS). It turns out that, as a result of outgassing, sublimation, thruster firings, airlock depressurization, and so on, a gaseous cloud that is subject to gravitation effects forms outside of spacecraft. This cloud is very, very rarefied (on Skylab, the surface density at various points around the vehicle was on the order of 10-9 kg/m2, or about a thousandth of a milligram spread out over a square meter), but you wouldn't want to breathe it anyway (many components are toxic).
Anyway, by doing a little research on "Skylab," I found a history page at NASA, which mentions a project to measure the "external atmopshere" of Skylab. At that point in the procedure, I figure I'd flogged that particular question into insensibility. Spacecraft have their own atmospheres (small, but measurable), and the term I was looking for is "external spacecraft atmosphere."
's what I love about the job. You learn something new every day.
Cheers...
no subject
В слове "собственная" лично я здесь ощущаю (моё субъективное ощущение) тот факт, что эта атмосфера как бы "обволакивает", она как бы некая внешняя оболочка космического корабля, как будто корабль является некоей моделью планеты Земля, будто корабль имеет притяжение (как Земля) и оно удерживает эту атмосферу вокруг корабля, и эта оболочка (в смысле "атмосфера") не отрывается от корабля и всегда следует с ним.
Это ощущения. С другой стороны это довольно сухой формальный термин, который 1 раз принимается, и его потом все учёные стараются придерживаться.
В просто "external" лично я не ощущаю "обволакивания". Будто эта оболочка может иметь "разрывы", может "отделяться" на время от корабля.
Слово "собственная" по моим ощущениям "лишает" её такой возможности. Она как бы "собственность" корабля, и поэтому её "возможности" ограничены, поэтому она как бы "относительно стабильная" часть корабля, которую можно использовать или остерегаться её, т.к. она ПОСТОЯННО находится вокруг корабля.
Но это моё субъективное ощущение этого слова здесь. Для "неспециалиста"(!!) это слово здесь несущественно.
P.S. Не знаю как звучит по-английски, но в математике/физике в подобных случаях я часто встречаю "proper".
Посмотрел Интернет. Да, 1 наш переводчик именно так и перевёл:
http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/mir/mir-structure.html
, proper external atmosphere of the orbital complex,
Но не знаю, как это ЗВУЧИТ для американца :(
P.P.S. Извини, что отвечаю по-русски, но время поджимает :(
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However, and after a somewhat alcohol-fuelled conversation with another translator recently, the downside is the whole 'jack of all trades and master of none' thing I often feel about what I do. Maybe you feel this less as you seem to concentrate such a lot on all things related to space.
Even then, though, space is a very broad 'topic', just as 'crime' or 'sport' are for me. The avalanches are linked to skiing. Skiing is a sport. I'm supposed to 'do' sport... although here I could have used a post-grad degree in several areas from geography, geology, climatology, environmental protection, etc.
I certainly don't agree with translators translating any old stuff, and do believe you should concentrate on areas where you have a certain degree of knowledge (and/or have the time to do the research *well* and *thoroughly* before attacking anything new). The problem, I find, is that I *like* new fields because they stimulate me, yet unless I take the time and effort to do my homework the result isn't going to be good. And the time and effort aren't always possible so I have to turn things down when I'd love to delve into them.
It helps, of course, if a client has enough knowledge of the languages and subject to know whether you did a good job and can step in to correct terminology if necessary. Obviously that isn't always the case, and what's more you don't always *know* if that's the case so you need to be as sure as possible you've got it right.
And then people think translators are expensive *sigh*. They think that the word count = what they pay for. Even when you think you know a subject, there are very few jobs where you don't have to find out something else, check facts, terminology, etc. etc. Which takes TIME.
Sorry, ranting again *g*. I'm about to embark on some technical stuff about football (soccer to you). So, I'm about to mosey on down to the FIFA site as I don't know *enough* about different types of pitch, even after working in sports administration before translating full time.
I suppose my point (she has one? Wow!) is that to be a translator you need a massive thirst for knowledge, plus the ability to juggle deadlines with the research, plus the actual ability to actually translate, i.e. getting the style, grammar, etc. right.
Amazing people, aren't we? Heheheheh.
Hmmm. You got me thinking, as usual. So did a thread posted to the 'interlingual' community about 'trashlators', of which there are way too many, IMHO.
Take care :
(no subject)
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