Visiting Durango...
Dec. 29th, 2002 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpWe ended up driving to Durango today, which was a good thing in the final analysis because I think we were starting to get a mild case of cabin fever, the kind you get when all you ever see is the house, the store, and the road between the two.
Once in Durango, we got the snow tires swapped onto the car for about $12 a wheel while we went shopping in the rest of the Wal-Mart. I made a point of stopping by the electronics section, but those under-$200 computers were not on display (although the $700 HP units were). I suspect the cheap units are probably available via mail order only.
We stopped in a few other places in town and then moseyed back home on highway 160, getting back relatively early in the afternoon. I took a nap and Galina started reading The One-Minute Millionaire.
* * * The next document on the translation block is more of the same stuff I've been doing the past few days. There's a 14-page section that gives me pause, but I'm sure I'll figure out a way to handle it (I plan to sleep on it :^).
One of the issues I've identified with regard to my translations is the inadequacy of my current system of recordkeeping on the document side. (Actually, no... that's not quite it... let me try again...)
Once I finish a translation and invoice it, I find that the information I've worked hard to develop (via 'net research), not to mention the content of the text, is hard to retrieve, i.e, it is effectively "lost." The materials are all there, of course, but several times this past year I've run into the situation where I've seen a particular term or theme before and then waste time - sometimes fruitlessly - looking for the prior document containing the term or theme.
This should not be a terribly hard thing to fix, but between it and the usual streamlining of my "checklist" (have you ever noticed how there are some items on forms that seem never to be used? I've got a couple of those... for now. :^), this is no big deal.
The paramount goal, however, must be to minimize unnecessary activities. No need to get Prussian about it, or anything.
Enough freewheeling... I'm going to go enjoy the rest of my day off.
Cheers...
I've experimented with ways of capturing that information in a searchable file
Once in Durango, we got the snow tires swapped onto the car for about $12 a wheel while we went shopping in the rest of the Wal-Mart. I made a point of stopping by the electronics section, but those under-$200 computers were not on display (although the $700 HP units were). I suspect the cheap units are probably available via mail order only.
We stopped in a few other places in town and then moseyed back home on highway 160, getting back relatively early in the afternoon. I took a nap and Galina started reading The One-Minute Millionaire.
One of the issues I've identified with regard to my translations is the inadequacy of my current system of recordkeeping on the document side. (Actually, no... that's not quite it... let me try again...)
Once I finish a translation and invoice it, I find that the information I've worked hard to develop (via 'net research), not to mention the content of the text, is hard to retrieve, i.e, it is effectively "lost." The materials are all there, of course, but several times this past year I've run into the situation where I've seen a particular term or theme before and then waste time - sometimes fruitlessly - looking for the prior document containing the term or theme.
This should not be a terribly hard thing to fix, but between it and the usual streamlining of my "checklist" (have you ever noticed how there are some items on forms that seem never to be used? I've got a couple of those... for now. :^), this is no big deal.
The paramount goal, however, must be to minimize unnecessary activities. No need to get Prussian about it, or anything.
Enough freewheeling... I'm going to go enjoy the rest of my day off.
Cheers...
I've experimented with ways of capturing that information in a searchable file
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-29 11:15 pm (UTC)Another idea I had was to create a separate file / directory on various subjects and list the URLs I've used, although as I'm an idiot with Excel (yet another project: stop being scared of Excel).
All this is fine and good, but I confess that most of the time, when I'm looking for something, I end up relying on my own memory, i.e. what terms I'd entered into Google or where I put the appropriate bookmarks, or even which client uses what terminology or whether they want UK or US English. What's infuriating here is that I work for several telecom companies, all of which have their own glossary and use different variations on US / UK spelling and usage. Even worse are the international organisations, which all have *very* bad and incomplete glossaries, often completely ignored by their own in-house teams: this means that background docs or support material just confuse you all the more. Current problem: a police 'officer' is, in most countries, any member of the police force, not somebody with rank. So a police officers' training school *should* be a school to train all levels. Except... it isn't. It's the official translation for the police academy intended for senior police ranks in some countries. And when you create reports based on 30 speakers whose usage is not aligned, what the heck to do you do? Yes, there are URLs with comparative police ranks, but short of putting a link to that at the beginning of the report and using the foreign titles in the text plus (US *and* UK) equivalents, it's tricky. Then what happens when the translators have to put my work into Arabic, Spanish and French?
But I digress. I'm cranky, too *g*.
Yes, yes, one of those mornings where I wonder why I'm a translator / editor. Hmpf.