Categories: translation, trials
Date: 24 August 2007 15:03:07
Much of my week has been taken up in bribery and corruption. Not actually committing it, you understand, but translating and proofreading a case which involves such dastardly deeds. One might think that it would be quite interesting to gradually uncover the cloak-and-dagger dealings and be involved in a sort of John Le Carré type of story with its double-crossings and double agents.
The reality is, I'm afraid, much more mundane. The end-client, of course, needs the documents yesterday, so the team working on this job, is churning out zillions of words a day in order to return the work the day before yesterday.
The documentation is pages and pages and pages of lists of numbered file documents, their contents and notes of when a post-it note was attached. The pages have to be reproduced EXACTLY as per the original which can cause an editorial headache concerning where to split a sentence. As German word order does not reflect English word order, I might need a few words from the next page to compose a half-decent sentence. If the German sentence goes on for a few hundred yards (as they sometimes do), I have to decide how many clauses I can squash on to the current page or, alternatively, how many to carry over the page break without incurring the wrath of the end-client.
Another challenge was faced yesterday in trying to read a scanned version of a hand-written document produced on squared paper. Not only was the handwriting nigh on illegible, the layout was minimal in its formality. How is a girl supposed to reproduce that accurately? The agency's project manager summed it all up excellently earlier in the week when she said, “These legal translations, where you have to reproduce every last coffee stain, are a real pain in the bum.” Understatement? Oh no. I don't think so.
Still, every cloud, etc. The project manager has left the office early for the long weekend and so I've got the rest of the afternoon free. The sun is shining and after the tedium of checking long lists of payments, the prospect of cleaning my windows suddenly seems incredibly attractive.
PS. Just thought you might like to know this. I double-checked the spelling of dastardly (occupational hazard, you realise) and discovered the following. “Dastardly adj. Mean and cowardly [C15 dastard (in the sense: dullard): prob. From ON dœstr = exhausted, out of breath]. The Old Norse is quite apt - given the deadlines I've been working against this week.