Musings from an overworked translator

Dealing with crazy days March 30, 2009

Man, I am happy to see this day end! I am surprised I got as much accomplished as I did. Susanne III calls these days “ADD days” – days when you can’t concentrate on anything for any length of time. In my case, it was due to constant interruptions.

My day started with a client calling me to tell me that the translation I had planned on working on today had been shortened by two pages. She wanted to know if I had started it, and I was happy to tell her that I hadn’t. It had been a crazy weekend, and the jobs I had worked on had taken up more time than I had planned.

I went to my computer to download the new file – and got error message after error message. My e-mail was down – dead as a doornail – es ging absolut gar nix! Not only could Mailwasher and my e-mail program not download my e-mail – I couldn’t even load my ISP’s website to check my mail online or even my own website. I kept getting Page Load Errors and network timeouts. Something was definitely not right. It took several hours to deal with the problem. Luckily I asked my colleague and our resident computer guru on the ATA German Language Division listserv if he had heard of any problems with my ISP in Germany. He reported he was having problems with his GMX account. He did some research and got back to me. It turns out United Internet owns both 1&1 and GMX – not to mention web.de. In the end, it turns out it was a server problem at a backbone provider called XO.net in the UK. Roadrunner (Roland and my ISP here in the U.S.) could not access any sites owned by United Internet. I called their third level support, who called someone who managed to fix the problem by 6 PM. So to those of you who have Roadrunner as an ISP and had problems today: you’re welcome. In the meantime, I hacked into an unsecure wireless network near my home and was able to access my e-mail and get to work translating, delivering a medical report, counting the lines of the PPT file I delivered Sunday night, and writing invoices.

But that wasn’t even the strangest part of the day. Oh no! Around two o’clock my phone rang. It was my neighbor across the street telling me that all the police cars outside were due to a strange briefcase left at the Planned Parenthood down the street. They blocked the road at both ends and put up lots of orange barrels to restrict traffic. But people kept trying to drive through anyways. Man, people these days are selfish and entitled! I amused myself watching the police yell at people trying to drive through the parking lot across the street only to find themselves blocked in by barrels in the middle of the stretch. The bomb squad was called in, and two hours later the drama was over. It was a false alarm, which didn’t surprise me one bit.

Luckily I only had 800 words to translate instead of the previously assigned 1600. I don’t think if I would have gotten any more than that accomplished, because I had to be somewhere by 7 tonight. What a strange and exciting day it was. I really, really hope tomorrow is blissfully uneventful.

As for you, dear readers – what is the craziest day you’ve ever had to deal with and how did you handle it?

Savoring the slow days March 24, 2009

After work 12- to 14-hour days all last week and translating a total of around 34,000 words I woke up this morning with a dull headache, but was committed to enjoying the day. It’s chilly but sunny, and the birds are singing and building their nests. The perfect spring day. I had a nice lie-in with my dog, Lily, tucked in firmly by my side (I don’t know if she was afraid of the windows rattling from the spring gusts or was cold, but she usually sleeps at my feet – or rather ON my feet). She almost pushed me out of bed this morning, and that’s unusual. After letting her out to run around the backyard, I fired up the computer and checked my e-mail. I translated the two remaining responses in the survey (final word count: 35,789 – 5,000 of which were translated by a colleague so I could enjoy the weekend) and put on a pot of coffee. I have a 4-cup Gevalia coffeemaker that makes the most delicious coffee… I have a medical report due later today, and one of my colleagues is checking several spots for me. I’ll be heading out to deliver Meals on Wheels in about half an hour, which brings me great joy. I then have an appointment scheduled at 2 with a colleague through LogMeIn to finally remove all vestiges of Office Live, which causes Word to crash every few minutes and drive me batty. Once my computer is fixed and the translation is delivered the day yawns ahead of me, and I plan to embrace it. I’ll definitely go on a walk with Lily in the local park – or maybe even head down to her favorite dog park. I’ll read several chapters of The Private Patient by P.D. James and maybe catch up on some TV shows. The evening will be probably spent watching several movies (Hancock and The Dark Knight) that I borrowed from the public library and have to return soon. Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a refill on my coffee…