Musings from an overworked translator

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1. Kyung Kim - August 1, 2012

Jill, why is it ‘Wordless Wednesday’? Is it because you do translation work all day long alone at home on Wed?

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Jill (@bonnjill) - August 1, 2012

It’s something several non-translator bloggers do that I have adopted for my blog. If you google “wordless Wednesday” you’ll see lots of blogs do something like this. I call it “(Almost) Wordless Wednesday” because the comics do in fact have words with them.

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2. Susanne Aldridge III - August 1, 2012

I immediately had to think of this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
Every time I see this I have to laugh so hard!!!

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3. Gintautas Kaminskas - August 1, 2012

I am actually a native English speaker (came to “Anglophonia” as an infant) but since retiring early at age 55 and working at home a alone all the time as a translator and therefore using mostly my non-English languages most of the time (even thinking in them) I find that my ‘tolerance’ for exotic syntax and expressions has increased to the point that I sometimes have to check with my son and his wife that a certain phrase I have written is really, normal, acceptable, idiomatic English. (We have a private joke: I have taught them ‘foreign’ syntax on one point. Whereas most languages say: “What means …[word or phrase in question]…”, English uses the cumbersome construction: “What does …[word or phrase in question]… mean?” For a joke, I always say to them: “What means …[word or phrase in question]…” ☺)

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Allison Wright - August 8, 2012

I am in the “What means…” brigade too, although I do try hard to ensure that what actually leaves my mouth as speech is a reasonable facsimile of English (my mother tongue). I blame the fact that most of my translation work is from German. I am also very careful not to use Portuguese/English false cognates when speaking either language in Portugal, where I live. I have the delightful habit, it seems of peppering my not very good spoken German with Portuguese words when on the telephone with one agency. I may stop all this stuttering one day! 🙂

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4. Cassy - August 2, 2012

Yes, working from home really deteriorates social life as I will be working without an officemate, no timeclock and etc. Wordless indeed!

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