The eternal wait for an answer

With the translation mostly finished yesterday, I received a late afternoon email from the same client asking if I could do a short text for today. It was only 500 words or so, so I said it wouldn’t be a problem. Oh my God, will I ever learn?

 
The problem with translating short texts is that it invariably requires the same amount of research and thought as a long one. In this case, I probably spent longer in lexicographical research than I did on the 40,000-word translation I had just completed. Every sentence involved research for a job title, departmental title, field of research, etc. – sometimes there were 2-3 positions in a sentence, so that Mr XX, was changing from being a YYY in department ZZZ to being an AAA in department CCC, but it would still be under the aegis of supervisor position EEE in department FFF, except for Saturdays, when it would be under department GGG or DDD in the case of a leap year.
 
Normally, that is fine – but the issue is, the organization has no org chart available to the public – or indeed to translators, and some of the positions were new, in any case – so I would spend 20 minutes looking up a similar position in an equivalent organization, then try to get hold of my contact for confirmation. My contact, of course, doesn’t work Fridays. This I only found out 30 minutes before submission deadline. So what a mess it was. All the while, I was supposed to be meeting a friend for lunch and was fielding calls from her as to where she would be. She has just had an operation and had various follow-up places to be… in the end, I cancelled lunch and said I’d try to meet for a coffee later on.
 
Eventually my proofer, who had also gone on a Crocodile Dundee-style walkabout, got back to me and we cobbled together the translation just in time. I have no idea if it is good enough… but I ended up doing about 7 hours’ work for 500 words of translation. I normally work on 2,500-3,000 words per day, so I was a little chastened and, not to put too fine a point on it, pissed off with the whole day.
 
Fortunately, I managed to meet J and we went to a small Italian café called the "Bello E Buono Caffè Italiano" near Hintonburg for a coffee. It was good to catch up, even if her tale of woe was exceptionally woeful. Hopefully, better days are ahead. It also had the positive effect of putting my day into perspective.
 
Went home where I negotiated the worst drivers the City of Ottawa could throw at me and then settled in for dinner with the Ottawackers. We had a Chicken Run movie-night.