Pirates!

Pirates are infinitely more interesting than common sailors. Society supports this as fact. We have "Talk Like a Pirate Day" (last Wednesday, for those playing at home), not "Talk Like a Sailor Day."

Random?

Not really. You see, I'm doing research on 18th century nautical terms, in both French and English. There are a few glossaries and dictionaries out there, as well as meticulously labeled diagrams, but it's easier to learn and understand the terms in a context.

Looking for such historical context, one can turn to a few different places. Textbooks (can be dull), ship's logs from the era and other primary sources (excellent, but the old-style spelling can be hard to wade through), or historical fiction and non-fiction stories. Interest-peaking AND historically accurate!

After all, pirates sailed on the same ships as everyone else.

Real Life Gets in the Way

It does. It's not "if," it's "when." Life interferes with EVERYTHING from time to time.

For example, I was planning on writing so many things on this blog for the past month. And then we had to move, kind of suddenly, to a temporary apartment on the third floor of a friend's parents' house in the suburbs, and the two-day move stretched into five days, and Mr. S got an interview in Rhode Island, and Labor Day weekend family visits happened, and now here we are, just over two weeks from the ALTA Conference in Rochester, and I've just finished my to-do list to prepare for the conference, and we're trying to figure out which boxes we should be unpacking so we can actually live a normal life and which we should just leave in storage. And yet, through all of that, I've been working. I've taken my paying jobs, and I've done some volunteer work for my favorite NGO in Switzerland, and I've even started a new pet project (it's a French comic book about an awesome cross-dressing heroine who can win knife and gun fights on a merchant ship in the late 18th century, thank you for asking). The conference is coming up so quickly, and I'm so excited about it -- I've even got a meeting lined up with the adviser for the University of Rochester's MA in Literary Translation program, which may be my next destination.

Life gets in the way, and pushes you forward at the same time. But only if you work at it.

Things I've Learned: Ask the questions that need asking

This starts with the contract. So many questions that you'll have along the way can be answered while discussing the contract. Feel free to start with the offered contract, or with the PEN model contract, and work from there. Figure out WHY things are done the way they are. For example, if your contract is a work for hire contract, that actually means that you'll most likely have little to no say in the editing process, for better or for worse. But ask up front. "How involved will I be expected and allowed to be in the editing process?" Will I ever see my translation between the final draft and the published book?

Another thing: payment. Maybe you're going to get paid upon final delivery. Great. But is that payable on receipt? Is it Net 30? You'll feel better if you know when your money is coming in, and if you know it sooner rather than later.

Next, before you even start translating, talk to the editor. After you've read the book send her/him a list of stylistic questions. "How do you want me to handle the historical present tense?" "How much slang are you comfortable with this character using in English? There are equivalents to XYZ in the original."

Just ask. Ask your editor, the admin assistant, anyone who's involved. Don't be afraid of asking stupid questions, because chances are, they'll all be important at some point.

P.S. This was a tough love letter to myself. Dear Allison, I'm writing to you. Fix your mistakes. Learn from them. Do better next time. I know you can.

Into the Woods

I'm a winner!! Last night, I won tickets to Shakespeare (actually, Sondheim) in the Park's production of "Into the Woods", a musical that I have loved since high school. It's a mash-up of fairytales, and what happens after they live happily ever after. I was the one, in grade school, that was already writing a script for what I called "Pocahontas 2: The Search for Flit," and a version of Little Red Riding Hood where the Narrator gets involved. Sondheim's musical is one that I was destined to love.

This particular production, originally staged at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London, struck two amazing balances, very important for a restaging of a beloved show. First, the directors found a way to both remain faithful to the original production and find intriguing new innovations. To my ear, one which memorized the original score, nothing in the show was changed, yet they made the Narrator a little boy playing with his toys in the forest instead of an old man watching over his characters. This made for a very interesting twist in the second act when the characters start fighting with the narrator...which I won't spoil.

Another balance, one that the Public Theater seems to hit in many of their summer shows, is in the casting. Theatre nerds were titillated about Donna Murphy as the Witch, and giddy about Chip Zien as the Mysterious Man. Mr. Zien played the Baker in the original production, and his distinctive voice has been etched onto the collective theatre hivemind as that role. But the Baker and the Mysterious Man sing a duet near the end of the show, and to hear Mr. Zien in the other role, that was pure magic.

But fear not, those with other interests! Surely, you've seen a movie recently. Thus, presented for our pleasure, was Amy Adams, of Enchanted and The Fighter and Julie and Julia fame, as the Baker's Wife.

Oh, Public Theater, how well you have achieved what translators aspire to every day! A brilliant balance between fidelity and finding your own voice, a way to simultaneously appeal to the experts and the masses. Thanks for the showing us how possible it is.

Research Tools

Regarding the researching I mentioned yesterday, here are some of the tools that I've found most useful so far, as a translator, a linguist, and a writer:

WordReference: Congratulations. You now have a basic bilingual dictionary, completely searchable, including both the Oxford bilingual dictionary (usually -- depends on the language combination) and entries on phrases, idioms, and a myriad of other expressions from users all around the world. Yes, the user-defined fields must be taken with a grain of salt, and the forums are sometimes more hindrance than anything else, but it's a good place to start. Of course, it doesn't include an exhaustive list of languages, but they've got most of the major ones.

Linguee: This service is just starting out, and so far, it's just between English and German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. But what it IS, is a pretty good dictionary combined with a search engine that pulls already-bilingual documents from all around the Internet with your phrase in it, to see how it's been translated elsewhere. Right now, it's a lot of EU and UN documents, as well as some multinational companies, so it's not going to help for non-commerce requests. It's still hit or miss, but it promises so much more as it grows!

Oxford English Dictionary and Historical Thesaurus: Their online databases are a paid service, but I would bet you anything that your library offers a way to login for free (NYPL members, go here). And oh, the rich detail in the entries! The dictionary is the best in the English language. The thesaurus gives you every word that could possibly ever be linked with your chosen word, in a convenient tree form. (According to them, every word in the English language can be filed under three categories: the external world, the mind, and society.)

A monolingual source dictionary: Even as a translator, this is an invaluable resource. When you come across a word you don't know, or aren't quite sure how it works in that particular context, look it up in your source language first. See if you can figure out what it means for yourself, then try to find a good translation on your own, before relying on someone else's ideas.

Listservs/LinkedIn groups/other: These are your personal connections with colleagues when you work from home. Right now, I'm on...five lists? I think? Two French lists, one literature list, one business list, one local translators list. Yes. Five. Invaluable for keeping sanity intact and asking questions that you should know the answer to, but don't, for whatever reason. Also, general commiseration and congratulations, when the time warrants it.

There are more, of course, but more entries of resources will inevitably follow. For now, I'm off to use my own list!

Things I've Learned: Research Early, Research Often

Seriously. Just do it.

Oh, more information? Right.

I thought I was being very smart, researching all the vocabulary I needed as I went along, as well as most of the historical references. (Did you know, for example, that Nadar was a pioneer in both photography and hot air ballooning, making him the first aerial photographer?)

But as it turns out, I had always left a few terms in each chapter to look up later. To check with other sources, other people. And then there was the pesky little problem of primary source translations. Some of a famous French author's work would undoubtedly be translated into English, no? So those translations should probably be the ones cited in my work, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and do them all myself.

All this work kept piling up, and suddenly, I was three weeks from deadline with only enough time budgeted to finish a few last translations and re-edit everything. This, folks, is what you call a time crunch. And I got it done, because that's what you do.

But there is much more to translation than just translating. There is searching, and researching, and re-searching, and re-researching. There is asking around, and begging, and digging, and hunting. There is editing, and proofing, and rereading, and storming around the house because you can't find that one perfect word. Then, when you find what you were looking for, you realize it doesn't actually work.

Oh, and translating also includes the mountain of daily emails, and marketing yourself, and doing samples, and looking for new clients, and keeping existing clients happy. Literary translators usually have other work to keep themselves afloat.

It's a delicate balancing act, keeping all of that up in the air. But it's doable. And kinda fun.

"And I know things now, many valuable things, that I hadn't known before..." - Little Red, Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods"

Rise and shine!

Wake up, blog, it's a new day! Birds are singing, bacon is sizzling in the pan, and...wow, we've been a long time dormant and asleep. My apologies.

Long story short, translating a book happened. And then a well-deserved vacation. Although it wasn't planned in that order, it just happened to work out that way.

Another long story short, the translation was probably the single hardest thing I've ever had to do, besides possibly move to France and teach children English for a year without knowing anything. I learned a lot. Quite a bit. Huge amounts. Volumes and mountains. And of course, I will be recounting these on this blog in the coming days and weeks (partially for the wider internet world, partially to make sure I don't make the same mistakes twice).

For now, a quick tidbit: connections matter. Sometimes, they're fun to make. So when I have seven hours in Paris between arriving by train and departing by plane, and the author of the book I just finished translating just so happens to live in the Paris area, and plans are made in advance, I get to meet said author for lunch. At Angelina. Where their chestnut-flavored, creme-de-marron-filled Mont Blanc reminds me of Ardèche, my former (once and future?) home, where chestnuts are the local specialty...

She's lovely, by the way. The author. Fascinating woman.

Exit Waking World, Enter Subconscious

I had a very vivid dream this morning just before my alarm clock went off.  It was an Indiana-Jones-meets-video-games puzzle, a carnival booth in a dank cave in which I had to open a chest in order to receive my prize, or move onto the next level, or not die (dreams are sometimes weirdly non-specific about motivations).  There were pressure plates, and supplies for small explosives, and pulleys and levers, and buckles and snaps, and lots of sand.  And an egg, but I don't think that's relevant. I had to use contextual clues to figure out how to open the chest, plus a healthy dose of trial-and-error.  What happens if I connect this buckle to this pulley, then to this pressure plate?  Nothing explodes?  Okay.  What if I connect all six pressure plates to the same weight?  The chest moves closer?  Great.

Of course I woke up before the dream ended, but I'm still intrigued.  Puzzles!  Logic!  Mental tests!  Tips from the context!  Trial and error!

Oh.  I must be translating literature again.

:-)

A croissant a day keeps procrastination away

And thus, the third week of working from home draws to a close.  It's a tricky transfer, from a 9-5 office job to working from home for yourself.  Habits to form and reform, trying to figure out what schedule (or lack thereof) will keep you on track the longest, trying to avoid the homemade Oreo vanilla ice cream in the freezer...

One of my biggest problems is a lack of variety.  Sometimes I can sit at my computer, windows open, music on in the background, working for anywhere between 20 minutes and four hours before I just...can't anymore.  Getting up and stretching doesn't work.  Sitting at the piano for ten minutes doesn't work.  A light snack doesn't work.  Calling my mother to chat doesn't work (and is usually more distracting).  A quick reading break devolves into hours on the couch.  So what is a poor freelancer to do?

To each his own, of course, but my strategy to refocus involves going to a local French cafe with Wifi.  It's something about being surrounded by just enough activity that my brain isn't allowed to wander.  I buckle down and work, consistently, for as long as I need to.

But -- monkey wrench! -- such a plan involves spending money.  A croissant, a cafe au lait, a limonade, a quiche...even one a day starts adding up.  Now, I am all for supporting local businesses with my wallet, but when my wallet is pretty trim to begin with, there's not a lot of support I can give.  Rationing must occur.

Then, oh the dilemma!  What if I was just at the cafe yesterday, but it's now 2pm and I've been staring at my computer without getting any work done for three hours because I can't focus?  Does the croissant money justify the productivity?

Well, yes.  As a matter of fact, it does.  Even if I'm not specifically working on a paying job whilst at the cafe, any work I do will lay the groundwork for a paying job.  It's replying to an email and keeping in touch with a PM.  It's updating my website.  It's working on a short story translation for a possible magazine publication.  It's updating my online Rolodex.  All useful things.

Definitely worth the croissant.

Universal business advice, expanded upon from a brief phone conversation with a fellow translating stranger

- Be wary of entering into agreements if you are already busy; or, alternatively, desperate.  Too busy, and you may renege on your end of the bargain.  Too desperate for work, and you can be taken advantage of. - Find a personal contact within a large company that you're working for.  Make sure they can rely on you for honest communication and prompt fulfillment of your promises.  Then, you can rely on them for flexibility, good projects, and dealings with Accounting (read: getting paid).

- Figure out how best you negotiate rates as a contractor.  If the other party is being difficult, you have two options to protect yourself: either be firm for the initial talks and give discounts as you see fit, or compromise at first and be firm on that compromise.

Huh.  I know more than I think I know.  Talk and practice are different animals, though.  It's tough work working for yourself!