When the English tongue we speak
Why is break not rhymed with weak?
Won’t you tell me why it’s true
We say sew, but also few?
And the maker of a verse
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse? Beard is not the same as heard, Cord is different from word, Cow is cow, low is low, Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose and dose and lose,
And think of goose and yet of choose,
Think of comb and tomb and bomb, Doll and roll and home and some.
And since pay is rhymed with say,
Why not paid with said, I pray?
Think of blood and food and good; Mould is not pronounced like could.
Why is done, but gone and lone -
Is there any reason known?
To sum it up, it seems to me
That sounds and letters don’t agree.
Lord, help me to relax about insignificant details beginning tomorrow at
7:41:23 am PST.
God help me to consider my customers feelings, even if most of them ARE
hypersensitive.
God help me to take responsibility for my own actions, even though
they’re usually NOT my fault.
God, help me to not try to run everything.
But, if You need some help, please feel free to ask me!
Lord, help me to be more laid back,
and help me to do it EXACTLY right.
God, help me to take things more seriously,
especially laughter, parties, and dancing.
God, give me patience,
and I mean right NOW!
Lord, help me not be a perfectionist.
(Did I spell that correctly?)
God, help me to finish everything I sta
God, help me to do only what I can,
and trust you for the rest.
(And would you mind putting that in writing?)
Lord, keep me open to others’ ideas,
WRONG though they may be.
Lord, help me be less independent.
but let me do it my way.
Lord, help me follow established procedures today.
On second thought, I’ll settle for a few minutes.
Lord, help me slow down
andnotrushthroughwhatIdo.
Amen.
Some of my readers would like to know how they can create a blog.
First of all, opening a blog and updating it requires a lot of dedication. You need to have something to blog about, and sometimes you need to find something that inspires you in order to write a post (I mean, when running out of ideas or just looking for inspiration). So, the first piece of advice I can give you is: if you’d like to open a blog, you have to think about the use you wish to make of it.
Which is your goal? This might be the reason why you want to get a blog. For example, you’re a translator and you’d like to write a translation blog, so your posts might be about your life as a translator, words you found difficult to translate, books you read, resources you use, and so on.
I made my first video tutorial today! It’s in English, and its purpose is to guide you step by step through the creation on a blog hosted at Wordpress.com. You can get a blog there for free, and I highly recommend Wordpress even to first-time bloggers. You can watch my tutorial below.
Questo thread della community di ProZ mi ha ispirata a scrivere questo post… diciamo che è una sorta di risposta… si parla del motivo principale per cui si lavora come traduttori (tra l’amore, la passione e i soldi).
Sinceramente, non ci vedo niente di male a leggere frasi come “amo tradurre”, “la traduzione è la mia passione”, ecc… sono la prima ad ammettere che, se non ho passione nel fare una cosa, non la faccio (una lezione che ho imparato nel corso degli anni). Quelle frasi possono anche essere scritte sinceramente. Mi sono anche sentita chiamata in causa da quel topic perché, sul profilo che ho sul mio sito, la prima cosa che ho scritto è proprio una frase simile: “Amo tradurre, e amo aver tradotto”. A parte il fatto che se non amassi tradurre non avrei aperto un sito e non avrei un blog di traduzione (e avrei scelto sicuramente un altro lavoro), in giro per blog ho scoperto che qualcuno ha detto “Odio tradurre, ma amo aver tradotto”, e ho semplicemente adattato la frase facendo in modo che mi rispecchiasse. Questo topic mi ricorda un post del blog La quarta bozza, scritto da Ilaria Katerinov, traduttrice dall’inglese. Anche lei è dello stesso partito, e al suo tempo quel post ha avuto diverse critiche nei commenti.
Sono anche una traduttrice alle prime armi, ma non per questo mi devo “svalutare”. Qualche giorno fa mi è stata proposta la traduzione di un testo tecnico-scientifico di 20 pagine, ho proposto una tariffa ragionevole (15 euro a cartella), ma non si sono fatti più sentire. Credo che si debba un po’ cambiare mentalità nei confronti della traduzione… è vero che c’è lo studente che s’improvvisa traduttore e chiede 4 euro a cartella per togliersi qualche sfizio (comportamento sbagliato e che, al contrario delle frasi che inneggiano alla passione per la traduzione, quello sì che non è professionale!), ma c’è anche gente che intende lavorare seriamente, perché quello del traduttore è un lavoro a tutti gli effetti. Non bisogna, però, fare di tutta l’erba un fascio e pensare i traduttori alle prime armi come rivali nella professione, disposti anche a farsi pagare pochissimo pur di “rubare” il lavoro agli altri. Ripeto: ci sono traduttori e “traduttori”.
Now that I have more free time, I’m finally back with a post in English! *hopes her English-speaking readers didn’t miss her*
I should update this site more often, because “Learning by Translating” is a site I created to share my experiences as a student translator (or Translation student, fate voi, like we say in Italian). Unfortunately, I’ve been very busy with my classes and couldn’t update more than I actually did. Classes till 7 p.m. almost every day + homework = very little time for other activities (besides writing, I’ve been neglecting another hobby of mine, scrapbooking).
As some of you may already know from reading my posts on Twitter, I switched to Mac. My MacBook Pro has a 13 inch monitor, OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) installed, a 160 GB hard disk drive, 2 GB of RAM (which are enough for running OS X, but not for using XP as a virtual machine with Parallels. I created a partition for XP using Boot Camp, and if I boot XP at startup, it works perfectly). I needed to install XP on a partition because, as you might already know, Trados doesn’t work on OS X. I’m going to learn how to use it in the second semester, so I have to install it somewhere. I use Subtitle Workshop for subtitles (I’ve been subtitling short films in French class), and there isn’t a Mac version of the software. By the way, I’m happy with my new computer! It hardly crashes, and there’s no need to format your hard drive because of viruses. I’m getting used to the different keyboard shortcuts, and to the fact that there’s no “Del” button on Mac keyboards. I didn’t need to insert a CD when I plugged my printer, OS X recognized and installed it by itself! I still have a lot to learn though. I’ve been told: “You’ll never get back to Windows after you get a Mac”. I hope so.
P.S.: You can even choose which language to use. For example, I’m using it in English. It was in Italian when I bought it, and it took me a while to realize that “Scrivania” is “Desktop” and “Archivio” is “File”. Why were they localized that way, when “File” and “Desktop” are commonly used in Italian? I don’t get it.
Ilaria. 23. Italian. Translator and blogger. Languages: Italian, English, French and a little bit of German.
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