Thursday, February 24, 2005

# Translation work

Recently took up a volunteer help in translation with huifang's IOFC. agreed to help her out in translating essays of her friend's from chinese to english.

At first I thought that the translation work is easy, and I realized I have over-estminated my own abilities. haha. As I went along in the work, learnt quite some new things:

1) to understand and maintain the author's style
2) to communicate with author to get his expression accurately
3) to check and re-edit again and again and ask professional opinions

The first day progress was slow. took whole night just to translate one paragraph. Then the second day I got much better as I can roughly understand the author's style already.

However, I realized, surprises happen in all places. While I thought my speed and accuracy have increased, after a few days, I encountered mental block. Tried to translate the whole day but the outcome is just terrible. Now I realized there were times when we cannot use our brain at all. :-P

Quite enjoy this work and it really helps a lot in my language ability. will continue to learn from it and work hard. ganbate!

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