PEARLJAM/BLACK/NERO

PEARLJAM/BLACK/NERO

Traduzione: Eva Canza

Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
Were laid spread out before me as her body once did.
All five horizons revolved around her soul
As the earth to the sun
Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn

Pile di tele vuote e argilla mai toccata

Aperte e distese dove una volta era lei.   

I cinque orizzonti satelliti dell’anima sua

Come la terra del sole

Poi il sapore dell’aria che conoscevo cambiò

 
Ooh, and all I taught her was everything
Ooh, I know she gave me all that she wore
And now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds
Of what was everything.
Oh, the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything...

E io le insegnai ogni cosa soltanto
E tutto quel che aveva, me lo diede

E ora tormento le mie mani amare sotto le nuvole

Di quel che resta ed era tutto.

Tutte le foto coperte da una colata d’inchiostro, annegate nel nero…

I take a walk outside
I'm surrounded by some kids at play
I can feel their laughter, so why do I sear?
Oh, and twisted thoughts that spin round my head
I'm spinning, oh, I'm spinning
How quick the sun can drop away

Fare una passeggiata,

Intorno i bambini che giocano

Li sento ridere, perché allora mi scosto

E mi prende alla testa un vortice di pensieri distorti

E tutto gira

Come in un attimo un sole scompare

And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass
Of what was everything
All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything...

E ora cullare con mani amare le schegge di vetro

Di quel che resta ed era tutto

Tutte le foto coperte da una colata d’inchiostro, annegate nel nero…

All the love gone bad turned my world to black
Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I'll be... yeah...
Uh huh... uh huh... ooh...

Tutto quest amore rovinato ricopre di nero il mio mondo

È rimasto macchiato quello che vedo, che sono, che sarò

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine

Lo so che un giorno la tua vita sarà bellissima,

So che sarai un sole nel cielo di un altro, ma perché

Perché non il mio, perché non può essere il mio.

Riapparire per un amico

zorro chiede un link, ecco il link. buona fortuna!

Transloscope March-April

The horoscope for translators - 15 March - 15 April 2010


Aries
Stop getting angry because you cannot ctrl-z back in those excel cells and no, it is not absolutely sure that you checked already for double spaces in that 4,000-words doc: it just takes a sec, don't send it yet.


Taurus
Before you set on fire your internet provider's central building, go out and subscribe to the local gym and work out to realease the stress: in a prison cell the wi-fi is going to be even more unstable.


Gemini
Don't refuse that dentistry manual job: the fact that you specialize in gardening tools does not mean at all that you'll do bad: no-one will notice unless you loaf on the couch until it's two days from the deadline as usual.


Cancer
I know: it's not the right time, today it's so cloudy, you had a fight with your girlfriend, you don't know the true meaning of life. At least crawl out of the bed, get yourself some coffee and send that €3k invoice, ass.


Leo
In 2010, no-one is going to acknowledge the striking superiority of your work in accuracy, quickness and eloquence: now this may sound unfair to you, but perhaps you should rethink that €0.09 min rate, mate.


Virgo
You could fit those extra 2,500 words for Mon, work on Sun at the legal doc, and Sat night you can finish checking the agency's Nuclear_physics_TM. What you need, though, is to fit a dinner out, music and sex.


Libra
There's quiet no-one like you at fixing problems with CAT, organizing work and not snapping at coleagues, but this month keep in mind that they'd love you or hate you all the same if you were the floor's janitor.


Scorpio
If this month you find your job so boring, don't plunge into alcohol and sexual promiscuity to make it more lively, just try to think rationally to what a new job could be, that is excluding drug-dealing and blackmailing.


Sagittarius
You made clear that you don't need this job, it's this job that needs you. Your PM does not know it yet, though, so no jaw-dropping and eye-rolling at criticisms. And laser away that "Pro Translator" chest tattoo.


Capricorn
Last time you tried to take a break, you ended up organizing a heart-surgery translation 4-days intensive course on the beach in front of the resort: don't you realize you really are a navy-seal doing the wrong job?


Aquarius
Dude, I don't really know what to say, it's just the weird way you make it all work, just don't fiddle with suicidal thoughts for the human condition and dying whales and keep on going, whales will make it somehow.

Pisces
Probably this year you ought to specialize in some field. Probably you ought to become an in-house. Probably you should raise your rates. Probably you'll get some 20k words to do. What?! Oh, no, no, it's all up to you.

News - "Click Revolutionary kidnapped"

This is the last e-mail received by a translator from his hiding location in the Argentinian Ande.

Shortly after sending the message, the SDLX militias arrived and at present the hold him captive. The prisoner is thought to be a member of the Church of the Second Proofreading, the European offspring of the Hijos de la Inconsistency, a radical sect of translators who reject the use of CAT tools. There have not been further communications from the kidnappers and tonight authorities have scheduled an emergency meeting in Buenos Aires at the residence of Percent Iate, the New Guinea Consul's appointed expert and a free-range translator himself. Iate is the only acknowledged representative of Guinea Free-Range Translator Tribes, as they and their representative are defined in the UNCFTA 20 May 2001/Matters concerning the international recognition of the Free-Range Translators community, L. Grassman vs. New Guinean government pronouncement, p. 23-45. 

Here is the moving and frantic letter of a defender of translators, and yet a potential terrorist and member of a severely extremist sect. After enduring several weeks of fighting and hiding, apparently he was reached by the militias while he was writing this very mail. He is heavily altered as he writes, and seems to refer to past events, and more specifically to his conversion, a central topic in he Church of the Second Proofreading. Experts suspect that the victim might have been forced to use CAT and shocked with a 30k words batch. We do not know how did he send the email, from what device, nor it has been made public to whom it was sent.

"[missing text] Microsoft standard, always respected elsewhere, forces translators to use an unbearably long periphrasis: "to right-click" becomes "fare clic con il pulsante destro". 99.9% of italians who use a PC uses shorter expressions among which "fare clic destro". Please allow for this madness to end: readers will surely appreciate it as it is obnoxiously redundant. "To click" is academically "Fare clic", but EVERYONE say "Cliccare". But that is very radical for Italians and I still do not dare to push it forward. The subject is not futile at all as Italians have to do MAD things when there are character limits per cell or row; likewise, a persistent formality involving the use of impersonal syntax, infinitives and bureaucratic, cold approach to readers of manuals are all factors that slow down Italian translators, draining energy and time which should be for proof or research or a snack. Too much time is dedicated to fitting coiling subjects and verbs, making something complex of what once was straight-forward handbook english. If you become aware of such issues and test alternatives, you can have the chance not only to maximize your staff's production, but also to make them enjoy their work better, as we often get so frustrated by the awareness that such time-sucking syntax-juggling-for-the-sake-of-formality is utterly useless, as the reader would rather want a straight-forward, linear, clean Italian that explains things clearly and pragmatically [missing text] Last but absolutely not least, the pitch of an Italian manual turns out to be aloft, vanely robotic in the repetitions of blurb while unclear in the relevant spots. Definetely heavier, especially for IT manuals: IT guys worldwide know the English for their job and just scroll through manuals picking up what they need. I mean, no beginner will ever read an Oracle server manual. If he needs one, instead, he probably knows already how to use it and will just peek at the manual looking for a filepath or a command every now and then. SO there is a particularly generous time- and money-squandering attitude to still hold on to certain obsolete language structures, the virtuosity of which are no longer appreciated and barely perceived by the average reader of a  handbook for specialists and/or professionals, who wouldn't care less whether you address them Sir or buddy, as they just want brief, clear information. Manuals are things that people mostly do not use nor read. English manuals are friendly in comparison, sound like your neighbour is telling you how to install a program or to clean your chainsaw. American handbook English is blessed with carelessness for grammar, syntax; randomly, they's become you's, plurals turn singular and it's no scandal to anyone. Look at how they make us work: for each English 10 words, we have to use 20 to get the concept across. To some extent, it is unavoidable and a liguistic fact. But some of it is so obsolete that hit causes us to have troubles when we work on a text.

Why can't we write "cliccare", io clicco, doppio clicco, clicco col destro! Why on earth even for a young creation like the PC there already is a sclerotized standard which forces me -through its duly and unconcerned hangmen: the PMs, the proofreaders, at best in a hurry and just unaware- to write "fare clic", "fare clic con il pulsante destro". Just look at it, think you read: RIGHT-CLICK.

and translate: FARE CLIC CON IL PULSANTE DESTRO.

Does it feel right to you?

I am limiting my examples to the few which are easily understandable even by a reader with no cognition of Italian language. Not every country experiences the same socio-linguistic issues or does so at varying extents, but I am sure many translators share similar issues and face parallel obstacles with their own language.

V - The Feeding Habits of the modern Free-Range Guinea Translator

Let us have a closer look into the life of Free Range Translators now: as you probably know, translators follow what is called a deadline circadian rhythm. That is due to the fact that the life of Free-Rage Translators is conditioned on deadlines:  depending on the nature of the work and on the deadline, the Free Range may as well sleep for a scarce four hours a night, or wake up very early in the morning, often without knowing anymore exactly which one is which. Due to this fact, Free Range translators have little familiarity with the human convention of solar calendar time measurement: whilst they accept and understand the use of months and years, they are troubled by week-days: as deadlines are seldom synchronized to the work-week, transaltors tend to mistake weekdays, generally go shopping when shops are closed, and will forever have troubles with post offices until these do not provide night-time opening times.

To endure such changing day-night cycle, translators ingest massive amounts of coffee, mostly liquid but in raw beans as well, which the creature crunches while browsing for jobs or checking the email: often Free Range translators are tracked by hunters by the traces they leave, like empty coffee cups for instance.

In 1967, archaeologist Hernanda Prieto-Cid discovered a burying site of an ancient Free Range translator. Inside the small conical structure, there were six mugs containing well-preserved traces of several liquids, among which tea, milk, orange juice and chocolate. It is thought that such items were placed besides the body of the translator in order to help him in translate in the afterlife.  The tomb now belongs of the Translation Ethology Museum of Figueras, Spain.

When hungry, the Free Range begins a ritual activity that has not yet been fully explained by researchers: the specimen ceases to work, stands up, walks to the fridge and stands in front of it, opens it, closes it, looks at the clock. Then it moves to the shelf - where crackers, dehydrated soups and cookies are hoarded. It stares at it blankly, opens it, sighs, looks at the clock, and closes it. Then it goes back to the PC and begins to work again. This pattern will be repeated even four or five times before the Free Range actually decides to feed on something, and when it happens, it shows its wild nature by throwing a pan on high flames while devouring crackers or coffee beans.

The meal will last between up to 4 minutes, regardless of the quantity or the entity of the food.

However furious its meals are, the Free Range never fails to leave some left-over: it is a trick that this species has learned during evolution to survive to the cold season or to procrastinated payments. Free Ranges are accustomed to feed on the left-overs of the day before, and go as far as feeding on other translators' left-overs, although this is generally performed by male Free Ranges onto a female's meal left-over. Besides coffee, translators' diet consists of processed cheese and tuna, but it is an omnivore and is delighted by pizza, which it cannot cook, though.

As a rather intelligent species, the Free Range does possess some degree of culinary expertise: a few recipes are known to researchers (thanks to philologist Ted Roost's uncompared work): all recipes characterized by optimizing time and often mock actual human recipes:

3 am spicy fuzzy morsel

1 can of tuna (oil or brine regardless)

tabasco

2 slices of bread

processed cheese

Put the tuna and the cheese in a hot pan until the cheese melts, mashing everything up.

Add tabasco, then spread the whole thing on the bread.

Add salad or toast the bread for special occasions or if you have guests.

14 pm undead pasta from hell

left-over pasta (at least 500 gr)

grated bread

frankfurts

grated parmesan

olives

take the left-over pasta and shove it in a baking pan previously buttered.

Chop frankfurts, or really, chop whatever can be chopped, throw the olives in.

Now spread a layer of pasta, then grated bread, then pasta, and on top, parmesan cheese.

If the pasta is already a little dry, add tomato sauce or cooking cream.

Put the thing in the oven - which should be already at max temperature- and go back to work.

Cooking time: 20-30 min

Deadline Completion Eggs

Eggs

Powdered mint

Processed cheese

Parma/smoked ham/bacon

milk

butter

Pour a thin layer of milk in a sauce-pan, then a little butter and two eggs, minding not to break the yolk. Cover immediately with the lid and cook for 4-5 minutes at low fire, until the white becomes thick. Then add the meat.

When the whole thing looks almost ready, add the cheese (and, if it really came out well, wrap the meat with the mixture of white and melted cheese). Sprinkle plenty of powdered mint.

It's at least 40,000 calories so Free Ranges love it and prepare it only on special times, such as after they handed in some work.


In next post: The Proz Age

IV - Present-Day Free-Range Translators

Some specimens of Guinea Free Range have adapted to urban habitat and presently live in suburban areas of Western cities, where they have mated with local translators, causing several cross-breeds to appear: such recent phenomenon raised the interest of several scholars, among which John Trados, who began studying them in 2005. Urban Free Ranges are omnivore and possess higher resistance to industrial handbooks and go as far as feeding on legal and medical texts.

Trados went as far as adopting one stray cub, who was named F4, in the attempt to train it to a normal translator's circadian rhythm: after six months, F4 would spontaneously wake up at 7 am and work until lunch. Then John would take him for a short walk around the block and then put it back to work until 7 pm. After three months, though, the cub began to show symptoms of depression, so John thought of feeding F4 a few words-of-the-day from Urbandictionary in order to provide him with the creative vitamins these creatures can't do without. The idea was successful, and apart for sporadic times when John would catch F4 not working but composing puns on a secret word document, his behaviour was perfectly compliant to the work standards which would be required from a  domestic translator.

All seemed to go for the best and the cub recovered quickly after being fed small doses of creative contents, until something unexpected happen: F4 was assigned a large work from a client who would send new batches at 7 pm, as there was a 6+ timezone gap between them. After months of training the Free Range to work in the morning, the cub found itself having to work at night, as it is instinctive for its race.

F4 worked for a months translating dutifully 3000 words a day and revising another 2000 in addition every other day, when one night it suddenly snapped at the PM. The fit of aggressiveness was justified: the evil PM had shown no appreciation of the work done so far, although the quality of it was good enough to make of f4 the coordinator and proofreader for Italian. The PM proved to be unconcerned of the long period of previously unmentioned overnights and overall dedication, and what's more, kept on sending hysterical, bossy and blunt emails at poor F4, who generally read them right before to go to sleep and thus developing insomnia, bruxism and personality disorder.

After composing 5 different hilarious mails to the client, where he ironically complained about the PM, none of which he actually sent, F4 suffered a terrible breakdown: quality of work decreased, and John found out that he had been outsourcing proofreading to a 15-years-old student next door for the last two weeks. F4 never reverted to morning time work and now refuses to  check emails at the end of the day and keeps on raising his euro/word rate in fear of other timezone-affected assignments might have him exploited again.

John did some research on the PM, to find out that she was a lonely Argentinian Anal Shepherd, who had been adopted by a Canadian lady, an agency owner, as a guard-PM: it had been trained to attack whoever tried to contact directly the owner, to deny any raise under any circumstance, and to actually expect that it is justified to send a 2500 words excel file of subtitles at 01.00 am and expect it to be ready by 09.00 am in the morning for 0.03/word. The sapphic and deranged dedication of the Anal Shepherd to their master is a well-known characteristic of its species and makes them very timely and fatigue-enduring translator shepherds. Unfortunately, F4 showed to be not sufficiently domestic to undergo the rough treatment to which flocks of out-sourced translators have been educated to.

John has had F4 mating with an Irish Adaptation Hound, and is currently studying the off-springs. His goal is to create a balanced cross-breed, capable of facing many years of technical translation without loosing creative skills.

In next post: The Feeding Habits of the modern Free-Range Guinea Translator

III - The Free-Range Translator in Folklore

Through time, folklore turned the Free Range Translator into a mythological being: according to the sources accurately presented by Johanna Endresson (Friversättarsaga: The Free Range Translator in Nordic Folklore), the Free Range never sleeps, can edit while sleeping, can be tamed by feeding it fridge-cold meatballs, can smell double spaces, can open Transit pfx files with Logoport interface and load on it an IBM TM. In Brittany, the écrivain rouge, owing its name to the thick reddish fur, is invoked by translators with children who refuse to go to bed.

In the Middle Ages, PMs hunted down Free Range translators as they were accused to spread the Catalyst heresy, whilst of course these harmless creatures had nothing to do with it. Behind these religious accusations there were underlying political reasons: Free Range translators often ran away from their Project Masters, as they were called in those times, and could hardly bear the volumes of work which used to be assigned in those times (just picture revising a 2000 words Benedectine scroll over the week-end).  

Even though according to popular tradition Free Ranges were thought to possess benign magical powers, Project Masters lived in fear of them: it was believed that you can have a PM fired if you express such wish as you pluck a hair from the Free Range's back; alternatively, by storing beneath the keyboard a tooth of this wondrous creature, you can prevent payment delays. Finally, the Free Range is portrayed in a XIV century Triptych of Curriculum's Vitae, while it quietly sits at Saint Thesaurus's feet, whose worship was believed could cure excel settings. Persecutions ceased only in the late XIV century, after Saint Thesaurus founded the Order of the Tabula Puteulana (Protestants created a twin order, the Blue Board, under Henry VIII). Saint Thesaurus was himself a Free Range translator, who performed such miracles as to induce religious authorities to make him saint, scared as they were of a peasant translator revolution should they refuse to acknowledge the man's piety.

Nevertheless, today many PMs have not yet wholly dismissed certain superstitions: according to a survey involving 230 PMs, carried out in 1999, 34% of Western PMs believe the a hired Free Range translator only needs to sleep 4 hours a night, and 54% that, as it barely needs any nourishment but lager and pizza, it can survive any assignment as long as it is paid 0,02 euro/word. Additionally, the stereotype according to which if you write politely to a Free Range it will turn against you and curse your project, causes PMs to write as bluntly as they can. This stereotype is so rooted among PMs that, under Nazi Germany, Reich's scientists tried unsuccessfully to create a cross-breed of Free Range translators and dobermanns in order to obtain a übertranslator characterized by extreme aggressiveness and genetic hatred for PMs. 

Another fairly spread belief is that you do not actually need to reply to a Free Range if his or her application has not been accepted: again, the fear of the Free Range’s cursing powers is such, as to not dare to refuse explicitly a job, but to rather let time pass by. Free Ranges in fact spend a good part of the day grooming each other in front of a screen, refreshing every few minutes their emails, as they wait for a reply to their application. Generally, a young Free Range tends to accept side-assignments during the wake for reply, thus ending up with overloads as they all get accepted: this, in turn, causes the average quality to decrease and the Free Range to become more and more hostile to PMs. On the other hand, adult Free Range know better, and refuse side-assignments during the wake for reply, thus ending up with no work, as the reply never comes, which causes the Free Range to become more and more hostile to PMs. 

As far as reality is concerned, the few specimens left of the Guinea Free Range Translator show amazing pecularities indeed: unconcerned by the hardships of a non-necessarily industrial localization diet, these animals can endure prelonged fasting and several overnights in a row of joblist browsing to find their selected preys. In fact, Guinea Free Ranges can survive only if the environment provides them with sufficient Rata Persatisfactionis, a rare species of ant which is present only on the twisted branches of the Crea Tee Vine, a type of ivy that used to grow over the islands of the region but which became progressively rarer as it was taken over by the more aggressive American species. 

In next post: Present-day Free Range Translators