One of those days, part the eleventy-somethingth
The day was starting out so well. My folks arrived Monday from New York, they had a nice couple of days enjoying my hospitality, and I saw them off to catch a boat to the islands. I went to work, started to get things organized, and then my office-mate asked for help with something.
In retrospect, that's the point where I should have run for the mountains surrounding the city.
First, he sent me two documents, one old in Greek and English, one new in English, telling me that the new document had to be completed by the end of today. I started to look over the new English document, finding problems all over the place in the English, and then realized ... the last Greek version I had didn't correspond to the latest English version at all. Meanwhile, I was being asked how much of the thing I could do by the end of the day - I decided to be conservative and say that I could probably handle about half of it (it's a long one, at 28 pages).
Except what he hadn't told me at the outset was that it didn't need to be edited; it needed to be translated. Into Greek. By the end of the day. All 28 pages.
Oh, and if I wanted to yell, I should go yell at the guy who'd given *him* the task.
So up I went, and when the guy who'd given out the task asked me if I had any questions about it, I decided to cut right to the point: "What happens if this thing isn't done by the end of today?"
The answer was that the client wouldn't be happy, that they wanted to sign this agreement tomorrow morning, but that it wouldn't be a disaster, but maybe a bunch of us could split up the task?
I took on a big chunk of it. With luck it'll be done by the end of the day, although the English copy is atrocious, and the old Greek copy isn't that great, either. My office-mate got thrown a piece of it, and he was complaining that the English was the worst he'd ever seen.
I think there's a growing consensus that the first step of translating this agreement into Greek should have been to translate it into English from whatever it was written in ... but I'm the only one who'd be qualified to do that, and I've already got too much on my plate.
I think this task might get done today. Assuming I work late. Assuming no more surprises.
The latter's not a safe assumption.
This entry is cross-posted from http://bktheirregular.dreamwidth.org/591731.html. Feel free to comment here, or on Dreamwidth using OpenID (
comments).
In retrospect, that's the point where I should have run for the mountains surrounding the city.
First, he sent me two documents, one old in Greek and English, one new in English, telling me that the new document had to be completed by the end of today. I started to look over the new English document, finding problems all over the place in the English, and then realized ... the last Greek version I had didn't correspond to the latest English version at all. Meanwhile, I was being asked how much of the thing I could do by the end of the day - I decided to be conservative and say that I could probably handle about half of it (it's a long one, at 28 pages).
Except what he hadn't told me at the outset was that it didn't need to be edited; it needed to be translated. Into Greek. By the end of the day. All 28 pages.
Oh, and if I wanted to yell, I should go yell at the guy who'd given *him* the task.
So up I went, and when the guy who'd given out the task asked me if I had any questions about it, I decided to cut right to the point: "What happens if this thing isn't done by the end of today?"
The answer was that the client wouldn't be happy, that they wanted to sign this agreement tomorrow morning, but that it wouldn't be a disaster, but maybe a bunch of us could split up the task?
I took on a big chunk of it. With luck it'll be done by the end of the day, although the English copy is atrocious, and the old Greek copy isn't that great, either. My office-mate got thrown a piece of it, and he was complaining that the English was the worst he'd ever seen.
I think there's a growing consensus that the first step of translating this agreement into Greek should have been to translate it into English from whatever it was written in ... but I'm the only one who'd be qualified to do that, and I've already got too much on my plate.
I think this task might get done today. Assuming I work late. Assuming no more surprises.
The latter's not a safe assumption.
This entry is cross-posted from http://bktheirregular.dreamwidth.org/591731.html. Feel free to comment here, or on Dreamwidth using OpenID (
comments).