Translation is sometimes really difficult, but not in the way you think
Yanno, reading about exploding kidneys is one thing, reading about infants with metchromatic leukodystrophy (google MLD for more info) is draining.
In my effort to work OT, get lots done, and do it at home, I brought work home with me. I got the bright idea of being at the office for 8 hours, then going home to continue working in much reclining comfort. In my jammies. Duh.
The particular job I brought home with me happened to be German, which I (unfortunately) understand, translated into English. And it was an interview between some random interviewer and a man whose infant child is slowing wasting away from MLD. The poor kid had only just started to say "daddy!" when his father came home at the end of the day when the worst symptoms apparently took hold, and now the kid just sits there basically drooling. The child's parents have been told to prepare themselves for the end.
It's this kind of thing and the cancer patient reports I can almost not bear, except that I know I have to make sure the translation is right. If anything, at least this man's words are on a page, correctly rendered into English, and more strangers than he can imagine have read them and will probably continue to read them before they're sealed away in some pharmaceutical company's file cabinet. In a way, his child's memory will live on, maybe?
It's kind of an important job. But sometimes it just sucks.
And now I have to go to bed. And not think about dying children.
In my effort to work OT, get lots done, and do it at home, I brought work home with me. I got the bright idea of being at the office for 8 hours, then going home to continue working in much reclining comfort. In my jammies. Duh.
The particular job I brought home with me happened to be German, which I (unfortunately) understand, translated into English. And it was an interview between some random interviewer and a man whose infant child is slowing wasting away from MLD. The poor kid had only just started to say "daddy!" when his father came home at the end of the day when the worst symptoms apparently took hold, and now the kid just sits there basically drooling. The child's parents have been told to prepare themselves for the end.
It's this kind of thing and the cancer patient reports I can almost not bear, except that I know I have to make sure the translation is right. If anything, at least this man's words are on a page, correctly rendered into English, and more strangers than he can imagine have read them and will probably continue to read them before they're sealed away in some pharmaceutical company's file cabinet. In a way, his child's memory will live on, maybe?
It's kind of an important job. But sometimes it just sucks.
And now I have to go to bed. And not think about dying children.