(in which the crazy translator acquires an equally crazy editor)

My experimental translation project is still slow, painfully slow work. I'm beginning to pick up speed (at least with my first drafts that need a lot of editing), but I'm grateful that I'm not bound with a deadline at this stage. There were a lot of trial and error experiments just to ( Read more... )

It’s already official: I’ve gone crazy. Or at least crazier than before. :P

I’ve started translating this book with the author’s permission. We don’t know yet if it has any chance to get published in Bulgaria.

If I never get paid for this translation, so be it. I’m not motivated by the money, not this time. This is my own personal project. I’m ( Read more... )

So, the good news is that the author of a certain book unambiguously approved me as a translator today.

The bad news is that he's already losing hope of finding a publisher in Bulgaria. I can see why.  It's a highly inconvenient book to publish - too "scandalous" for this culture, and not in the way that would sell.

That means that there will be ( Read more... )

I need a common name in English for my translation - a name for this particular species and not just something general like "geranium".  I might be "rose geranium", but I'm not sure at all.

I'm not even sure what the Latin name is. All I know is that it's some Pelargonium species. Pelargonium roseum? Pelargonium graveolens? Both? Pelargonium ( Read more... )

... the little thing with the big wings on the right...

... he can really FLY! *happy dance*

Not just flutter through 5 to 10 centimeters at a height of a couple of centimeters, but take off in the air and circle around me a little. He perched on my arm twice. Very untypical of a Bombyx mori domestic silkworm moth. It's good that there was that ( Read more... )

I had a difficult text to translate from Bulgarian into English yesterday (and of course it was urgent - the wonders of being Almost UnemployedTM). It wasn't easy to find some of the terminology. Then I suddenly remembered that two of my Bulgarian gay friends (one I first met at Sofia Pride last year and another I first met on Facebook) might know ( Read more... )

This is what I'm translating now, no kidding!

IN the city of Vienna there once reigned a duke of such a mild and gentle temper, that he suffered his subjects to neglect the laws with impunity; and there was in particular one law, the existence of which was almost forgotten, the duke never having put it in force during his whole reign. This was a law ( Read more... )

I'm mastering the finest subtleties of the grammar of my own language.

I only have a problem with the part I've italicized. I'm not even sure what "common sympathy" means in this case.

Some of these daily dependents were young men of birth, who (their means not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by creditors, and redeemed thence by lord Timon; these young prodigals thenceforward fastened upon his ( Read more... )