“They’ve all been translated by you,” was the response I got when I asked my editor for another chick-lit to translate.
“What? Am I that workaholic?” was my first reaction, before thinking, “Now, WHAT am I going to do?”
I continued reading the rest of the email and found out that I had two options:
a. Translate a book from another genre (in this case, romance), or
b. Edit a translated material.
Hmm.. Tough choice.. 😀 First of all, I don’t (really) like romance books. Nothing wrong with them, it’s just personal preference. After all, I did start out with translating three romance books. Second of all, I don’t know the first thing about editing. Well, of course I always edit my own work, but that doesn’t count.
After some thinking, I told the editor that I wanted to try both. “Opportunity doesn’t knock twice” and all that.. (“All that” being I need a distraction from some personal issues and yes, I admit, I AM a workaholic :D)
All I can say right now is: editing is hard. I don’t know if it’s the genre (again, romance), the fact that I’m a newbie, or, well, the quality of the translation, but I’m frustrated with my own speed. I’m so used to accomplish 20 pages (of the source) a day when doing a translation whereas with editing, 10 pages (of the translation) a day was all I could manage in the first week. It’s also my first time to actually use “Track Changes” feature and I was so disoriented by all those red marks until I found out how to hide them (and then, of course, I had to check the document again from the beginning because apparently those marks made me look like I don’t know how to use spacebar properly). I’m still doing the editing. Faster now, but I still wake up every morning worrying about the deadline. I thought this was supposed to be romance, not suspense! 😀
While waiting for me to finish the editing, why don’t you just sit back and enjoy these articles I translated for Tiger Tales Indonesia and wish me luck? 😀
thekleinebeer 