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Article 24

December 26, 2011, 3:46 pm
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I'm feeling a bit gloomy at the moment. December has not been easy.

My laptop is still on backorder. I'm writing this on my mother's desktop machine because I needed my internet fix, and because I have a couple of essential things to deal with for tax prep work in 2012 that need to be done online before year's end. Being without a computer of my own for a month now threw a monkey wrench into my plans to buy professional tax software, and start on paid translation work, and generally get new revenue streams into place for the new year (for its own sake, but also to have the means to set up my exit strategy from the upholstery job. I do not want to still be working there next Christmas). It also is interfering with writing projects I had planned to concentrate on once my classes ended, which was a week and a half ago.

Further, I had one of my tooth caps break over the weekend. My dentist is on vacation this week, and while I have an emergency number for him, I'm not in pain, so I can wait till next week to get looked at assuming nothing changes. I'm glad this occurred now while I still have insurance; COBRA is extended to 36 months in New York for medical insurance, but not for dental, so my dental insurance runs out at the end of next month. Fixing the tooth still promises to be an expense I need to think hard about, since what little I have in my savings is earmarked to pay for classes, and with the new laptop and whatever dental expenses I have ahead, that plan is looking shaky.

On top of everything else, I got sick three weeks ago, and I'm still not 100%. I had to look up the number for my brother's house so I could call him for Christmas yesterday, and his number hasn't changed in well over a decade. I've had few opportunities with the holiday season to really rest, so mostly I've had the concentration to do crosswords and other puzzles and then go to bed early, rather than anything productive.

I could go on, but you get the idea. So I'm feeling gloomy. I know some of this blue mood is hormonal so it'll lift soon enough, and I know I'll have a laptop soon, and the dentist will be able to see me next week. So things will be better. It's still a bit hard to shake the notion that the universe has decided to make things rough for a while to see what I'll do. It's a good thing I have a clear vision of where I want to be - folding is not an option!
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Article 23

January 7, 2012, 7:54 am
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I'm back!

I have a gorgeous new laptop and need to catch up real soon.

I have a thing this afternoon, so more later.
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Article 22

January 9, 2012, 4:42 am
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One very cool thing about the new laptop is that it's fast enough to wake up almost immediately when I turn it on - though the 45 updates Windows 7 saw fit to apply overnight might slow it down some, keep your fingers crossed - so I can drop in for 5 minutes before work and check my e-mail. Something it took the old laptop way too long to be ready to be worthwhile.

I woke up strangely this morning: telling myself that I needed to update my resume to add a job I'd totally forgotten about, then realizing, when fully conscious, that this job and the vivid memories that go with it cannot have been real. The only time period it could have been was between the Chinese chemical trading company and my return to the computer consulting firm, which was the second half of 2002, and I know I didn't work then.

I think I must have dreamt back in 2010 about a conflation of the Chinese company and the computer consultant (my ex-boss there played a part, as did commuting to New Jersey), and the dream was fleshed out enough in my memory that it felt real the second time around. What an odd feeling to know, in detail, a thing you did, and yet in reality could not have done. Reality is supposed to be better delineated than that, dammit.
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Article 21

January 9, 2012, 9:01 am
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- Being without a computer for six weeks has cramped my style. I had plans to gear up for tax preparation for the new year in December, as well as to begin soliciting paid translation work, but I didn't feel comfortable doing so without my own equipment to do the work on. And getting sick didn't help; I still feel a bit run down and disinclined to move on stuff I'd planned to do - buying tax prep software, marketing my services, and doing more writing to boot. And having to spend about $1,000 on new computer stuff is not making things any easier. I'd hoped to put that inevitability off till I had a bit more cash to play with.

- I realized last week that the plan I had to finish the translation certificate program by the end of summer is unrealistic, because NYU doesn't offer enough courses in the summer to make it feasible. I cannot spare either the money or the time to take more than two courses in the spring - and possibly not more than one, given the computer purchase - so I'd need to take two at least in the summer, which I believe is more than they provide. So I'm looking at the end of 2012 at the earliest to be done with the certificate. I can obtain work without the certificate, certainly, so it's no great hardship, but I wanted to be done already.

- I also have concluded that I need to tear apart and recreate my resume. My current one is an old-style chronological number, and I don't think it's getting me noticed in a modern environment. I may not need personal assistance if anyone knows of a website with good sample resumes. Any suggestions?

- I have decided that a $2.50 cover price, as effective last week, is more than the NY Times is worth to me. It was barely worth it at $2.00, so it wasn't a tough call once I had a computer at home so I could read the important stuff on line. As far as keeping my mother supplied with crosswords, which is a big reason I held out this long, an online subscription to just the crosswords is dirt cheap, and I'll see if she'll go halfsies on it.
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Article 20

January 9, 2012, 7:27 pm
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An oldie, but a goodie: Charles Pierce on the lost opportunity of the Iran-contra scandal. An awful lot of subsequent historical ugliness wouldn't have ensued if Iran-Contra had been dealt with properly.

FYI, Glenn Greenwald alluded to a quote from the special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh yesterday - on his hundredth birthday, no less - but after reading the quote, I checked Wikipedia to see when he died, since I didn't recall seeing an obituary. Turns out that's because he actually turned 100 yesterday. Happy birthday, Mr. Walsh, and may you outlive all those who eluded your grasp.

Edited to add: Re: Pierce, of course, I'd read Pierce reading the phone book.
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Article 19

January 15, 2012, 10:10 am
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I just replied to an ad from Craigslist looking for part-time and full-time translation specialists. I don't have a resume set up for translation yet, and no real portfolio, but what the hell.

I'm conflicted about the tax work I was planning to do this year. I decided I don't want to use the tax software I'd initially decided on using, and found a different one that's a bit cheaper for my needs, but there's a catch: E-filing costs money, and if I do more than ten returns, I'm required to e-file them. Registering with the IRS to be an authorized e-filing agent is separate from the tax preparer registration, so it's an extra fee, and an extra on-line registration, and I think I have to provide fingerprints, too. If I didn't already have clients whose tax needs necessitate my using software, I'd consider taking this tax season off.

These would be easier decisions to make if I also didn't have to pay to have a broken tooth fixed. That needed to happen this month because my dental insurance COBRA ends at month's end, and redoing a crown is pricey. All that (along with paying for the new laptop) meant shelving plans to take two translation courses this coming semester, and being able to afford even one is a close call.

I'm determined to keep moving in the right direction, but I do wish life would be a bit more cooperative and stop giving me obstacles to move around.
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Article 18

January 31, 2012, 7:06 pm
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roadnotes brought to my attention The Challenge: A Month of Letters, where one writes a letter to someone every day the USPS delivers mail in February. Sounds like an excellent idea, and an excuse to reconnect with some people I've lost touch with. My first letter will be to a guy I worked with at the rickshaw place for a while who I grew rather fond of, who disappeared for a while and resurfaced in DC. I don't know if he'll want to keep up any correspondence, but I'm willing to take the chance.

I actually read two whole books this month! Not getting the paper any more frees up commute time for book reading. Neither Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (not set in this century!) nor Garry Wills's Bomb Power is an easy read (though Bomb Power reads quick, it's fairly short) or a feel-good sort of book, but they both give insight into how our world got that way. I also got a tidbit or two for the Freud-Rudolf novel along the way.

Speaking of which, I'm ready to return to research reading for that project. I'm torn between going back to the biography of Franz Joseph I began a few months back, possibly restarting from the beginning; reacquiring the library copy or purchasing a copy of the recent biography of Freud I started a few months back and couldn't finish in one library borrowing cycle; or continuing with the abridgement of the famous Jones biography of Freud, which is valuable because Jones knew Freud personally and because I want Freud to correspond with Jones in his customary fashion as a part of the book. I still wish I read faster, so this didn't seem like such a tough call.

(agrumer just pointed me at this, which I note here to self as just the thing to send to someone I plan to write to.)

Does anyone have a good system for keeping track of novel-related research stuff? My research skills are antiquated and not very tech savvy. Avi mentioned Tiddlywiki as a possibility, since I think linkage between timeline stuff might have some use, but it's iffy with Windows 7. And I'm sorry, Excel is for number crunching.
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Twitter question

February 2, 2012, 9:46 am
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I set up a Twitter feed for my employer. I can access the account from the iMac desktop at work and from my Windows machine at home. My boss cannot log into the account from his Mac laptop, no matter how he tries.

I logged out of the account on the iMac to let him log in, without any luck. Then, when I logged in again, I had to type in a captcha to be allowed back in, which I had not needed to do previously.

Twitter tech support is not helpful, they want to reset the password, and I'm not sure that'll fix the issue.

Thoughts?
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Article 16

February 23, 2012, 5:49 pm
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So let's see, what's up?

I had a relapse of some of the crud that's been plaguing me this winter, so a bit enfeebled. I expect to be under the weather to some extent till the weather warms up enough to knock the crud out of me. Probably some time in May - even though it's warm for winter, it's not actually springlike.

I registered again for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, along with my mother and brother. I haven't trained as much as I probably should, nor have I even really looked at the NYTimes crossword since I decided to drop buying it at the newsstands when the price went to $2.50. I have the online subscription but really don't use it.

I'm also registered for another translation class at NYU, and I'm looking to submit a literary translation for NYU's Arts Festival. I don't have anything ready, but I'm looking at what works I have around that would be suitable to translate. Preferably something that hasn't already been published in English translation - to obviate the need to worry about plagiarizing - and from a personal viewpoint, if it's by a Puerto Rican or Venezuelan writer, I'd be really happy. Feel free to suggest something!

I also finished the biography of Emperor Franz Joseph I've been reading this week, and began again with the Freud bio I started a few months back and set aside (actually, took back to the library - I have my own copy now, that I can read as slowly as I please, or more accurately, am able). I have a new angle of approach to the Freud book that stems from something in the bio - the author notes Freud's ambition to become a great man, a history-making figure, and I can see a vision of Aristotle guiding Alexander, or Plato and Dion (and I'm gratified to see the Wikipedia article on Dion refers to The Mask of Apollo, great book), occurring to Freud quite naturally, what with his classical bent. That could lead down some very interesting paths indeed. I don't know yet that I actually have a story or anything to say - speculative fiction is always about here and now in some way - but I'm excited by the possibility.

And I printed out the first chapter of the torso of a manuscript at work, to look at for the first time in months, and as far as I can tell, it isn't an embarrassment of suckery. I'd even dignify it with the description of workmanlike, and some works get published without rising even that far. (I'm looking at you, Oscar Hijuelos, you overrated poser.) So I feel like continuing to work on it will be worth my time. Kewl.
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Article 15

March 13, 2012, 7:53 pm
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My mother Josie, brother Ric, and I are profiled in today's El Diario (the local Spanish daily paper) for participating in the crossword puzzle tournament. It's nice to be recognized.

My translation of the article follows:

A family passion for crosswords
by Carolina Ledezma
Josephine Quiñones will celebrate her 85th birthday playing with words

Brooklyn -- For a decade, Josephine Quiñones, 84, has celebrated her birthday with her children Enid Enrique [sic], 64, and Christine, 43, at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
This year, from March 16 through 18 at the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge Hotel, she already has her place among some 700 participants from all over the country in the 35th edition of this annual competition.
Born in Brooklyn in a Puerto Rican and Venezuelan family, Josephine is able to solve over 20 puzzles in English per week, as her mother did years ago. "The hardest thing is to finish quickly," recalled this former Brooklyn school board secretary.
At the tournament, founded in 1978, each competitor must solve seven crosswords in between 15 and 45 minutes each, depending on its difficulty. The winners can finish each puzzle in 7 minutes or less.
After retiring, Enid Enrique, who has a computer business in Boston, decided to enter the tournament. When Josephine found out, her son says, she used her biggest smile to win him over to joining him. Christine, who is a translator and library volunteer in Brooklyn, at once joined up with the clan. So it happened that a passion that each of them nurtured from a young age became a family tradition.
"These are people who take the SAT for fun," says the son, to give an idea of how they are members of a group marked by their mental agility and incredible capacity for storing knowledge. "At 15, I used to memorize the answers while riding the A train to high school, because the cars were so full I couldn't write them down."
Finishing is not the only challenge in this competition. It has to be done as fast as possible and without errors. "It's better to sacrifice time to review patiently, because each mistaken letter costs 225 points," advises Christine, for whom clues on sports, military, and cars are a headache.
Josephine, on the other hand, worries about completions, and at her age, she laughs because many of the history questions are easy because she lived through them.
Her son runs into trouble with myths, Biblical references and pop music. Don't ask him about Lady Gaga, Enid Enrique says; but do ask about opera, another habit that he feeds by going to at least 20 performances a year.
United States crosswords are more rigorous than their counterparts in Spanish, Christine says, but, in contrast to British or French ones, the great thing is there is always a way to get out of a jam. "If there's a hard down clue, the across clue is always easier," and so it's possible to keep going forwards.
Each of them has tricks for putting their minds to work. Josephine looks for words with hard letter such as Q, X and K. Enid Enrique looks for clues asking to fill in the blank. Meanwhile, Christine looks for abbreviations or examples of the word being sought.
This year, tournament creator Will Shortz commented over the phone, the youngest participant is a 15-year-old from California, and Josephine may be the oldest. "It's incredible to see people so young; how can a 15-year-old know so much," says Josephine, showing a dozen books she will read this week and a smile that lights her up from knowing that her "birthday celebration" is coming soon.
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Article 14

March 17, 2012, 6:23 am
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Suck. On. This.

April 17, 2012, 7:03 pm
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Congratulations to the Mustache of Understanding, Thomas Friedman, Eschaton's Wanker of the Decade!

For more on why this is such a well-deserved honor, check out one of the best takedowns of an inexplicably popular author since "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses."

I also want to recommend James K. Galbraith's The Predator State, which I'm a few pages from finishing, as the most eye-opening and original take on America's recent economic history I've read in a while. I suck at explaining what's so great about this sort of book, but it's good stuff.

These things are related because in the course of reading the Galbraith, my opinion on the "stupid or evil" conundrum of current political leadership shifted decisively towards stupid. (Of course, any sufficiently advanced stupidity becomes difficult to distinguish from evil.) Good grief, our leadership are together enough to pour piss from a boot with instructions on the bottom, but damn little else. As I've said before, it really is all about dying with the most toys, and they don't even care who they take down with them.

(Edited to swap links to a better one of the Taibbi article, which includes the Get Your War On strip that introduces the Mustache of Understanding.)
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Article 12

May 19, 2012, 1:08 pm
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I finished this biography of Sigmud Freud last night, as part of the novel research, and I can happily say it's given me a lot of insight into Freud's personality, his strengths and his shortcomings. The book is by no means perfect - the writing rubbed me the wrong way in spots, and the chronology gets fuzzy in the latter part of the book, after the psychoanalytic movement is under way, where I really wanted clarity in what exactly was happening, what books and articles were published when, who was in and out of Freud's favor when - but it is a good and fair assessment without any sense of hagiography.

I need to decide now if Rudolf and Freud get along. This, if my research is any guide, will be crucial to the success or failure of the treatment. (Please note that success or failure to treat Rudolf successfully may or may not correlate positively with the fate of Austria-Hungary. Pyrrhic victory is always an option.)
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Article 11

June 1, 2012, 7:08 pm
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Article 10

October 6, 2012, 2:16 pm
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I think the new one-game wild card preliminary round of postseason play has broken me. I'm actually wearied by the idea that there are three more rounds of playoffs after this. Seriously?

Maybe the division series should be trimmed back to best of three and the LCS to best of five, keeping the World Series at best of seven. This would make for a pleasing symmetry of odd numbers, plus it would mitigate the November Problem.

I'd been musing earlier about the possibility, instead of two wild cards, of having the wild card-best record division series be best of three while the other one remains best of five. The pitfalls of this are obvious, so perhaps all three games need to be played in the best record team's stadium to readjust the wild card's disadvantage further. Or maybe this is more baroque than helpful.

I was ranting on Facebook and Twitter a bit last night about the Infield Fly Rule, and this piece defends the call in the Cardinals-Braves game as well as any. Still, I don't think anybody would have been saying, "that should have been an infield fly," if it hadn't been called in that situation. Maybe the Infield Fly Rule is the baseball equivalent of the parallel postulate - an awkwardly-phrased, non-intuitive rule that is necessary for the whole thing to work. I don't know.

I also want to put on record somewhere that I predict the Nationals will win the NL pennant - and I'd be glad, not least because of this guy - and I have no idea who's winning the AL. I can't complain if the Yankees win, but it's the most boring possibility. Orioles might be the most intriguing option, but there are no teams whose success is to be dreaded here.

I think Yankees-Cards is the least appetizing combination. So I'll root against that.
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Article 9

November 6, 2012, 6:07 pm
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I got up an hour early to vote this morning, got there a bit after 7 am and it was already a mess. I was first directed to the wrong line for my district; then, when I got to the right table, they couldn't find me in the book. So I had to fill out an affidavit ballot instead. I got a special ballot, and an envelope with red writing on it where I had to fill in my identifying information, so they can hopefully find me and count my vote later on tonight. I did not bother to thank the poll workers, although they may well have had training sessions cancelled because of Sandy, so I feel bad about it now. I got to work about 1/2 an hour late.

I gave Working Families a lot of my favor, and Democrats otherwise.
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Article 8

May 30, 2013, 12:07 pm
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Wow, I haven't posted since January.

I am harried. My pants are Chapter 11 and looking at Chapter 7. Uri Geller has had his way with my spoons.

I've been tallying the pressing matters that want my undivided attention:

1. my job at the rickshaw company;
2. my job at the upholstery shop;
3. my freelance tax preparation work - this may now be fading away for the next few months, and yes I know April 15 was weeks ago;
4. my freelance translation work - dormant at the moment, but still claiming mindspace;
5. my volunteer gig at the library;
6. my efforts to find new health insurance (my COBRA runs out end of July);
7. renewing my apartment lease;
8. getting various medical stuff done before COBRA ends;
9. my Freud book (the white whale, as I've come to see it - more on that soon);
10. the nonfiction e-book project (on taxes for pedicab drivers, pending till I know what I'm talking about);
11. another writing project I am not prepared to discuss, but which is also tenaciously holding mindspace;
12. helping my mother with various things she's not quite up to handling solo anymore, being at the "x years young" stage of her life;
13. the usual life stuff - haircuts, laundry, sleep.

I'm grateful not to have to stare at the four walls, but when I'm home and on me time, the thing I tend to do is stare at the four walls. And the Mets losing, and the internet.

If anyone has a spare year's salary lying around needing a good home, call me. I can translate something for you, or do your taxes.
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El Grito de Yara/The Cry of Yara and a peek into the translator's workshop

November 9, 2014, 5:12 pm
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On another forum, I received the following query from barking_iguana:


Maybe the most striking bit of political rhetoric I have ever read is from an 1868 speech by Cuban revolutionary Carlos Manuel Céspedes known as the Cry of Yara. I've only read translations. One of them and notes on the discrepancies...

"...the power of Spain is decrepit and worm-eaten. If it still appears strong and great, it is because for over three centuries we have regarded it from our knees. Let us rise!"

The boded phrases have also been translated "great and strong" and "contemplated."

I imagine the final exhortation is a single word in Spanish and perhaps it actually reads more dramatically in English. I certainly prefer the scansion of "regarded" to "contemplated," but that's the word that prompts this message. Was Céspedes' word really so cerebral? Would a stronger evocation of vision ("beheld," for instance) be appropriate? I also think that just in the past few decades, English has changed so that the middle "it" might better be replaced by "that."

So if you have any interest and a few moments to check the Web for the original Spanish, I'm curious how you would translate it.


This is the sort of nice, meaty language bone I love to chew on, so I found a version of the Spanish:


El poder de España está caduco y carcomido. Si aún nos parece fuerte y grande, es porque hace más de tres siglos que lo contemplamos de rodillas: ¡Levantémonos!


The translation above is pretty close to the original. A more literal rendition could be:


"The power of Spain is decrepit and worm-eaten. If it still seems strong and great to us, it is because it is over three centuries that we have been regarding it on our knees. Let's get up!"


The most interesting word in the entire source quote to me is actually caduco. It can mean "decrepit" or "outmoded," and the related term caducidad means "expiration" (e.g. fecha de caducidad is the common term for "expiration date"), but it also carries the botanical meaning of "deciduous." Similarly, carcomido is literally descriptive of wood that is infested with worms. So Céspedes, a plantation owner (who freed his slaves at the outset of the revolt he's calling for here), gives us a subtle tree metaphor which both translations above fail to carry over into English. I'd love to find an adjective that brings this out more clearly, but it's not coming to me yet.

As for contemplar, the subject of the original question: Spanish doesn't have the variety of registers English has, with its Anglo-Saxon everyday terms and its Latinate fancy ones. Contemplar is not an especially cerebral verb in Spanish; it's got the everyday meaning of "to consider" and the more exalted one of "to contemplate" as well as "to look at" in the way one looks at a monument or a landscape. (As a Catholic, however nominal, adoration of the Host during Mass is the sort of thing contemplar brings to mind, and it may have been something on Céspedes' mind as well.) So actually, "beheld" is not that bad a choice. But I like "regarded" better, myself.

In a similar fashion, I translated ¡Levantémonos! as "Let's get up!" to make a point that this word is not only appropriate as a call to battle, but it's also what a Spanish speaker would say if he were simply observing it's time to get out of bed. "Let us rise!" isn't usable in the latter context unironically in current English. It's still valid in its place - the translator's judgment is in play here, and I think the call is sound.

As for "it" vs. "that," the original simply says es, which is merely the third-person singular of "to be." So "it is" is all it literally says, but "that is" may well be a more idiomatic translation into 21st-century English. That's why they pay us translators the big bucks! (Can't believe I kept a straight face writing that.)

One last comment: I am not certain from the cursory research I did if El Grito de Yara refers to Cespedes' speech or to the uprising that led from it. A similar revolt in Puerto Rico around the same time is known as El Grito de Lares, so I'm inclined to think it's the latter.


This is the sort of thinking freelance translators are privileged to get paid for doing, which is why it's so much fun for me and I hope interesting for you, too. Thanks to barking_iguana for the question and for permission to reproduce it here.
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I had a good weekend.

June 3, 2015, 7:57 pm
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My friend Andy from my crossword-puzzle competitor crew joined with some of his fellow young independent puzzle constructor friends to create a new crossword tournament, the Indie 500 in Washington, DC, which happened this weekend. I wanted to support a buddy, and I haven't done a tournament outside the ACPT on my own in a few years, so it was an easy call to make arrangements to head to DC on Friday morning. (One of the perks of the freelance life. Did I mention that I'm freelancing three days a week now? I quit one of my day jobs! That deserves its own post; a task for another day.)

My bus arrived around 2 Friday afternoon. The bus station is a disappointment by Port Authority standards, which is saying something. It's not much more than a parking garage open to the elements adjoining the train station, which is much nicer. (Perhaps the difference is important people often take the train to DC, while poor schlubs like me take the bus.) I got lunch at the food court in the train station - there's a nice teriyaki counter - and found the Metro to Arlington, where my hotel was.

I haven't taken the Metro probably since my sister was at Georgetown Law School in the '70s. I didn't recall or realize how boring the Metro is. Dimly lit, concrete decor - nothing to see. A lost opportunity, I think. That said, it's pretty fast and there was plenty of ridership, and the pay-per-ride farecards print the balance remaining on the card when you leave the system, which is very nice, if totally unworkable for New York.

The hotel was about a mile from the Metro, and I walked it in about a half-hour, with my baggage. Since my back isn't in the best shape at the moment, I took the hotel shuttle bus to and from the Metro the rest of the weekend, but the part of Arlington I was in is somewhat walkable, and the room itself was pretty sweet for the price I paid (king bed, banquette, desk, huge flatscreen TV - I wish I had company). I spent the rest of the evening watching the Nationals play (and Stephen Strasburg get hurt) and relaxing.

Saturday morning, I found the tournament venue at George Washington University pretty easily once I had breakfast under my belt, and fauxklore arrived moments after I did. After taking a second to watch Andy painstakingly mark out squares on a whiteboard by hand, to be used for the final puzzle grid, we ended up sitting at one of the round solvers' tables with Joanne, another crossword friend who came in from New York (via Chicago), and five men, all of whom ranked in the top 100 in this year's ACPT. I was quite certain I wasn't contending for anything, but it was exciting to be among some of the top talent in the community.

There were five puzzles for the entire field. Each of the tournament organizers constructed one puzzle, and they chose a sixth from contest submissions. In my experience with the ACPT and Lollapuzzoola, the local NYC tournament, there's a trajectory of easier-to-harder-to-deadly-to-easier, but the Indie 500 puzzles didn't go that way. I'd say that on average they were slightly more difficult than those for the ACPT. They were impressively clever and imaginative for all that. fauxklore has spoiler-free capsule reviews of the puzzles in her report.

Scoring was computerized and updated to the Indie 500 website regularly, but there was no WiFi that my tablet could use to check. I asked another solver to look me up on her phone, and I was in 50th place out of 100. Middle of the pack, about where I expected to be, and I was having a great time, and that was enough to make the whole thing worthwhile. Right?

Turns out the scoring was incomplete, and I actually finished Puzzle 5 in 34th place (later slipping after scoring corrections to 35th place). (My solutions were all perfect, so speed or lack thereof was the big determinant of my ranking.) Now all the tournaments I've been to have two divisions (the ACPT has three): one for the superfast elite solvers and one for the rank and file. The top three solvers in each division compete head to head in the final. My rank, as it happens, was good enough for fourth place in what the Indie 500 calls the Outside Track - so just outside the top three. But then one of the top three disqualified himself from the final, because he'd seen one of the tournament puzzles before that day and it wouldn't be fair for him to compete. Which meant I was in! And when my name was announced, that was a real surprise. "Really!" I said. And so, on to the final!

My fellow Outside Track finalists were two complete rookies; for both Andrew and Josh, it was their first tournament ever. The way the final works is this: the finalists get the same grid to solve on whiteboards on stage in front of the crowd, and the fastest to solve the puzzle accurately is the champ. They wear headphones with white noise playing so any crowd comments aren't audible, which means the audience can't blurt out answers and affect the outcome. (The ACPT actually offers play-by-play for the grand championship final.)

One innovation the Indie 500 came up with was to have contestants choose their own entrance music, should they get to the final. That's how it happened that I got to make my grand entrance for the final to Also Sprach Zarathustra. Then I pantomimed throwing my marker into the hall as if it were a prehistoric animal bone.

We had 20 minutes to solve a themeless 15x15 puzzle, and I needed 15 1/2 of them to finish. It was tough, with some really obscure clues and some references I just didn't know. I could hear the applause over the white noise when Andrew finished, and then when Josh finished, and I felt soooo sloooow, but finish I did. And then the scorers took longer than I expected to ratify that I had a perfect solution, at the end of which they informed me that I had taken second place! Andrew had left a couple squares blank, so he got third place, and Josh took first place. Remember the names Andrew Miller and Josh Himmelsbach - I hope I see them both in Stamford next year, because they have chops.

One of the guys at my table, Eric Maddy, took third in the Inside Track, while crossword blogger extraordinaire Amy Reynaldo got second, and Joon Pahk took the championship. Incidentally, the Inside Track finalists solve the exact same grid as the Outside Track finalists (this is true at the other tournaments I know as well), only the Outside Track clues are only wicked hard, while the Inside Track clues are impossible. Joon managed to finish perfectly in 12 minutes and change. The crossword elite are on a whole other plane of being.

Thanks to all the Indie 500 team - Andy Kravis, Erick Agard, Evan Birnholz, Neville Fogarty, and Peter Broda - their special guest constructor Finn Vigeland, and the volunteers for doing a fantastic job getting all of this together. Do this again, guys!

I took a little time on Sunday to see DC before boarding the bus for home. fauxklore recommended the US Postal Museum, and given my connection to USPS via my father the postal inspector, it was a great choice. I didn't get to see everything and had to head to the bus just as I found the room devoted to the Postal Inspection Service, but that gives me a reason to come back. Next time I'll give myself an extra day in DC so I can get in more touristy things.

I guess this whole crossword thing is working out okay.
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Freud, women authors, and continuing research for the White Whale

June 16, 2015, 1:26 pm
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It says something about the loss of esteem psychoanalysis as a discipline has suffered that the YA biography of Sigmund Freud I just read is subtitled "Famous Neurologist." I did learn from it, however, that the Chinese have taken to the talking cure in a big way, and that psychoanalysis via Skype from US therapists is currently popular in China. Who knew?

I am almost finished with Regeneration by Pat Barker. It's a classic, but from my point of view, it's worth reading because it deals with (a) real people (Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Wilfred Owen, as well as the main psychiatrist character William Rivers); (b) psychoanalysis; and (c) World War I (albeit the middle of it versus the run-up to it, which is the time frame for my project). I couldn't really not read it, could I? Also, I have in my own way been taking up the Tempest Challenge, and Barker is a woman.

(Concentrating on authors who aren't white and male while researching pre-1914 Austria-Hungary isn't easy, but it's doable! Memoirs by Alma Mahler and Lou Andreas-Salome count, and there was a terrific book by Lavender Cassels called Clash of Generations about Archduke Rudolf's travails as Crown Prince, struggling against the hidebound thinking of his father and the rest of the Habsburg court, among other things. I have read other challenge-appropriate stuff in between these works, including Blair Tindall's notorious classical-music memoir Mozart in the Jungle - haven't seen the TV series yet, but it sounds very loosely based on the book - and a couple of books by Laurie Colwin, who I have mixed feelings about. Perhaps I'll elaborate in another post.)

Regeneration is very good, by the way, and it's given me a lot to think about on how to depict therapy sessions on the page. I've been in therapy, but my thinking was that it was handled very differently a century ago. Maybe Barker is putting a late-20th-century gloss on early-20th-century therapy technique, but it rings true to me. Which means I have a lot more flexibility in how to show Freud doing his work. This is only fair - it's well known that Freud often didn't practice what he preached with respect to clinical distance from patients. With Rudolf, the question of that distance is complicated by several factors - the ruler-subject relationship and how strictly Rudolf may have viewed it (his father Franz Joseph took it very seriously indeed), the relative closeness in age of Freud and Rudolf (Rudolf was two years younger than Freud, far closer in age to him than almost any of his patients), the openness with which the therapy takes place (in my thinking, not very at all given the delicacy of the situation in Europe at the time), etc. So much world-building to think about! I almost wish I didn't have to translate at the same time, but of course, I didn't have to - that was entirely my choice, too.
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Work habits, their care and feeding: a study in work avoidance

June 23, 2015, 8:40 am
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When I set out on my serious freelancing almost two months ago, I came up with a set of good work habits to adhere to.

- Mornings are for translating: by which I mean not only the actual work of turning Spanish text into English, but looking for jobs on the translation websites I'm registered on, administrative stuff, etc.

- Check e-mail first thing: I have my e-mail open all the time anyway, so I can address stuff as soon as it pops up in my inbox.

- Be sure to get walking in: I make a point of taking a "walk to work" for about half an hour in the neighborhood before clocking in, at least on the days I'm home. I still do bookkeeping in Manhattan two days a week, and my routine is different on those days.

- Regular mealtimes: Breakfast around 9, lunch around 1, dinner around 7. I try to keep this schedule at work in the city too, when work permits.

- Afternoons are for other work/social stuff: I currently have a tax return and some freelance bookkeeping work to deal with, so that's for after lunch.

- Think about getting a better chair: More on this later.

It's still morning, so why am I posting to LJ instead of working on my current translation assignment? I just completed a very large assignment, some of which was a real tooth-pull to finish. I'd planned to write the agency that sends me work to hold off for a couple days, but yesterday was a work-in-the-city day, and by the time I had a break from work to contact the agency, the new assignment was already in my inbox. Steady work is a good thing, so I can't really complain. However, I want to work on taxes and bookkeeping, where my clients are waiting for answers ASAP, while my translation deadline is the beginning of next week. So when the habits conflict with my priorities, do I stick with the routine or do I bend to the demands of the moment? (Well, right now I post to LJ. Kicking the can down the road FTW.)

Some years ago I posted to LJ - can't find the post at the moment - about why I hate Quickbooks. (I still hate it, I still think it's the accounting software of choice for small businesses who need it, I don't use it myself, I worry I'm making a mistake by not using it myself. My kingdom for non-sucky bookkeeping software!) One of my big complaints is that it's rigid where it should be flexible, and flexible where it should be rigid. I suspect this is more reflective of a core quandary of my personality than I'm comfortable thinking about. So I guess I'd better think about it some more.
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Baseball anniversaries

July 3, 2015, 11:09 am
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I missed the fortieth anniversary of my very first ballgame earlier this week. June 29th, 1975: I know my mother and my late Aunt Alice (the biggest Mets fan in the family) took me but I don't remember who else was there. It was a Mets-Phillies double-header at the old incarnation of Shea Stadium, the one that looked like a Wonder Bread wrapper. Tom Seaver, my first baseball love, started the second game, while Jerry Koosman started the first. Yogi Berra was the manager (he was fired a few weeks later).

The Mets lost both games, of course. The event that stuck in my mind (and made it possible to look up all the other information above) was the relief pitcher Bob Apodaca getting smacked square in the nose with a line drive (from Johnny Oates, the only batter he faced, in the ninth inning of game 2). His bloody face was on the back page of the New York Daily News the next day. Perhaps that should have put me off baseball for life, but by then I was hooked. That big patch of green grass in Flushing, hellhole though it may have been, was love at first sight, and I've never regretted it since. Even when they traded Seaver to the Reds; I just switched primary allegiance to the Yankees, admittedly a good move in 1977, and no one told me I couldn't support both teams.

Another Mets anniversary is tomorrow: 30 years ago, Mets-Braves, July 4th, 1985. One of the oddest games ever played, I think still the single latest finish in MLB history - and after that they shot off fireworks in Atlanta at 4 am! I watched most of this game on TV, but I couldn't stay up long enough to catch the end, with Rick Camp (a very poor-hitting reliever) getting the only home run of his career, the Mets scoring 5 in the top of the nineteenth inning and giving up 4 in the bottom of the 19th, just squeaking out the win. At the link, I see the Mets apparently ate some raw meat on the bus afterwards. Good times.
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At loose ends

July 14, 2015, 11:50 am
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Today is the first day in a while that I don't have a translation assignment to work on. I had been giving short shrift to other responsibilities in the press to Make My Deadline, even as I dithered away pieces of my days while on deadline because the assignment was so time-consuming. So I'm working to catch up on stuff that got sidelined.

First order of business, though, was self-care; I slept until almost 10 this morning, taking to heartrecent reports about how horrible sleep deprivation is. It didn't help that I had a very hard time getting to sleep last night. I also have been getting back into physical therapy for sciatica issues; turns out my glutes are weak. So this means strengthening exercises and stretches and some basic yoga at the PT place. I did my exercises for today while on hold with the IRS for a bookkeeping customer, so multitasking really is possible!

I'm also catching up on translating sample documents for my online portfolio. I can't really ethically use translations I've been paid to do by my agency, because of confidentiality issues, but I found some examples online of the sort of document I'm doing and translating them. I also did a couple of samples of more financial and commercial texts, since that's the specialization I'm looking to get into. Hopefully with those uploaded, I can show prospective clients the quality of the work I do and they'll feel more inclined to entrust me with their business.

Now I get to go out and deposit a check and run a couple of other errands before my library gig.
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Certification testing

August 30, 2015, 1:20 pm
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I'm back from taking the certification exam for the American Translators Association, which is the big professional credential for my new profession. I feel weird.

It's been a Guinea worm of a week - sounds awful, doesn't it? I meant it to. (Don't follow the link. Trust me.) - and I've been going through an unusually deep depression for the last couple weeks, so my concern this morning was with oversleeping or otherwise missing my chance, since I won't have another one until next year. I managed to make it to the testing venue in plenty of time, and I feel I did a good job with the actual test. I used the entire time allotted to prepare my translations and to go over them carefully, and this was a good thing because I discovered while reviewing that I'd missed a few words on one of them, which could have done me in.

The way the test works is that we have one to translate one required passage of a non-specialized nature, and one of two optional passages that are more specialized. The specialized passages pertain either to scientific, technical or medical in content, or to business, legal or financial content. We're allowed to bring any number of paper dictionaries and glossaries for reference, but no electronic resources. On first glance, the former of these optional passages looked like the better choice; but, turning to it after completing the required passage, I found one crucial term that I could find the general meaning for the books I brought, but not the precise technical term I knew I would want, and I could tell it wouldn't come to me while I was in the testing room. (I checked when I got home, and I was right, no way I'd have done it justice.) So I did the business-legal-financial passage instead. This is what I want to specialize in anyway, so I'm glad it was something I could do at least a competent job of putting into English.

At this point it's in the hands of the graders. I don't know how strict they'll be about judging things such as placement of prepositions and subject-pronoun agreement - I revised a singular "they" out of one of my translations out of concern for this - but I just checked the ATA's standard for passing, which calls for "a level of obvious competence with some room for growth," and equates this to the following guidelines:
Can translate texts that contain not only facts but also abstract language, showing an emerging ability to capture their intended implications and many nuances. Such texts usually contain situations and events which are subject to value judgments of a personal or institutional kind, as in some newspaper editorials, propaganda tracts, and evaluations of projects. Linguistic knowledge of both the terminology and the means of expression specific to a subject field is strong enough to allow the translator to operate successfully within that field. Word choice and expression generally adhere to target language norms and rarely obscure meaning. The resulting product is a draft translation, subject to quality control.
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Okay, I think I crossed that bar. I'll know for sure in approximately 15 weeks, so mid-December. Certification would be a nice Christmas gift.
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A year as a freelance

May 5, 2016, 9:20 am
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A year ago today was the first day I devoted entirely to freelance translation work. This past year has been only a modest success financially: my 2015 income was about half my 2014 income, and YTD 2016 is on a trajectory to surpass 2015, but not by very much. Only 40% or so of my freelance income has been from translation, so I am lucky to have continuing interest in my accounting and tax preparation skills. I also received help from my family, continued part-time employment for the first few months, and a nice little tax refund, so I've been able to pay the bills in spite of the drop in income.

On the plus side, I completed my NYU certificate and while I didn't pass the ATA certification exam on the first pass, I am confident of success the next time around. I am involved in the local professional translation community and have made some friends there, and I have been to a professional conference. More recently, I have begun working with a couple of new agency clients, expanding my portfolio of subjects covered and, more important, earning higher pay rates. One of them has already given me repeat business, so I know I've made a good impression, and steady work from either or both of these clients will make life a lot easier.

Steady, salaried work in this industry is hard to come by, and not necessarily well-paid when the opportunity arises, as I know from direct experience. I was told by one of my professors that it takes on average three years to make a decent living as a freelance translator; I hope that the part-time work I was doing in 2013 and 2014 shaved a piece of that three years off. In any case, things look promising, and I can live with that.
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