By Johannes Tan
Humor is a tool in translation, and translation is a tool in humor. This compendium is dedicated to all project managers and translators with a sense of humor. Those who do not may proceed at their own risk. (© 1997 by Johannes Tan. All rights reserved.) |
In spite of what your mom repeatedly told you in your mother tongue, you keep talking to strangers with foreign accents. |
Those who insist freelance translators to be available on a daily basis and short notice, hire only part-time accounting temps who cut paychecks on a monthly basis. |
Uploading a 300-page document almost guarantees that the target BBS can be logged on only during expensive weekday business hours through a 300-baud rate modem. |
The more difficult it is to understand a translator's thick accent, the more often you have to deal with that particular translator. |
As soon as you finish fooling around with one of those silly Idiot's Guides for Dummies, a new and completely different release is on the market. |
The shorter the nanosecond deadline, the longer one has to wait for the check by snail-mail. |
When you are a language instructor, your side job is to translate; when you are a translator, your side job is to educate the client. |
Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is only one cardinal rule in educating the client: The client is always right. |
The volume of paperwork mailed by agencies to translators to update their database and complete translation tests is inversely proportional to the volume of actual work they will ever assign -- if any. |
The right assignment always comes in at the wrong time. |
As soon as better dictionaries are available and your customized terminology database is becoming comprehensive, civilization will come up with more untranslatable terms. |
Most super-rush assignments are too urgent to be FedEx-ed, cannot be downloaded, and consist of illegible handwriting on the umpteenth generation of hopeless fax pages. |
Outside the translation business, it's called an accent. Inside, it's called native language skills. |
After spending hard-earned dollars for annual visits to your home-country and enduring sleepless nights reading merely to keep your language skills current, you realize that your native language has been mercilessly infiltrated by English jargon. |
A Big Bang followed by a Quick Quote request will most likely be pending indefinitely until No Notice. |
Translators who still work with 286 PCs, 640K RAMs and 300 baud rate modems will be paid only by the hour. |
If to dilate means to live long, then to translate means to work without deadlines. |
in the Translation Business: |
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