The Monkey House

This week has been mostly An Unexpected Job.  Have just finished draft of Dullest Translation Ever.  Thought it was going to be conference abstracts, but it turned out to be nothing but glossed up CVs of the contributors plus opening and closing speeches.  Now I have to do the bilingual proofread, which is dull at the best of times.  Cannot face it until I've had a good sleep.

Sunday: The Hobbit

Next week, The Return Of The Marking.

For today, anyway. 2,100 words about hare population dynamics in Baden-Württenberg translated from German to English. It's been a slog of a day, but now all I have to do at the weekend is sort out some inconsistencies, figure out what a 'Formzahl' is, and check the thing through.

The author should have been shortlisted for an IgNobel. Who'd have thought that hare density is inversely correlated with fox density and positively correlated to the available hare noms in the locality?

Back from the doctor. Spider definitely has a urinary infection and probably has had it for weeks, but it was masked by the gastric thing. He's on antibiotics with instructions to take it very easy until the end of the weekend, so will only be popping into school intermittently for the bits that really matter--English GCSE assessments and guitar lessons.

By the way, how cool is it that his first English GCSE assessment is a Barak Obama speech? He has to explain the ways Obama engages with his audience.

In the meantime, my translation has progressed, um... not at all. Unless you count watching the nurse take blood from Spidermonkey as background research. She did better than a lot of the nurses in the study because she labelled containers and disposed of sharps correctly. But she didn't invert the samples at all, let alone the correct number of times. Neither did any of the nurses in the study. Has anyone ever seen a nurse invert a blood sample? Clearly it doesn't matter very much.

I'm not in any way complaining about the nurse, mind. She is completely wonderful! Because Spider is 14, he's supposed to go to the phlebotomy clinic at the hospital to have blood taken. (Take an number, wait for 4 hours, do not leave to buy a snack...) She bravely agreed to do him anyway since he's bigger, more sensible, and has easier veins than a lot of adult patients. So we had an extra 15 mins at the surgery rather than spending the rest of the useful day in Addenbrookes. Thank you, Maureen!

On Friday morning I was offered and accepted an urgent translation. The client promptly disappeared 'out of office' without actually confirming the go-ahead with the agency. Until this morning--Tuesday. That's four whole days wasted, but I only get one extra day to deliver. Because it's urgent.

I'll be done by Friday, by which time I should be even more expert on the importance of preanalytical audits in medical testing. And possibly in need of a stiff drink.

Work website text:
We very much regret that VLE users have been experiencing difficulties and poor performance recently, and these are continuing today. The ongoing investigation of the problems of non-availability and slowness show a number of factors are involved. We are working to restore a full and reliable service as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience."

Presumed source text:
As usual, it's either down or crap. You wouldn't believe how many bugs there are! We'll try to cobble together something that keeps it going, but don't expect miracles.