Batman Rules

11:50 PM and I’m still awake. What has gone wrong with my sleeping habits? Or did I have one in the first place? Arriving home from Manila after three hours of travel, the first thing I did was to check my emails. Checking emails has become a necessity nowadays because I sometimes also get jobs from those who seek translators on the net. Mostly, what I get are technical translation jobs which usually demand that I stop anything that I’m doing since the deadline (example, for 300 words) is after two hours of receipt of job order. (You think two hours is too long for 300 technical words? Try it.) Tonight, I got one which is a thousand and fifty-word job, which requires me to translate a glossary of Tagalog words (some words have been translated someplace). Always, these jobs are specifically asking that their codes be left untouched, and I’ve already learned to be very careful especially with translation tools they employ such as Trados. Incidentally, I thought about securing one such Tool for myself (in my dreams) because this will make any translation work truly consistent. What Trados does is to collect all these translations and put them in a kind of storage that you can easily recover if ever you get lost in translation. (I wonder if there’s a storage of translated words for Christianese.) I think storing the words is the only way that the clients can check the translations. So If you mess up the codes, the client will not give you another job.

Gotham
Anyway, since this “job order” for a glossary requires that I give a quote first, that’s what I do. The other thing that I ask for is the website of the “client,” who is usually represented by a “translation manager” or “project coordinator”. After the client confirms the job, I will email again to request that they send me a word document. But if they send me excel files, they will come in a zip folder which I need to unzip first. If they are PDF files, I won't complain and simply extract the text. You see, even if I ask for a word file, the client rules; their document comes as they have prepared it. They also say, "please don't change the file name but just put the TAG word in the end." And when they ask "Do you have SDX?" I would email back and say...what do I say? NO,I DON'T HAVE SDX. (And then I will surf and search about this SDX thing. It's another translation software I can't afford.)

The translation manager is not the same as the one who processes your check but the one you follow up with your best friendly tone when you collect your fees. This friendly tone often means dropping all formalities, and sometimes addressing the person by his or her first name. Since payment is usually 30 days after delivery, you want to send the invoice with the translation, right away. The count begins after you've sent the invoice, so after translation you can't rest until you have processed the invoice. (So now, I become an accountant.)

Bruce Wayne
The thing is, most US clients work while we in our country are already asleep. (I don't yet understand the other time zones such as in Latin America and the Ukraine) So in order to deliver on time I adjust my sleeping hour. I used to get uptight on this. If I was not awake the night of the job order, and get the "job notice" the morning after, the job will already be closed, and I would sulk. (There’s always a bidding with thousands of freelance translators on the net) So I lose a job. Later, I told myself that I don’t need this rush jobs that will require me to spend overnight in front of my computer. After all, I also want to enjoy it, you know, treat it like I'm doing some crossword puzzle, slow and deliberate. So I really get just a few of these jobs. My sister who does "Medical Translation" does not turn her computer off, and she's on call 24 hours a day. But she has three kids attending private high school. I don't have her financial stress. So what’s the matter with me? I began to relax. Now, I get only those jobs which give me room to move around (“move around”, you see, means washing dishes, watering the plants, sweeping the floor, hanging the wash, and all this minor extras which help me exercise my back joints and leg muscles).

But why am I still awake tonight at 12:30 PM (AM?)? Blame it on the blogging. I missed blogging last Monday which I promised myself is the day I should blog. It’s already Friday!!! Maybe I should change my blogging day? I think I'm turning into a bat.