Many things. The last post that I wrote - and have not yet published - was about being attacked in the town centre last Friday, and I decided that it was too angry a post to actually publish. I am toning it down, but I want it out there so that other ex-pats are aware that the Belgian police are not necessarily on your side.
I'm in Sevenoaks at the moment and I don't use the computer as much here, mostly because there are Real People to talk to, dogs to walk, etc.
Things (in no particular order)
Easter - Easter at home is all about daffodils and roast dinners and going to church a lot. I don't attend church in Brussels: there's something about francophone Catholicism that I find hugely uninspiring. Probably the fact that people go in, listen and stare with glazed eyes for an hour, take Communion and then flee the scene. There is no participation, no sense of connection or enthusiasm and worst of all No Music, apart from the usual nasal chanter leading responses that no-one joins in.
On the other hand, I am loath to go to one of those suspiciously friendly ex-pat churches, where well-meaning but overbearing parishioners zoom in on unsuspecting newcomers like hawks and before you know it you are on the coffee rota and attending evening songs of praise and signed up to goodness knows what else.
I am just starting my third decade on the planet, I have grey hairs (only two) and lines on my forehead and am increasingly wondering what it will be like to die. If I am going to be religious, I need it to engage me on an intellectual level, because at the moment I'm afraid Dawkins and the like have a pretty strong rational argument.
In the church that my parents attend, there are intelligent, professional people, whom I admire, and who have very strong beliefs, and I want to know where it all comes from. What do they know that I don't?
Katyń: I rented the DVD and finally saw this film, monopolising my parents' television and lounge for a good couple of hours (by the time I'd got 36 minutes into the Andrzej Wajda interview at the end I think they had had more or less enough).
I'm not a film critic and I tend to get emotionally involved in films, rather than making a detached analysis. I do however watch films set during this period with a great deal of caution, knowing how easy it is to be carried along and to become incensed about an issue which is not my battle.
One thing I will say is that the English subtitles on my rented DVD were appalling. Obviously my Polish isn't good enough for me to be able to catch everything on a film soundtrack (nor for that matter are my French and Italian, sometimes, if the accent is difficult, the dialogue fast and the background music loud). So I wasn't checking the translation. In any case, there's a fair amount of Russian and German dialogue in the film. And I'm not a trained subtitler, although I'm aware that there are certain time and space restrictions.
But: every time I looked down, the quality of the English was poor. It had clearly never even been checked by a native speaker. Subtitles are a way for foreigners, in this case English speakers, to access a film and a story that they would never otherwise have heard. What a betrayal of Wajda and of his subject matter to use such bad quality subtitling! Why, for the umpteenth time, is no-one prepared to pay for decent Polish to English translation?!
The Other Dog is very old and grumpy now and almost completely blind. He was diagnosed with diabetes some time last year and in the time it took to get it under control he lost his sight. He also has liver failure and is still not putting on weight, for no apparent reason. My parents have had him insured from the outset, which is lucky because the tests and consultations and overnight stays at the specialist vet's have already run to thousands of pounds. He seems perfectly happy, although he walks into cupboards a lot and occasionally trips over bumps if we forget to say 'step!'. He still eats and enjoys going for short walks and snarls at us if we tread on his tail. His ears prick up when you call him and he trots along with his tail in the air like a flag. My theory is that if he's still bright enough to try and raid the kitchen bin then he's far from ready to go yet. But I'm sad for all the people who have to put down pets which are still relatively healthy because they simply can't afford the vet's bills.
Things: my parents' house is full of things. Things they have collected over more than thirty years of marriage, things their grown-up children have left behind, things they have inherited from elderly relatives who have moved on in any sense. Some of the things are interesting: the tub chair my paternal grandmother used to sit in to have her hair set, a mysterious pastel portrait known only as 'Mrs Harford', boxes and boxes of old slides and photos. But all the interesting things are smothered in piles of linen and papers and old clothes and crumbling plastic bags full of ancient children's toys.
When somebody visits, they have to rearrange the things to make room for the extra person.
When I stay here, I feel as though I am suffocating under the weight of all the old things.
Showing posts with label Translation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Translation. Show all posts
Monday, 5 April 2010
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Freelancing pour les nuls
A friend recently dived off the solid rock of in-house employment into the icy (often shark-infested) waters of the freelance market.
We were discussing the various aspects of working from home, cancelled contracts, weekends spent hunched over a hot laptop, a slave driver of a boss who has you up at all hours to meet a deadline (psst - by the way, that boss is You).
- But doesn't it drive you a bit nuts working from home on your own??
- No it's fine, really. I only ever go two or three days at the most without speaking to anyone.
- Two or three days?!
- It might be a good idea to get a television...
I've been going it alone for about a year and a half now, but only then did I suddenly realise how horrifying it all sounds.
Fortunately, I've found this helpful - if rather patronising - brief guide on how to be a freelancer. All you need to know on how to work from home... and not go utterly nuts.
1/ Make sure you eat properly. Properly means high-fibre breakfast cereal, lean proteins and green vegetables. You will be a lean, mean translating machine. It does not include Liegois waffles, Leffe brune or Nutella.
Eat at a table or - if no table is available - in front of the television. Munching over the computer keyboard (especially while Skyping) is strictly disgusting and we would never dream of doing such a thing.
2/ Leave the house once a day. Checking your letterbox does not count. Good excuses for leaving the house include: running out of milk, buying European Voice (I know you can read it online, but just pretend), visiting the Bureau des Etrangers, going jogging. If you are having trouble getting out of the house to do exercise, try buying new sports shoes or a high-tech sweat-absorbing hat. The prospect of sport is far more enticing when it involves outfits.
3/ Speak to at least one (real) person a day. This can be the lady at the Post Office, the bloke behind the counter at the 24-hour corner shop, the customer services staff at Mobistar, etc. NB Skype chat absolutely does not count.
4/ Maintain your sartorial elegance. Try to be out of your pyjamas by noon. Make sure you own more than one pair of sweatpants. So that you can wash them at least once a week. Remember where you left your hairbrush. Compensate for lack of grooming by wearing very girly earrings.
If you find yourself pulling on a pair of old comfy jeans every day... well done. You still haven't hit the bottom. Real home-workers find jeans formal and restrictive and are longing to ease them off and hang out in baggy tracksuit bottoms.
5/ Try to moderate time spent sitting in front of the computer screen. Do not on any account spend your evenings checking Facebook, scrawling on Twitter or writing blog posts. That is what office hours are for.
6/ Build up a good network of colleagues. You can then meet for regular lunch and coffee breaks. This is an excellent procrastination strategy as it will take you at least twenty minutes to get to the meeting point and back. Plus it counts as work (especially if you speak in foreign).
7/ Build up a good network ofother layabouts people who like to drink during the week. This is a lot more important than you would think: Monday morning deadlines are pretty common, which tends to put a damper on your weekend. Then, when you get to Wednesday and are gasping for a G&T, you have someone to call on. This network may include other freelancers, students, the long-term unemployed, musicians, British people.
8/ Remember what time of day it is. This is trickier than you might think. Investing in an alarm clock is probably a good idea. If you can, try and remember the days of the week. It's nice to have an Actual Paper Diary, with little paper corners you can tear off. When things become chronologically distressing, it gives you something comforting to hold on to.
9/ Remember that none of the following are abnormal: talking to yourself, talking to the television, jumping when the phone rings, giving names to household appliances.
That's about it.
Thank goodness for that.
We were discussing the various aspects of working from home, cancelled contracts, weekends spent hunched over a hot laptop, a slave driver of a boss who has you up at all hours to meet a deadline (psst - by the way, that boss is You).
- But doesn't it drive you a bit nuts working from home on your own??
- No it's fine, really. I only ever go two or three days at the most without speaking to anyone.
- Two or three days?!
- It might be a good idea to get a television...
I've been going it alone for about a year and a half now, but only then did I suddenly realise how horrifying it all sounds.
Fortunately, I've found this helpful - if rather patronising - brief guide on how to be a freelancer. All you need to know on how to work from home... and not go utterly nuts.
1/ Make sure you eat properly. Properly means high-fibre breakfast cereal, lean proteins and green vegetables. You will be a lean, mean translating machine. It does not include Liegois waffles, Leffe brune or Nutella.
Eat at a table or - if no table is available - in front of the television. Munching over the computer keyboard (especially while Skyping) is strictly disgusting and we would never dream of doing such a thing.
2/ Leave the house once a day. Checking your letterbox does not count. Good excuses for leaving the house include: running out of milk, buying European Voice (I know you can read it online, but just pretend), visiting the Bureau des Etrangers, going jogging. If you are having trouble getting out of the house to do exercise, try buying new sports shoes or a high-tech sweat-absorbing hat. The prospect of sport is far more enticing when it involves outfits.
3/ Speak to at least one (real) person a day. This can be the lady at the Post Office, the bloke behind the counter at the 24-hour corner shop, the customer services staff at Mobistar, etc. NB Skype chat absolutely does not count.
4/ Maintain your sartorial elegance. Try to be out of your pyjamas by noon. Make sure you own more than one pair of sweatpants. So that you can wash them at least once a week. Remember where you left your hairbrush. Compensate for lack of grooming by wearing very girly earrings.
If you find yourself pulling on a pair of old comfy jeans every day... well done. You still haven't hit the bottom. Real home-workers find jeans formal and restrictive and are longing to ease them off and hang out in baggy tracksuit bottoms.
5/ Try to moderate time spent sitting in front of the computer screen. Do not on any account spend your evenings checking Facebook, scrawling on Twitter or writing blog posts. That is what office hours are for.
6/ Build up a good network of colleagues. You can then meet for regular lunch and coffee breaks. This is an excellent procrastination strategy as it will take you at least twenty minutes to get to the meeting point and back. Plus it counts as work (especially if you speak in foreign).
7/ Build up a good network of
8/ Remember what time of day it is. This is trickier than you might think. Investing in an alarm clock is probably a good idea. If you can, try and remember the days of the week. It's nice to have an Actual Paper Diary, with little paper corners you can tear off. When things become chronologically distressing, it gives you something comforting to hold on to.
9/ Remember that none of the following are abnormal: talking to yourself, talking to the television, jumping when the phone rings, giving names to household appliances.
That's about it.
Thank goodness for that.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
More translator-babble
While proofreading a legal document translated into English by a Polish translator, I found myself confronted with the puzzling phrase 'under pain of nullity'*. Now, I'm not a legal expert (shh - don't tell anyone I translate for), and the legislative world has a way of coming up with phrases that sound downright weird in plain English, so I googled it to check. The results were an entertaining wake-up call on not trusting what you read in the dictionary:
Item 1: a google search reveals confusion over the pain of nullity:
Item 2:
Polish translator no 1 asks for English version of phrase on forum. Polish translator no 2 offers
solution. Everybody happy.
Item no 3:
Confused English contractor, in receipt of a Polish-translated contract, goes online to check what it all means...
Does anyone else find this funny? Or have I just retreated into my own little translator world...
* (In Dalek voice: 'You will be deleted... you will be deleted...)
Item 1: a google search reveals confusion over the pain of nullity:
Item 2:
Polish translator no 1 asks for English version of phrase on forum. Polish translator no 2 offers
solution. Everybody happy.
Item no 3:
Confused English contractor, in receipt of a Polish-translated contract, goes online to check what it all means...
Does anyone else find this funny? Or have I just retreated into my own little translator world...
* (In Dalek voice: 'You will be deleted... you will be deleted...)
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant
Phew it's been a little while.
I'm finding that after all perhaps I'm not able to continue translating away as usual while attending classes during the day and trying not to forget my zadanie domowe.
The past two weeks have seen me at the computer well into the evening most days, and it seems I can't do the one without affecting the other: silly errors creep into my work and I blabber out the wrong verb ending in grammar classes. Of course neither of these indicate the end of the world - but my feeling that I only exist to work and no longer have any time to do the things that make me an independent human being does. It is time to get organised.
But first, I have a confession to make.
In my first week back in Kraków, I went on a Big Adventure: I followed my flatmate to her salsa class and sat on the bench watching. All those couples, lined up around the room, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of the music*... before long I was tapping my feet and swaying along with them.
Three weeks later and I've (full of nervous excitement) signed up for a class myself.
Not the same one as my flatmate of course, she's on poziom 3, while I'm only 'podstawowe'. We do have one thing in common though: both of us dread that moment immediately after the warm-up and initial solo work, when everyone pairs up and the dance instructor's voice rings out with the hated words:
Kto nie ma partnera??
Then we look at the floor, or up at the ceiling, or at something very interesting on the far wall of the dance studio, or - when I'm feeling brave - at the other one or two ladies who happen to be unaccompanied on that particular evening.
Yes, I'm afraid it's true. The social depravity of your humble author knows no bounds. Not only does she engage in the highly inappropriate practice of Speaking Polish with other Foreigners**, oh no, worse still! On a regular basis she breaches the golden benchmark of social good taste:
Being a single woman at a salsa class.
Think about it. What normal guy goes to dance classes, except under duress and on the end of a short lead pulled by his girlfriend? For a girl to show up on her own at a dance class and knock the numbers out of shape is not only inappropriate, why, it's just plain rude!
Fortunately the whole process works on the basis of rotacja. There's no point learning to dance with just one person, in the same way that you have to learn to play on different pianos, work with different interpreting systems and change your socks from time to time. Every few bars the guys move on to the next girl and I get hazy flashbacks to alcohol-fuelled university ceilidhs (or perhaps the Ukrainian Man-snatching dance)
Effectively this means that I spend two evenings a week dancing with Other People's Boyfriends.
They usually look more nervous than I do about the whole endeavour.
Anyway, it's going well, and I can do three steps now (two of which involve turning around). I practice in front of the kitchen window in the dark, while the cat dashes itself against the table legs in excitement.
Some day I hope to take my new-found skills to a dance club... but not until I've finished my Polish homework.
*generally a bizarre Latino version of Coldplay's Clocks
**when the other linguistic options are Japanese, Hungarian or American, I think you can see my point.
I'm finding that after all perhaps I'm not able to continue translating away as usual while attending classes during the day and trying not to forget my zadanie domowe.
The past two weeks have seen me at the computer well into the evening most days, and it seems I can't do the one without affecting the other: silly errors creep into my work and I blabber out the wrong verb ending in grammar classes. Of course neither of these indicate the end of the world - but my feeling that I only exist to work and no longer have any time to do the things that make me an independent human being does. It is time to get organised.
But first, I have a confession to make.
In my first week back in Kraków, I went on a Big Adventure: I followed my flatmate to her salsa class and sat on the bench watching. All those couples, lined up around the room, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of the music*... before long I was tapping my feet and swaying along with them.
Three weeks later and I've (full of nervous excitement) signed up for a class myself.
Not the same one as my flatmate of course, she's on poziom 3, while I'm only 'podstawowe'. We do have one thing in common though: both of us dread that moment immediately after the warm-up and initial solo work, when everyone pairs up and the dance instructor's voice rings out with the hated words:
Kto nie ma partnera??
Then we look at the floor, or up at the ceiling, or at something very interesting on the far wall of the dance studio, or - when I'm feeling brave - at the other one or two ladies who happen to be unaccompanied on that particular evening.
Yes, I'm afraid it's true. The social depravity of your humble author knows no bounds. Not only does she engage in the highly inappropriate practice of Speaking Polish with other Foreigners**, oh no, worse still! On a regular basis she breaches the golden benchmark of social good taste:
Being a single woman at a salsa class.
Think about it. What normal guy goes to dance classes, except under duress and on the end of a short lead pulled by his girlfriend? For a girl to show up on her own at a dance class and knock the numbers out of shape is not only inappropriate, why, it's just plain rude!
Fortunately the whole process works on the basis of rotacja. There's no point learning to dance with just one person, in the same way that you have to learn to play on different pianos, work with different interpreting systems and change your socks from time to time. Every few bars the guys move on to the next girl and I get hazy flashbacks to alcohol-fuelled university ceilidhs (or perhaps the Ukrainian Man-snatching dance)
Effectively this means that I spend two evenings a week dancing with Other People's Boyfriends.
They usually look more nervous than I do about the whole endeavour.
Anyway, it's going well, and I can do three steps now (two of which involve turning around). I practice in front of the kitchen window in the dark, while the cat dashes itself against the table legs in excitement.
Some day I hope to take my new-found skills to a dance club... but not until I've finished my Polish homework.
*generally a bizarre Latino version of Coldplay's Clocks
**when the other linguistic options are Japanese, Hungarian or American, I think you can see my point.
Friday, 20 February 2009
Language post
*Attention* Language geek post follows.
Every so often there are a spate of articles in the British press about how bad we are at learning foreign languages. These are usually in opinion columns and usually take the form of a sort of nagging warning: 'uh... look, guys... we might be missing something'.
I've noticed a couple in the past few days (ok, people have sent me links. although naturally I read ALL the papers in four languages every day like a good little linguist. Including the finance sections. it's true, honest it is).
Article 1: Foreigners translating into English because we're not clever enough to do it ourselves; the Times, Feb 16:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article5741122.ece
Article 2: Not enough native English interpreters in the EU; BBC News, Feb 19:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7900276.stm
This leads me to the conclusion that I might be in the only profession in the current world climate in which there is actually a real demand*.
Saints preserve us, I may actually have made a good career choice!
I would write my own article, but I have a plane to catch. I anticipate No Problems At All getting to Balice airport in the snow thank you.
Oh yes and the fun stuff?
Tłusty Cwartek**: Four at last count (although cheated by eating leftover two for breakfast the next morning). I scored one free doughnut in 'Pisanie/Słuchanie' class at school; my flatmate scored two from her workplace and one at salsa class (I really have to sign up to salsa dancing).
The police protest: A police protest against the removal of their right to retire after 15 years. Lots of big bangs which the other dog would not have liked. Also, they were in my way on the way home. Last time I protested about anything was as a student in Paris. I think that's the only way to do it really.
NATO summit: lots of helicopters over the town centre and security guards on the Rynek. Very exciting... in any case, anything loud enough to interrupt classes is naturally a plus.
School: Six hours so far, including gramatyka, mowienie, słownictwo... I'm discovering I may have been hasty in my judgements of my fellow students: not everyone is of Polish origin and not everyone is engaged to a Polish girl. And did you know there is an excellent Polonistyka department at the University of Tokyo?
We have just spent the morning learning how to apologise and to forgive people in Polish (przepraszanie and wybaczenie). This will be extremely useful given my propensity to pharmacy and tram rage. Particular emphasis was placed on the right expression and accent.
Notably, our repertoire now includes przepraszanie:
z lekceważeniem
ze złością
niegrzecznie
arogancko
z drwiną
And now I really must go and put these into practice in the queue for check-in...
*apart from useful things like teachers, doctors, reality tv show stars, etc.
** Polish pancake day but the Thursday before - start of the last week of carnival, only with doughnuts instead of pancakes. Just a light snack then.
Every so often there are a spate of articles in the British press about how bad we are at learning foreign languages. These are usually in opinion columns and usually take the form of a sort of nagging warning: 'uh... look, guys... we might be missing something'.
I've noticed a couple in the past few days (ok, people have sent me links. although naturally I read ALL the papers in four languages every day like a good little linguist. Including the finance sections. it's true, honest it is).
Article 1: Foreigners translating into English because we're not clever enough to do it ourselves; the Times, Feb 16:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article5741122.ece
Article 2: Not enough native English interpreters in the EU; BBC News, Feb 19:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7900276.stm
This leads me to the conclusion that I might be in the only profession in the current world climate in which there is actually a real demand*.
Saints preserve us, I may actually have made a good career choice!
I would write my own article, but I have a plane to catch. I anticipate No Problems At All getting to Balice airport in the snow thank you.
Oh yes and the fun stuff?
Tłusty Cwartek**: Four at last count (although cheated by eating leftover two for breakfast the next morning). I scored one free doughnut in 'Pisanie/Słuchanie' class at school; my flatmate scored two from her workplace and one at salsa class (I really have to sign up to salsa dancing).
The police protest: A police protest against the removal of their right to retire after 15 years. Lots of big bangs which the other dog would not have liked. Also, they were in my way on the way home. Last time I protested about anything was as a student in Paris. I think that's the only way to do it really.
NATO summit: lots of helicopters over the town centre and security guards on the Rynek. Very exciting... in any case, anything loud enough to interrupt classes is naturally a plus.
School: Six hours so far, including gramatyka, mowienie, słownictwo... I'm discovering I may have been hasty in my judgements of my fellow students: not everyone is of Polish origin and not everyone is engaged to a Polish girl. And did you know there is an excellent Polonistyka department at the University of Tokyo?
We have just spent the morning learning how to apologise and to forgive people in Polish (przepraszanie and wybaczenie). This will be extremely useful given my propensity to pharmacy and tram rage. Particular emphasis was placed on the right expression and accent.
Notably, our repertoire now includes przepraszanie:
z lekceważeniem
ze złością
niegrzecznie
arogancko
z drwiną
And now I really must go and put these into practice in the queue for check-in...
*apart from useful things like teachers, doctors, reality tv show stars, etc.
** Polish pancake day but the Thursday before - start of the last week of carnival, only with doughnuts instead of pancakes. Just a light snack then.
Friday, 30 January 2009
Polish word of the day: 0012009
I've decided to resurrect 'Polish Word of the Day' - ostensibly to get some culture into an otherwise flagging blog and give Anna a run for her money but basically because it's still by far and away the biggest search hit* and I Want Stats.
Today's Polish Word of the Day is 'pakiet internetowy'. Or even 'pakiet transmiji danych'. (I know that's actually several words. But one single concept).
This is a magic bean that you can bolt on to your sim card or phone contract (if you were the kind of person who stayed in one place long enough to have a phone contract), which allows you to have internet wherever you go. Hurrah, and finally, freedom from sitting in front of the screen! Not only can one check/receive emails on the move (thus avoiding that annoying situation where you have No Work for 48 hours, yet the minute you go outside for a walk/shopping/just to remember what daylight looks like, four million requests arrive, all of which are answered by ... 'never mind, I found another translator' by the time you come back).
Also it would allow me to update my facebook status and get a little mobile phone sign next to it, just to confuse all my friends who work in the city...
Having decided that mobile internet was going to be essential to my professional survival over the next five months, I set out for Carphone Warehouse.
- Sure, said the first guy. You can buy a Blackberry handset (costs a fortune but it'll be worth it), add a SIM-only contract and then cancel it and slip in your Polish SIM once you get over there. No problems!
I spent an evening calculating how many pages of EU regulatory notifications I would have to translate before earning back the £250+ a Blackberry handset would cost me, and whether it would in fact be better to spend this money on minor essentials such as my first month's rent and deposit (I probably lose almost this amount per month in missed jobs when I'm away from my email for whatever reason).
I then passed many happy hours trying to decipher the various websites of Simplus, Era and Blackberry Polska. All excellent vocabulary practice.
The next day I went to the Sevenoaks Mobile Phone Centre. A very smug salesman was very busy with a middle-aged customer. I checked the queue at Phones 4 U and came back about twenty minutes later.
Blackberry? No, you can't do that. It's got to be configured you see - all of ours are locked to Vodafone. If you put a new sim in the email won't work.
You could try the new Nokia...
great!
... but it'll cost you 300quid.
Oh.
Back to the drawing board.
I tried Carphone Warehouse again and talked to a different salesperson.
- You know what? she said; I think maybe for your purposes an email phone isn't the best way forward. Why not get a netbook (greedily I took in the row of tiny 7" Asus laptops, all heavily discounted - hurrah for credit-crunch Britain) and use a PAYG dongle for mobile internet? Then all you have to do is put in your Polish sim when you go abroad!
Wow! A new toy! And wouldn't it look bad-ass in the booth?! (not that I'm in the booth all that often, but who knows, maybe a magic netbook would give me special professional powers)
I wanted one.
I went home and rang the 3G sales line to ask about their mobile broadband roaming rates.
- Um... I'm not actually going to buy anything today but I'd like to... can I still ask you some questions?
I could feel the guy's heart sink at the lost commission, but he gamely agreed to chat to me.
- No... no it doesn't work like that. All our dongles are locked to 3G. You'd have to have it re-configured for a Polish sim. You're basically in a Catch-22 situation** really: if you get an English contract you have to pay massive roaming fees, and if you get a Polish one... well, you're stuck with it for eighteen months.
Oh crap.
Back to the drawing board. Worse still, no new toy for me.
I decided to leave it until I actually got to Poland and then go and talk to the nice guy in the Plus GSM store. And then possibly to the dodgy guy down the road just off Starowiślna, under the sign saying 'Odblokowanie komórki'.
Anyone got a better idea?
*with the exception of anything about Polish men. You'd be surprised. Actually, maybe I should tag all my posts with 'Polish men' and gain a whole new reader demographic.
**I've heard that the French equivalent to this phrase is 'une situation Corneillienne': can anyone give me an Italian or Polish version?
Today's Polish Word of the Day is 'pakiet internetowy'. Or even 'pakiet transmiji danych'. (I know that's actually several words. But one single concept).
This is a magic bean that you can bolt on to your sim card or phone contract (if you were the kind of person who stayed in one place long enough to have a phone contract), which allows you to have internet wherever you go. Hurrah, and finally, freedom from sitting in front of the screen! Not only can one check/receive emails on the move (thus avoiding that annoying situation where you have No Work for 48 hours, yet the minute you go outside for a walk/shopping/just to remember what daylight looks like, four million requests arrive, all of which are answered by ... 'never mind, I found another translator' by the time you come back).
Also it would allow me to update my facebook status and get a little mobile phone sign next to it, just to confuse all my friends who work in the city...
Having decided that mobile internet was going to be essential to my professional survival over the next five months, I set out for Carphone Warehouse.
- Sure, said the first guy. You can buy a Blackberry handset (costs a fortune but it'll be worth it), add a SIM-only contract and then cancel it and slip in your Polish SIM once you get over there. No problems!
I spent an evening calculating how many pages of EU regulatory notifications I would have to translate before earning back the £250+ a Blackberry handset would cost me, and whether it would in fact be better to spend this money on minor essentials such as my first month's rent and deposit (I probably lose almost this amount per month in missed jobs when I'm away from my email for whatever reason).
I then passed many happy hours trying to decipher the various websites of Simplus, Era and Blackberry Polska. All excellent vocabulary practice.
The next day I went to the Sevenoaks Mobile Phone Centre. A very smug salesman was very busy with a middle-aged customer. I checked the queue at Phones 4 U and came back about twenty minutes later.
Blackberry? No, you can't do that. It's got to be configured you see - all of ours are locked to Vodafone. If you put a new sim in the email won't work.
You could try the new Nokia...
great!
... but it'll cost you 300quid.
Oh.
Back to the drawing board.
I tried Carphone Warehouse again and talked to a different salesperson.
- You know what? she said; I think maybe for your purposes an email phone isn't the best way forward. Why not get a netbook (greedily I took in the row of tiny 7" Asus laptops, all heavily discounted - hurrah for credit-crunch Britain) and use a PAYG dongle for mobile internet? Then all you have to do is put in your Polish sim when you go abroad!
Wow! A new toy! And wouldn't it look bad-ass in the booth?! (not that I'm in the booth all that often, but who knows, maybe a magic netbook would give me special professional powers)
I wanted one.
I went home and rang the 3G sales line to ask about their mobile broadband roaming rates.
- Um... I'm not actually going to buy anything today but I'd like to... can I still ask you some questions?
I could feel the guy's heart sink at the lost commission, but he gamely agreed to chat to me.
- No... no it doesn't work like that. All our dongles are locked to 3G. You'd have to have it re-configured for a Polish sim. You're basically in a Catch-22 situation** really: if you get an English contract you have to pay massive roaming fees, and if you get a Polish one... well, you're stuck with it for eighteen months.
Oh crap.
Back to the drawing board. Worse still, no new toy for me.
I decided to leave it until I actually got to Poland and then go and talk to the nice guy in the Plus GSM store. And then possibly to the dodgy guy down the road just off Starowiślna, under the sign saying 'Odblokowanie komórki'.
Anyone got a better idea?
*with the exception of anything about Polish men. You'd be surprised. Actually, maybe I should tag all my posts with 'Polish men' and gain a whole new reader demographic.
**I've heard that the French equivalent to this phrase is 'une situation Corneillienne': can anyone give me an Italian or Polish version?
Monday, 24 November 2008
Just a formality
One of the hardest things in any foreign language is learning to use the formal register.
swumph!
That was the sound of thousands (read 'one or two') of readers simultaneously clicking their browser windows shut.
French is ok: anything French is normally work and therefore 'vous'. Unless you're elderly, or married to a diplomat, anyone you meet socially is 'tu' (although traditionally apparently it's a bit naughty to ask guys if you can se tutoyer: so that's one to remember when you're out hunting for a sugar daddy on Bvd St Germain). Having said that, it's now a bit trendy to call your colleagues 'tu', especially in a translation company where everyone is under thirty and wears jeans to work. It leaves you a bit confused with older colleagues and the boss's PA... will they be offended because you've made them feel old??
Polish: well, everything about Polish is hard. You can forgive a stupid foreigner a couple of mistakes here and there.
No, the really complicated one is Italian. If you learnt Italian at university, you probably studied abroad on the Erasmus scheme, and you probably hung out with lots of long-haired groovy sociology students who called everyone 'tu'. If you went to a British or American university back home, your professors were probably relaxed enough to slip into the informal at the earliest possible moment (not wanting to distract from important things, like Italo Calvino and Marco Tullio Giordana, with complicated things like personal pronouns).
In the formal, pronouns work in a similar way to Polish: the formal personal pronoun is the same as the third person singular, except with only one gender: everyone is a feminine 'Lei'. Having said that, there's also a very archaic form: 'essi', which I am not too sure about.
Basically you are calling the person 'Her' all the time (hmm - like a Scottish laird: 'is Himself at home?), and conjugating as appropriate (la, le, with or without capital letters).
Now, when you're applying to work for an Italian firm, you send them an email in polite Italian, they email you a test translation in polite Italian, you complete it, they give you a score and ask about your rates, etc, all in nice polite (hellishly complicated) formal Italian. Cordiali saluti all round.
When a slightly harassed project manager sends you your first job request, it's still all 'La prego di consegnare ...' and 'Le mando i files ...' ecc.
And you continue - watching your step, because the more correspondance is exchanged, the more chances you have to slip up - with the polite forms of address.
I can't even begin to list the possibilities for disaster here. Imagine you are a professional linguist with an image to maintain. Imagine that - unlike me, ahem - you have up until now managed a steady flow of dialogue without any typos, or mistaken endings, or bent genders.
Now you are getting to know your project manager better, you want to build up an easy working rapport with them, but at the same time maintain a professional distance. Do you stay formal and risk sounding archaic (imagining mirthful project managers reading out bits of stilted Italian from their English correspondants to peals of laughter)? Or do you slip into 'tu' form and hope they don't notice?
I was doing my best to keep a formal tone, when suddenly, the project manager starts calling me 'tu' (rather offhandedly - 'when you translate, make sure you check this and this, and then spellcheck, and check for uniformity' and so on). Relieved, I started using the informal too, along with all the accompanying dry rot of modern email correspondance (lower cases, lack of accents, etc).
Suddenly: wham! We're back in the formal, effectively Szanowna Pani - ing each other all over again.
Panic!
Have I offended her? Should I have stayed virtuously formal while she slipped into the second person? Have I won or lost respect through some complex pronomial game of which I was not aware? Did I use some anachronism of antique Italian and is she mocking me??
Find these answers to these and more in the next exciting episode of Pinolona's translation life...*
*Welding glossary not included.
swumph!
That was the sound of thousands (read 'one or two') of readers simultaneously clicking their browser windows shut.
French is ok: anything French is normally work and therefore 'vous'. Unless you're elderly, or married to a diplomat, anyone you meet socially is 'tu' (although traditionally apparently it's a bit naughty to ask guys if you can se tutoyer: so that's one to remember when you're out hunting for a sugar daddy on Bvd St Germain). Having said that, it's now a bit trendy to call your colleagues 'tu', especially in a translation company where everyone is under thirty and wears jeans to work. It leaves you a bit confused with older colleagues and the boss's PA... will they be offended because you've made them feel old??
Polish: well, everything about Polish is hard. You can forgive a stupid foreigner a couple of mistakes here and there.
No, the really complicated one is Italian. If you learnt Italian at university, you probably studied abroad on the Erasmus scheme, and you probably hung out with lots of long-haired groovy sociology students who called everyone 'tu'. If you went to a British or American university back home, your professors were probably relaxed enough to slip into the informal at the earliest possible moment (not wanting to distract from important things, like Italo Calvino and Marco Tullio Giordana, with complicated things like personal pronouns).
In the formal, pronouns work in a similar way to Polish: the formal personal pronoun is the same as the third person singular, except with only one gender: everyone is a feminine 'Lei'. Having said that, there's also a very archaic form: 'essi', which I am not too sure about.
Basically you are calling the person 'Her' all the time (hmm - like a Scottish laird: 'is Himself at home?), and conjugating as appropriate (la, le, with or without capital letters).
Now, when you're applying to work for an Italian firm, you send them an email in polite Italian, they email you a test translation in polite Italian, you complete it, they give you a score and ask about your rates, etc, all in nice polite (hellishly complicated) formal Italian. Cordiali saluti all round.
When a slightly harassed project manager sends you your first job request, it's still all 'La prego di consegnare ...' and 'Le mando i files ...' ecc.
And you continue - watching your step, because the more correspondance is exchanged, the more chances you have to slip up - with the polite forms of address.
I can't even begin to list the possibilities for disaster here. Imagine you are a professional linguist with an image to maintain. Imagine that - unlike me, ahem - you have up until now managed a steady flow of dialogue without any typos, or mistaken endings, or bent genders.
Now you are getting to know your project manager better, you want to build up an easy working rapport with them, but at the same time maintain a professional distance. Do you stay formal and risk sounding archaic (imagining mirthful project managers reading out bits of stilted Italian from their English correspondants to peals of laughter)? Or do you slip into 'tu' form and hope they don't notice?
I was doing my best to keep a formal tone, when suddenly, the project manager starts calling me 'tu' (rather offhandedly - 'when you translate, make sure you check this and this, and then spellcheck, and check for uniformity' and so on). Relieved, I started using the informal too, along with all the accompanying dry rot of modern email correspondance (lower cases, lack of accents, etc).
Suddenly: wham! We're back in the formal, effectively Szanowna Pani - ing each other all over again.
Panic!
Have I offended her? Should I have stayed virtuously formal while she slipped into the second person? Have I won or lost respect through some complex pronomial game of which I was not aware? Did I use some anachronism of antique Italian and is she mocking me??
Find these answers to these and more in the next exciting episode of Pinolona's translation life...*
*Welding glossary not included.
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
Super Optyk
Cisza pinolony trwa...
I've been lax about the blog for a while and now the word 'election' is but a distant memory (except in a rather lame yet naughty xenophobic joke relating to the Manggha Centre for Japanese Culture. What's that scraping sound? Oops, must be the bottom of the barrel.).
Talking of lame jokes, here's a good example:
A Pole goes for an eye test, and the optician asks him to read out the bottom line on the chart:
- Sure! S...Z...C... Hey- I went to school with that guy!
I've been having trouble focusing beyond the middle distance (very useful if I were acting in an ITV Sunday night detective series, but sadly not helpful for reading cinema screens, Departures boards, etc.). On the plus side, I can use my ever-increasing myopia to excuse my appallingly poor hand - eye coordination (although my foot-mouth coordination is pretty much spot-on). And if I take half an hour to find a place it's because I'm too blind to read the road signs. Absolutely nothing to do with my sketchy Polish reading comprehension.
Kids, what your mother told you was true. Don't read under the duvet with a torch, don't spend all evening in front of the computer screen chatting on Skype, and Never, Ever, translate Anything.
To cut a long story (relatively) short, I have to go to the optician. My boss told me there was an English-speaking one near the Rynek, so at lunchtime I stepped out into the rain to try and find it. I followed his directions, and, Success! There did indeed appear to be an optical establishment in the place he described to me. I pushed open the door.
-I've been in Poland six months... I began
-No problem, you can speak in English (an encouraging sign)
I asked her a couple more questions and then tried to book a test.
- Oh I'm sorry. Here we only sell glasses. We don't test.
Three doors down, I found another optician. The sign directed me through a passage and up some stairs. Wafts of early-90s Central European rock mingled with the damp smell of the carpet. Grainy posters photocopied onto yellow A4 advertised student discounts. As I approached the reception desk I thought of an auto-repair centre near Oxted where I temped once. The guy behind the desk was clearly not the English-speaking optician recommended by my boss. We established that I could obtain contact lenses without a prescription, and that I could book a test over the phone (i.e. Not Now) and then I backed out through the door slowly and calmly before clattering at top speed back down the stairs and out of the passage.
I have since decided to give up on my boss's directions and take matters into my own hands. I mean, I don't have to find an English-speaking optician, do I? Surely even my limited Polish skills can handle a simple eye test! It's just a matter of 'read the letters, focus on the red and the green, wiencej, mniej, lepiej', right?
How hard can it be...?
To be continued...
I've been lax about the blog for a while and now the word 'election' is but a distant memory (except in a rather lame yet naughty xenophobic joke relating to the Manggha Centre for Japanese Culture. What's that scraping sound? Oops, must be the bottom of the barrel.).
Talking of lame jokes, here's a good example:
A Pole goes for an eye test, and the optician asks him to read out the bottom line on the chart:
- Sure! S...Z...C... Hey- I went to school with that guy!
I've been having trouble focusing beyond the middle distance (very useful if I were acting in an ITV Sunday night detective series, but sadly not helpful for reading cinema screens, Departures boards, etc.). On the plus side, I can use my ever-increasing myopia to excuse my appallingly poor hand - eye coordination (although my foot-mouth coordination is pretty much spot-on). And if I take half an hour to find a place it's because I'm too blind to read the road signs. Absolutely nothing to do with my sketchy Polish reading comprehension.
Kids, what your mother told you was true. Don't read under the duvet with a torch, don't spend all evening in front of the computer screen chatting on Skype, and Never, Ever, translate Anything.
To cut a long story (relatively) short, I have to go to the optician. My boss told me there was an English-speaking one near the Rynek, so at lunchtime I stepped out into the rain to try and find it. I followed his directions, and, Success! There did indeed appear to be an optical establishment in the place he described to me. I pushed open the door.
-I've been in Poland six months... I began
-No problem, you can speak in English (an encouraging sign)
I asked her a couple more questions and then tried to book a test.
- Oh I'm sorry. Here we only sell glasses. We don't test.
Three doors down, I found another optician. The sign directed me through a passage and up some stairs. Wafts of early-90s Central European rock mingled with the damp smell of the carpet. Grainy posters photocopied onto yellow A4 advertised student discounts. As I approached the reception desk I thought of an auto-repair centre near Oxted where I temped once. The guy behind the desk was clearly not the English-speaking optician recommended by my boss. We established that I could obtain contact lenses without a prescription, and that I could book a test over the phone (i.e. Not Now) and then I backed out through the door slowly and calmly before clattering at top speed back down the stairs and out of the passage.
I have since decided to give up on my boss's directions and take matters into my own hands. I mean, I don't have to find an English-speaking optician, do I? Surely even my limited Polish skills can handle a simple eye test! It's just a matter of 'read the letters, focus on the red and the green, wiencej, mniej, lepiej', right?
How hard can it be...?
To be continued...
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Translation: The Truth...
These are some of the useful things you learn in translator school:
- Maintain consistency of register
- Always, always reference the European Commission Style Guide (even if you didn't use it)
- Have at your disposal a little drop-down menu of At Least Four synonyms for each noun, expression or adjective, from which you can then select the most appropriate
- Specialise in Finance, for this (logically) is where the money lies
- Buy a Thesaurus and always carry a copy of The Economist and/or The Financial Times (even if you don't read them)
- Start bullet points with a capital letter and Never punctuate them, [!]
- Develop a habit of talking very slowly in order to choose the most appropriate expression
And here are the things they don't tell you:
- You will become intimately acquainted with the mysterious wiles of Microsoft Word.
- Translation software is NOT your friend
- You will spend more time jiggling text boxes and re-formatting images than actually translating
- Your fingers will acquire a muscular memory for typing the phrases 'In terms of' and 'With regard to'
- You will stay up late working to deadlines, but you will never be as glamorous as the journalists
- You will end up proofreading Everything written in English by a foreign person, from a friend of a friend's CV to the neighbour's kid's homework, but you won't quite have got it right
- Everyone in the world will assume they can do your job better than you.
Rant over. Hols tomorrow.
- Maintain consistency of register
- Always, always reference the European Commission Style Guide (even if you didn't use it)
- Have at your disposal a little drop-down menu of At Least Four synonyms for each noun, expression or adjective, from which you can then select the most appropriate
- Specialise in Finance, for this (logically) is where the money lies
- Buy a Thesaurus and always carry a copy of The Economist and/or The Financial Times (even if you don't read them)
- Start bullet points with a capital letter and Never punctuate them, [!]
- Develop a habit of talking very slowly in order to choose the most appropriate expression
And here are the things they don't tell you:
- You will become intimately acquainted with the mysterious wiles of Microsoft Word.
- Translation software is NOT your friend
- You will spend more time jiggling text boxes and re-formatting images than actually translating
- Your fingers will acquire a muscular memory for typing the phrases 'In terms of' and 'With regard to'
- You will stay up late working to deadlines, but you will never be as glamorous as the journalists
- You will end up proofreading Everything written in English by a foreign person, from a friend of a friend's CV to the neighbour's kid's homework, but you won't quite have got it right
- Everyone in the world will assume they can do your job better than you.
Rant over. Hols tomorrow.
Monday, 30 July 2007
The results of reading thrillers on a 4 1/2 hour train journey
The computer screen flickered into life, and a window opened, displaying a page of mysterious characters.
F was mystified. How ever would she decipher the code? She clicked on the browser icon and another window opened, the cursor flashing in the search engine tab. Quickly she typed (a skill she had picked up years ago on her Father's old computer), and hit 'return', holding her breath as the ancient Notebook re-paginated.
What appeared before her eyes caused her to gasp out loud. No! Surely not? Slow realisation dawned on her.
The entire text was written in French.
Of course: it all began to fall into place. She picked up the phone and dialled 'Paris, France'.
"Bonjour? Hello?" said the far-off voice on the other end of the line.
"J'ai vu le texte. I've seen the text. Vous avez le glossaire? You have the glossary?"
There was a long pause.
"Who wrote the text?"
The million-dollar question.
The other voice cleared its throat.
"The text was written by an ancient brotherhood, who have infiltrated industry throughout the world. They may not all know each other, but they are united by a common symbolology, incomprehensible to the rest of humanity. They may be recognised by their problemes de grammaire, grandmother problems, and their fautes d'ortographe, garden-drawing faults. Perhaps you have heard of them: they are known as Engineers".
Engineers! F had often heard stories of this mysterious sect, but she would never have imagined that they were active and thriving in the modern world.
The voice on the phone continued:
You have eight hours to decipher the text and solve the code. Only you can do it. Otherwise this ancient brotherhood will take over the world. You know Franklin D. Roosevelt? An engineer. Galileo? He was an engineer too. The sect is more pervasive than we ever imagined. We are relying on you.
F drew a deep breath, and began to type...
To be continued...
F was mystified. How ever would she decipher the code? She clicked on the browser icon and another window opened, the cursor flashing in the search engine tab. Quickly she typed (a skill she had picked up years ago on her Father's old computer), and hit 'return', holding her breath as the ancient Notebook re-paginated.
What appeared before her eyes caused her to gasp out loud. No! Surely not? Slow realisation dawned on her.
The entire text was written in French.
Of course: it all began to fall into place. She picked up the phone and dialled 'Paris, France'.
"Bonjour? Hello?" said the far-off voice on the other end of the line.
"J'ai vu le texte. I've seen the text. Vous avez le glossaire? You have the glossary?"
There was a long pause.
"Who wrote the text?"
The million-dollar question.
The other voice cleared its throat.
"The text was written by an ancient brotherhood, who have infiltrated industry throughout the world. They may not all know each other, but they are united by a common symbolology, incomprehensible to the rest of humanity. They may be recognised by their problemes de grammaire, grandmother problems, and their fautes d'ortographe, garden-drawing faults. Perhaps you have heard of them: they are known as Engineers".
Engineers! F had often heard stories of this mysterious sect, but she would never have imagined that they were active and thriving in the modern world.
The voice on the phone continued:
You have eight hours to decipher the text and solve the code. Only you can do it. Otherwise this ancient brotherhood will take over the world. You know Franklin D. Roosevelt? An engineer. Galileo? He was an engineer too. The sect is more pervasive than we ever imagined. We are relying on you.
F drew a deep breath, and began to type...
To be continued...
Friday, 27 July 2007
Re-match
My boss has been back from holiday this week, so I've had to re-learn the art of social interaction at work. Halfway through Monday morning, he looked up from the computer where he had been proofreading and exclaimed: 'This is all Mumbo Jumbo, isn't it?!'. And, not being an automotive engineer myself, I had to agree.
There's a children's game where you have to read a text, any text (e.g. the back of the cereal packet) out loud, replacing every noun with the word 'pants', all the while keeping a straight face. Occasionally terminology feels like that.
Today I went back to the Bad Obwarzanki Lady for a re-match. I smiled, greeted her, and ordered one apple and a small bottle of mineral water (this requires a different case ending. Very smooth). Before I got to the end she butted in with 'gazowananiegazowana?'. But by her tone of voice I could tell she was admitting defeat. I made sure to give the closest possible to the correct change, to indicate that I had understood (confusingly, the till in the kiosk displays three different figures, none of which are related to price. They may have some kind of cosmic significance that I am unaware of.). There was a certain amount of impatient tutting behind me, but I was too pleased with myself to pay very much attention.
Clothes are still a hot topic at the language school, proving revelatory in some cases ('At the weekend, Ben likes to wear a dress'). I can now describe from head to toe what I am wearing, including the colour plus one useful adjective from a list of six. I can also ask other people what they are wearing.
This skill will be invaluable if I ever decide to set up an X-rated chat line in Kraków.
And finally, I have discovered something I don't have to conjugate: the humble kiwi fruit. (in Polish: kiwi. Plural: kiwi).
I can like or dislike the kiwi, eat the kiwi or not eat the kiwi, live in a kiwi, give a present to the kiwi, go to the cinema with the kiwi and even take the kiwi for a walk.
If things don't work out with the Sacristan, the kiwi is going to become my new Best Friend.
There's a children's game where you have to read a text, any text (e.g. the back of the cereal packet) out loud, replacing every noun with the word 'pants', all the while keeping a straight face. Occasionally terminology feels like that.
Today I went back to the Bad Obwarzanki Lady for a re-match. I smiled, greeted her, and ordered one apple and a small bottle of mineral water (this requires a different case ending. Very smooth). Before I got to the end she butted in with 'gazowananiegazowana?'. But by her tone of voice I could tell she was admitting defeat. I made sure to give the closest possible to the correct change, to indicate that I had understood (confusingly, the till in the kiosk displays three different figures, none of which are related to price. They may have some kind of cosmic significance that I am unaware of.). There was a certain amount of impatient tutting behind me, but I was too pleased with myself to pay very much attention.
Clothes are still a hot topic at the language school, proving revelatory in some cases ('At the weekend, Ben likes to wear a dress'). I can now describe from head to toe what I am wearing, including the colour plus one useful adjective from a list of six. I can also ask other people what they are wearing.
This skill will be invaluable if I ever decide to set up an X-rated chat line in Kraków.
And finally, I have discovered something I don't have to conjugate: the humble kiwi fruit. (in Polish: kiwi. Plural: kiwi).
I can like or dislike the kiwi, eat the kiwi or not eat the kiwi, live in a kiwi, give a present to the kiwi, go to the cinema with the kiwi and even take the kiwi for a walk.
If things don't work out with the Sacristan, the kiwi is going to become my new Best Friend.
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Wheels on fire
After a week or so of fine weather, my boss has started cycling into work instead of taking the tram.
He does it very professionally, with a change of clothes, special shoes, lights and helmet. This is because 'you can't just hop on the bike in the morning'. I feel rather guilty and say nothing, thinking of the four years I spent in St Andrews doing exactly that, usually with head-on rain (if not salt spray) and cross-winds. The extreme of my cycling folly involved a rather wobbly trajectory down Abbey Street after rehearsal with a good 25cl of chinon blanc sloshing around my insides, an electric keyboard under one arm and twelve rolls of Kitten-soft swinging from the handlebars.
Last reports say my bike is gently rusting away outside the library. Faithful companion, I salute you.
Being unable to shift a longing for the breeze in my hair, the road beneath my wheels and misguided insects careening into my eyeballs, I rather frivolously 'invested' in a pair of rollerblades.
After my experiences with balance and coordination outside Tesco, I ought to have known better.
I've now been four times to practise up and down the path along the Wisla, and I have made an important discovery: asphalt is not smooth!
I can now chart every bump, node, crack and change in surface texture between Galeria Kazimierz and St Norberts Abbey. Small children on bicycles and joggers- old, fat joggers- frequently overtake me. Still, I'm taking no chances, and the knee pads, elbow pads and wrist guards are staying firmly in place, although the statistical chances of a fatal accident at speeds of under 2mph are low. A special kind of panic is generated when I find myself having to go into the cycle lane to overtake pedestrians: what if a bike should come silently whooshing up behind me? How do I get back into the pedestrian lane without crossing the path of one of them?
I'm proud of our efforts with eco-friendly transport. We must be the lowest-carbon translators in town. Our specialism? Automotive engineering...
My boss's cycle lamps actually reminded me of something which happened to me back in St Andrews. I never managed to keep a set of lights for more than about a month without them being pilfered by some young hoodie (read 'first year med. student') outside the Whey Pat Tavern after training. So I was frequently stopped by the police, whose presence in such a quiet town was impressive (although this never stopped my bike lamps from disappearing).
One evening, I was peacefully puffing and wheezing up Abbey Street with several kilos of fencing equipment lashed across my shoulders, when a large van swerved out of the darkness in front of me. My habitual stream of post-Romantic French poetry was cut short when I drew up on the inside of the offending vehicle and saw that it was driven by two policemen.
- I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you stop. You can't ride without lights after dark.
I was already late for training.
- Well how about a lift then?
The first policeman was just muttering something about insurance, when his colleague leaned over from the driver's seat:
- Where is 'training'?
I explained where the Sports Centre was.
- Oh that's just on our way: hop in the back
And they came round to help me in with my bike, while I took a seat on one of the benches and grabbed a helpful loop hanging from the ceiling. There was an amusing barred-effect window between the front cabin and the back benches. We were halfway down Argyle Street when the phone rang:
- Flic, where the hell are you?
- Are you sitting down? Sit down. It's an interesting story...
He does it very professionally, with a change of clothes, special shoes, lights and helmet. This is because 'you can't just hop on the bike in the morning'. I feel rather guilty and say nothing, thinking of the four years I spent in St Andrews doing exactly that, usually with head-on rain (if not salt spray) and cross-winds. The extreme of my cycling folly involved a rather wobbly trajectory down Abbey Street after rehearsal with a good 25cl of chinon blanc sloshing around my insides, an electric keyboard under one arm and twelve rolls of Kitten-soft swinging from the handlebars.
Last reports say my bike is gently rusting away outside the library. Faithful companion, I salute you.
Being unable to shift a longing for the breeze in my hair, the road beneath my wheels and misguided insects careening into my eyeballs, I rather frivolously 'invested' in a pair of rollerblades.
After my experiences with balance and coordination outside Tesco, I ought to have known better.
I've now been four times to practise up and down the path along the Wisla, and I have made an important discovery: asphalt is not smooth!
I can now chart every bump, node, crack and change in surface texture between Galeria Kazimierz and St Norberts Abbey. Small children on bicycles and joggers- old, fat joggers- frequently overtake me. Still, I'm taking no chances, and the knee pads, elbow pads and wrist guards are staying firmly in place, although the statistical chances of a fatal accident at speeds of under 2mph are low. A special kind of panic is generated when I find myself having to go into the cycle lane to overtake pedestrians: what if a bike should come silently whooshing up behind me? How do I get back into the pedestrian lane without crossing the path of one of them?
I'm proud of our efforts with eco-friendly transport. We must be the lowest-carbon translators in town. Our specialism? Automotive engineering...
My boss's cycle lamps actually reminded me of something which happened to me back in St Andrews. I never managed to keep a set of lights for more than about a month without them being pilfered by some young hoodie (read 'first year med. student') outside the Whey Pat Tavern after training. So I was frequently stopped by the police, whose presence in such a quiet town was impressive (although this never stopped my bike lamps from disappearing).
One evening, I was peacefully puffing and wheezing up Abbey Street with several kilos of fencing equipment lashed across my shoulders, when a large van swerved out of the darkness in front of me. My habitual stream of post-Romantic French poetry was cut short when I drew up on the inside of the offending vehicle and saw that it was driven by two policemen.
- I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you stop. You can't ride without lights after dark.
I was already late for training.
- Well how about a lift then?
The first policeman was just muttering something about insurance, when his colleague leaned over from the driver's seat:
- Where is 'training'?
I explained where the Sports Centre was.
- Oh that's just on our way: hop in the back
And they came round to help me in with my bike, while I took a seat on one of the benches and grabbed a helpful loop hanging from the ceiling. There was an amusing barred-effect window between the front cabin and the back benches. We were halfway down Argyle Street when the phone rang:
- Flic, where the hell are you?
- Are you sitting down? Sit down. It's an interesting story...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
