Tempus fugit

Third in a continuing series of blog titles that require, but don't necessarily receive, translation.

Taking a break from translating to drink tea, eat chocolate and poodle about in the Internets. Listening to the CD from which tomorrow's Friday Favourite will be taken (wait for it). Dear gods, it's already Thursday again. Exactly seven days until we hand in the competition, and it's still all very wobbly.

I think that some of the happiness in hard and serious work that I wrote about yesterday comes from having been in Flow for much of the day. The ability to concentrate, to work without being interrupted, is an essential pre-requisite for getting into the flow state; it's easily available at home (since I'm doing the translating on my PC which has no Internet connection and nothing remotely gamelike installed) but harder to obtain in the office. Most of the time I'm alone there, since G is busy being a new father and the two new hires also work mostly off-site.

Work on the translation is slowing down as I get further on with it. At the beginning, I could just plough ahead translating words at the drop of a whim, but now the spectre of consistency raises its head. I spend a small but steadily increasing proportion of my time looking back through what I've previously translated to ensure that I always use the same English word for a particular German one. This is of course a Good Thing and the right way to go about it, but it does slow down the work considerably.

Right, that's enough. Back to work. More later, perhaps.

Eight down, twenty-two to go.