I've been busy at work again and I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately. A coworker got sick and another one is sick. It seems that it's spreading around - whatever virus that is. I'm trying my best to sleep a lot and take vitamins and stuff, so fingers crossed that I'll be able to avoid getting really sick. The temperature went up to 1'C on Sunday, so a lot of the snow that had piled up melted away, but it seems that we've got a little bit of snow last night or this morning, so it's all white again, although it was a bit slippery in some parts yesterday because of the melted snow that went frozen again during the night.
My head feels a bit weird, so I'm not going to write too long. I just wanna share some magnificent Finnish photos by a Finnish photographer. Here's the link:
I really love his photos because they make me feel like I'm in a nice dream. If you go down the page, you can find the photographer's website link as well as FB link. He's put a lot of other pictures in both links.
And let's have some laugh with some hilarious Chinese-English translations he he he he...here goes:
1. I almost dropped a doughnut while taking it out of the bag. R2 and I were sitting in the kitchen at that time, about to drink coffee. I saw R2 smiling after I almost dropped the doughnut.
Me: "Hey, don't smile 'coz I almost dropped the doughnut!" R2: "I'm not smiling 'coz of that. I'm smiling 'coz I'm happy. After all, I have you!"
Me: (awwwwwwing inside) "Unfair! That's an unexpected response!" (smile)
2. Made some banana-chocolate pastries for my coworkers which became a hit (and I could share with them how easy to make it, too). Glad to know they liked 'em! :-D
Recipe: a box of frozen pastry (mine has 5 sheets of frozen pastries), some bananas, and some chocolate. Let the frozen pastry out in warm temperature until it's soft, then cut them into thin strips (around 2.5 cm wide) then cut a banana in half. Wrap the half banana with the pastry strip diagonally until it's all covered. Do it until you're out of pastry and bananas. Bake them in the oven until they're golden brown. Let them cool off for a while. Then melt some chocolate (I prefer dark chocolate around 200 grams) with a little butter and smear it on top of the pastries. All done! :-D Result: 10 banana-chocolate pastries.
3. A customer saying nice stuff to me that made my eyes wet. BLESS YOU, each and every single one of you! I'm REALLY blessed by your words!
4. Talking to Mom on Skype after she got back from Taiwan with her friend. Glad to know she had fun and that she only felt a little unwell once during a bus trip but after taking some anti motion sickness pill, she felt much better.
5. The very slow translating project I'm doing for a customer is nearing its end. Only about 20 pages left, though I still have the big task of editing my translation, but it's always nice to know that a project is almost ending. :-D It feels like almost completing a marathon (not that I've ever been in one, though).
6. Being able to enjoy Winter Wonderland scenery this month already. Even though the snow has mostly melted now, but it was such a treat!
7. Start listening to Christmas songs already....HO HO HO HO HOOOHHHH...
During the week when I was not feeling very well, I got lazy and I didn't do any translation at all, but now I've started focusing on it again. I must say that it's a really challenging task. There are just some things that sound natural in Finnish and the English translation of it would sound a bit weird. Plus in Finnish you can write such a loooooonnnngggg sentence that just can't be translated into English without my chopping them up into at least two sentences.
I haven't been translating long texts in a LONG time, so my translation brain is kinda rusty. Oftentimes I get stuck because I have the image of the word in my head, but I can't bring myself to remember the word. It feels frustrating to be able to view the image in your mind without being able to voice it.
Another challenge for me is the vocabulary (obviously). The main character goes fishing and some fishing gears are mentioned along with names of fishes or animals that I don't know 'coz they don't exist in Indonesia. THANK GOD there's Google and free online dictionaries. Otherwise I wouldn't have survived (so far I've only translated 3 stories). *GRIN*
The writer also has a certain style of writing that I'm not familiar with. After all, most of the time I've been reading translated novels (English to Finnish), so I haven't got too much experience reading novels written by Finnish writers (I did start reading Puhdistus by Sofi Oksanen, but then as usual*** I switched book in the middle - my bad!!! But I shall get back to that book someday he he...).
*** Confession: I'm not really a "good reader". I do LOVE collecting books, but I switch books A LOT while reading them. There are only a few novels (among all the novels I've read in my lifetime) that I read without switching and stopping in between. And yeah, that meant that lots of time I had to reread the books I had left behind from the beginning again ha ha ha ha ha...
P.S. I'd love to recommend Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal". It's VERY FUNNY and I LOVE all the characters. For some reason I enjoy this one better than Pratchett's Colour of Magic. Here's the trailer:
