This week, an even greater variety of texts than usual. A PhD thesis on the architecture of church roofs in Belgium to be edited, recruiting texts for new technology to be translated, texts about environmentally friendly cardboard furniture to be reviewed and translating a novel set in the seventeenth century! The latter takes a lot of research!
This morning, it was pebble wall masonry (there’s a castle involved!) – in Dutch ‘kiezelmetselwerk’. My initial search found a colleague’s blog, ‘Metselen met woorden’. Her company is called Kiezel!
The longer I work as a translator, the more my native language returns. It’s fascinating, all these words and phrases I didn’t realise I’d forgotten until they pop into my head, often with little or no connection to the moment. This week, it was ‘susceptible’ (which I managed to use in a translation!). For absolutely no reason at all, ‘fat lot of good…’. Use it in ‘a fat lot of good it did me’, or ‘a fat lot of use you are’ meaning absolutely no good, or no use. Then, to ‘put in your tuppence-worth’ or give your opinion even if it wasn’t asked for and lastly ‘Oh, there’s no show without Punch’ which my mother always said when my sister, afraid of missing something, pushed her way into the conversation.