Update

Well readers, sorry it's taken me so long to post, but I've been super busy with work + all my ESIT preparations, mainly the translation of my Bachelor's diploma into French and getting the document legalized. For those of you who don't know, dealing with the French Consulate (or any French buraucratic body) is a long arduous process that I would only wish on my worst enemy.  However, this time, it wasn't quite as bad as I expected because, unlike previous times, I was actually able to talk to a real human being on the phone, one with a name and a title and everything. It really blew my mind how fast things got done once I was able to verbally tell the person what I wanted and then have them respond and tell me exactly what I needed to do to get that done.  Just goes to show that the human being is not yet obsolete.

 In any case, as for my language and translation preparation, I haven't been studying as much as I would like (aside from listening to some RFI and some Radio France).  However, I just completed a 19 page Spanish to English translation for my work, and it was really good practice, plus it helped me realize how far I'd come with my Spanish, because even though it was kind of specialized technical language, I barely had to use a dictionary .

 Tuesday was the last day of the winter session of my violin lessons at the University, so I'll have to practice on my own until the Spring session begins in April. I'm now training for a 10K race that I'm going to run with my Dad in late March. I'm hoping that physical exercise will help get the blood pumping to my brain and help with my test in April.  I guess we'll find out soon enough if it's true .  But don't get me wrong. I know that running a 10K is no substitute for real translation practice. A translator translates, and the learning by doing method is the best one for this field. Practice makes perfect. So, I'm going to try to do some active practice (translating texts) and more passive practice (reading articles and listening to radio commentary).

 Well, that's all I got.

 'Til next time,

TW

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