Karel is out of the office but has forwarded your mail to me.
To answer your questions:
1. You are not the only person. Currently is proofreading 4b-d (previously we only spellchecked it due to approaching deadline).
2. I just asked to check a random file out of each section and write a report on the quality. No idea if she’s available yet though. For now, coordinate with . If ‘s available and can get us the report, I’ll forward it right away.
3. Not my field. I only know that the client has withheld final payment and is threatening to cancel the BoI project. By the client’s own admission, they decided this _without_ having looked at the German files.
As for a combined file…. I can do that, but are you sure you want a giant Excel file? That only makes sense if you are the only person to handle this, but you aren’t. We have , and probably will do some stuff too. A giant file would be hard to merge with other people’s work.
Perhaps a combined file of a section? If so, which section do you want?
Right now, we aren’t sure what to look for in the German files. Remember that the client hasn’t even looked at the German files, even though they were delivered almost a month ago. We do not have a list of specific complaints, or even a suggestion of what to look for.
If you want to, go ahead and spend a couple hours skimming the files. Let us know what you have found and what your suggestion is. We’re particularly worried about consistency and capitalisation, since those were the big issues with the French files.
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Hi
thank you for the message. I will send a short message to , and hear what he has to say, and then take a few hours this evening to skim through the files (unless already has more specific ideas).
I will get back to you about a merged file and with ideas once I have a better impression of everything.
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For your information, just confirmed that she got my email and will be working on that assessment right away. I told her to pick one file at random from each section plus one file from one of the longer sections (total: 20 files). I then asked her to spend 15 minutes reading each file and assess the quality of the translation, paying particular attention on consistency of terms and capitalisation, and then write a report on them.
I estimate this will take 6 hours, so maybe late evening tonight or early morning tomorrow we will have a better picture of the situation.
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as for section 1-5, I checked them against the dictionary but only with the second most recent glossary file (as I did not find the last one). I don’t know how many changes were made in the last glossary file (_2504).
As for abbreviations I used so far during proofing (4b/4c):
Heiligfeuer- Heiligf./Heiligfeu.
The same for Schicksalsfeuer
Tier-Jade – Tier-Ja.
Missgeschick – Missgsck
In the glossary segments 13341/42/49/50 struck me as odd. I think the translations got mixed up/wrong.
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Alexandre
says that you haven’t heard from me and I’m a bit puzzled.
What is it that you need from me? I thought I replied to everything that needs replying already. It’s possible the CS ate it. Not saying that that’s what happened, but are you sure it got sent?
To keep you updated, Emle and Carine were already proofreading section 7 since yesterday. The reason they weren’t assigned those earlier is that we needed the time to look at the files and decide what needs proofreading first and in what order.
The issue of capitalisation is not changed. If it is changed Karel will email all of us. This is not something we can negotiate with the client. The client wants it, so we’ll do our best. Despite misgivings, we will continue with the macro approach, since it’s the only practical method open to us. When you proofread, when you correct something for inconsistency, go ahead and use the correct capitalisation. However, don’t go out of your way to look for capitalisation errors because we hope using a search and replace macro will take care of it.
We personally would like very much to be able to follow your suggestion and leave capitalisation alone. But this is out of the question with the client.
If there is anything else, contact me. Also, if you need an answer but somehow doesn’t hear from me, well, ask again.
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Please read ‘s report regarding the German Jade Dynasty project:
http://001yourtranslationservice.com/uploadedfiles_001/TR/002_BOI/JD_German_assessment_.docx
Keep working on the current files, though.
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Please read ‘s assessment of the German JD project at
http://001yourtranslationservice.com/uploadedfiles_001/TR/002_BOI/JD_German_assessment_.docx
We’ll resume BoI tomorrow but will still do minor tweaks with JD. We’ll definitely proofread any files that were left unproofread back then due to lack of time, but we aren’t sure what else to do yet.
Any input of yours would be appreciated.
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Please read ‘s assessment of the German JD project at
http://001yourtranslationservice.com/uploadedfiles_001/TR/002_BOI/JD_German_assessment_.docx
We’ll resume BoI tomorrow but will still do minor tweaks with JD. We’ll definitely proofread any files that were left unproofread back then due to lack of time, but we aren’t sure what else to do yet.
Any input of yours would be appreciated.
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It looks like we’re all experiencing some communication issues.
This is the first message I have received from you since the 31/05 and I didn’t get any feedback from Carine nor Emle since I contacted them. If you sent me anything since that day, I have not received it.
Also, for the record I wasn’t worried, but JM kept insisting about who should get what file so I just asked him to contact you and Karel directly as I don’t have time to deal with this at all.
Regarding the capitalization, Karel already said ok two days ago and now I read a fresh email this morning stating that caps should still be fixed. I informed all 3 other proofreaders NOT to capitalize item names, please make sure they are following the right direction then.
Allright, I will do my best to help you out with this but you all know how I feel about this capitalization thing. Let’s just hope we will have enough time to do everything.
Please let me know if you need anything
With many
Alexandre
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I skimmed three files (5a, 2d, 2a) yesterday. I found some terminology inconsistencies, also some sentences with grammar errors in each, but the overall quality seems good. Of course, it is hard to find every potential inconsistency with glossary terms without really checking every term against the glossary, which would take far too long.
I have notes about these issues, but not yet edited the files. Maybe we can decide on how to proceed with them based on the below:
Yesterday, I discussed this idea with , and he agrees that this would help, but we were not sure whether there is enough time for this:
Set up a spreadsheet, into which all the problematic terms or phrases are copied in a way that we can then process them with find and replace. I.e. Column A: English, Col B: Current German, Col C: New German, Col D: comments.
This way, we could keep track of changes that occur in multiple files (errors in pretranslations, fuzzy matches). In the end, when we have a list of all issues, someone could process a large, merged excel file and apply the changes by way of find&replace (but would still have to look at the context and make sure the conjugation is right!!!).
We can also use this idea to keep track of issues for BOI.
But now the question is whether we have enough time, and whether you want us to continue on BOI or on JD.
Skimming through the files as I did, it would take a long time to go through every file, and I was only skimming. But if we collect issues with the spreadsheet, maybe some people can continue skimming for obvious issues and make the files look better.
So these are my ideas.
I hope you can tell me whether you want me to continue on JD or on BOI now? I am a bit confused about the priorities now, and if it is possible, it would be easier for me to focus on just one task at a time.
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Alexandre
Yesterday I assigned section 7 to Emle and Carine, so they are working. If you send a message to by CS – I don’t receive it, but I do receive whatever you post here, so I suggest to continue all communication in OT.
Last thing I know about capitalization is – to make corrections only if the word itself needs to be changed (wronf glossary term or whatever proofreading issue). If the term is the right one – leave as it is.
I will try to ask again about it, I don’t want us to end up telling proofreaders to do opposite things.
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You’re right, the OT seems to be the best approach, I will keep contacting you guys from this interface.
Also, I think the capitalization rule you stated is indeed the one we should be following currently according to the latest email from Karel.
However, just like I told him, not all items are listed in the glossary. Since we will come across hundreds of item names during the course of the proofreading stage, it might be easier to start capitalizing at this point. Even if we fix most of the consistency issues, there is no guarantee that the glossary will ever be 100% complete. Therefore a good amount of items might be left in lower case in the end.
Also, regarding the “capitalizing macro” I strongly recommend defining a specific time frame just for this since we will need to ensure only the right words are actually modified. Even one tiny mistake with this will result in hundreds of words being replaced so it might be wise to take some time to evaluate the problem from every angle.
With many
Alexandre
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Since we have green light for BOI, I will reply:
If the symbols are not protected by tags, replace them with the German analogue of “M” and “F”. If they are protected by tags, I would say that it can be done in vetting, but vettors will need to be informed whith what to replace (again, the German analogue of “M” and “F”).
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will it suffice to to tell you that the German abbrev. are M for male (männlich) and W for female (weiblich), or do will you need comments for each occurence of sex symbols?
I guess, maybe this could even be solved by find and replace during proofreading or vetting, so we could ignore the symbols whilst translating?
On the other hand, it is also possible to turn off tag protection whilst translating to replace the symbols.