Today I woke up at 9.30 and couldn't go back to sleep (because of the sun), even though it was a fairly late night last night. So I did my translations and then around 11.45 went on another bike ride. I didn't want to make it as long as yesterday so my first idea was to ride to Boswell, but then I remembered that cute little pannenkoekenhuis (pancake restaurant) that Anna and Scott and I went to that time (I also went there with Daan, before I'd been here long enough to know where in the world I was) and decided to go there instead, to see if I remembered how to get there. Well, I did. It's about 40 minutes ride from my apartment, but on the way back I found a shortcut - that's always good. :)
Anyway, this may be the last post you guys see for a while - Scott is next door playing PlayStation so I'm plugged into the wall, but a few minutes ago the Internet wasn't working when I was plugged into the router. Don't know if that's going to change or not.
I'm really proud of my first translation, the one everybody's doing - I think I've done a good job of "staying invisible" (as a translator is supposed to be) and I think it reads fluently. The second one isn't done yet - it's 'done' in the sense that the text is translated to English, but it's not 'smooth' yet; I'm still working on it. That's one that's just for me - my teacher mailed me a special, longer Dutch text to translate to English that I'm doing instead of the long English-to-Dutch one. So I have two translations, one short and one longer, just like everyone else, but for me they're both from Dutch to English instead of one of each. Woohoo! Anyway, she also wrote me a nice letter giving me info on how to begin with professional translating and saying she'd enjoyed having me in her class. And about the subtitle thing, she said, "I'm sure those companies could use someone who actually understands what the people are saying!"
Here's the one I'm finished with, in case you're interested.
Monday, March 6, 1944. Stood for fifteen minutes this morning in front of the post office waiting for Madelon. I was too early and had nothing else to do. The sun was shining, but gave no warmth. Around twelve she appeared on the balcony in her fur mantle. All the rooms on the second floor of the main post office have folding doors leading to shallow balconies, something I’d never noticed before. She bent forward and called, “I’m going to feed the seagulls!” But we’re too deep into winter; hardly any seagulls came; the crusts of bread that she tossed fell onto the street as if they were meant for me.
Just as the palace carillon began to play, she came down.
‘You look so serious today,’ she said, ‘is something wrong?’
‘I have good reason to look serious. My best friend was executed yesterday.’
I explained the why and how. I didn’t tell any more than what would probably be in the paper about it. That he underwent treatment by a dentist who had reported Jewish patients to the Germans, and that one afternoon, when he knew there were no other patients waiting downstairs, he shot the dentist dead. ‘He didn’t have a bicycle. The maid heard the shot and screamed. So once in the street, he had to get out of sight as quickly as possible. So he grabbed the first and best bicycle he saw. Upstanding citizens began to shout: Stop that thief! On Van Baerle Street, a window washer threw his ladder down across the road.’
‘How do you know all those details?’
As calmly as possible, I invented an explanation: of course I wasn’t there. His father told me… the story was perhaps a bit romanticized, but my friend was dead.
As I neared Uncle Hein’s villa, I thought: Now I’ve become an unusual young man; there’s even a special word for it, the word orphan. They don’t greet other people the way they will greet me.
Yesterday I went into my parents’ house, which is now my house, with my father’s keys, which Uncle Hein gave me. I’ve never had the keys myself, because I only came to the house during vacations, and even then only briefly.
I looked around, the way you do in houses you don’t often visit. ‘This is all mine now,’ I thought, ‘that table and those chairs, some of which I don’t even recognize. This garden, just the type of garden that old people should walk in. Absurd that it’s now all mine.’
On the table in the living room lay my own disgusting letter, unopened, which my uncle had probably put there. I stuck it in my inside pocket, wondering if I should shred it or not. I sat down somewhere and lit a cigarette. I laid the match in an ashtray which still held the ash from my father’s cigar. The linen curtains were half lowered. My parents always lowered the curtains if they were traveling. The yellow light that this created in the rooms carried a sense of traveling and not being home.
‘There’s no one here,’ I said out loud, ‘and no one will ever come home again. What shall I, the owner, do?’
I stood up and walked through the rooms. My heart beat nervously, as if I had stealthily broken into a stranger’s house.
‘Leave everything as it is,’ I thought, ‘until a thick layer of dust forms, where first mold and later plants will germinate. The garden will go wild, the vines and climbing roses will grow through the broken windowpanes and mingle with the indoor vegetation. This must go on for so long, that whoever passes by will think about a green hill and won’t be able to see that there was once a villa here.’
If you just read that and were thinking only about what was going on in the story and what you thought might happen, and not paying attention at all to the sentence structure and vocabulary - then I've done my job properly. :) So I hope you did. LOL.
Anyway, this may be the last post you guys see for a while - Scott is next door playing PlayStation so I'm plugged into the wall, but a few minutes ago the Internet wasn't working when I was plugged into the router. Don't know if that's going to change or not.
I'm really proud of my first translation, the one everybody's doing - I think I've done a good job of "staying invisible" (as a translator is supposed to be) and I think it reads fluently. The second one isn't done yet - it's 'done' in the sense that the text is translated to English, but it's not 'smooth' yet; I'm still working on it. That's one that's just for me - my teacher mailed me a special, longer Dutch text to translate to English that I'm doing instead of the long English-to-Dutch one. So I have two translations, one short and one longer, just like everyone else, but for me they're both from Dutch to English instead of one of each. Woohoo! Anyway, she also wrote me a nice letter giving me info on how to begin with professional translating and saying she'd enjoyed having me in her class. And about the subtitle thing, she said, "I'm sure those companies could use someone who actually understands what the people are saying!"
Here's the one I'm finished with, in case you're interested.
Monday, March 6, 1944. Stood for fifteen minutes this morning in front of the post office waiting for Madelon. I was too early and had nothing else to do. The sun was shining, but gave no warmth. Around twelve she appeared on the balcony in her fur mantle. All the rooms on the second floor of the main post office have folding doors leading to shallow balconies, something I’d never noticed before. She bent forward and called, “I’m going to feed the seagulls!” But we’re too deep into winter; hardly any seagulls came; the crusts of bread that she tossed fell onto the street as if they were meant for me.
Just as the palace carillon began to play, she came down.
‘You look so serious today,’ she said, ‘is something wrong?’
‘I have good reason to look serious. My best friend was executed yesterday.’
I explained the why and how. I didn’t tell any more than what would probably be in the paper about it. That he underwent treatment by a dentist who had reported Jewish patients to the Germans, and that one afternoon, when he knew there were no other patients waiting downstairs, he shot the dentist dead. ‘He didn’t have a bicycle. The maid heard the shot and screamed. So once in the street, he had to get out of sight as quickly as possible. So he grabbed the first and best bicycle he saw. Upstanding citizens began to shout: Stop that thief! On Van Baerle Street, a window washer threw his ladder down across the road.’
‘How do you know all those details?’
As calmly as possible, I invented an explanation: of course I wasn’t there. His father told me… the story was perhaps a bit romanticized, but my friend was dead.
As I neared Uncle Hein’s villa, I thought: Now I’ve become an unusual young man; there’s even a special word for it, the word orphan. They don’t greet other people the way they will greet me.
Yesterday I went into my parents’ house, which is now my house, with my father’s keys, which Uncle Hein gave me. I’ve never had the keys myself, because I only came to the house during vacations, and even then only briefly.
I looked around, the way you do in houses you don’t often visit. ‘This is all mine now,’ I thought, ‘that table and those chairs, some of which I don’t even recognize. This garden, just the type of garden that old people should walk in. Absurd that it’s now all mine.’
On the table in the living room lay my own disgusting letter, unopened, which my uncle had probably put there. I stuck it in my inside pocket, wondering if I should shred it or not. I sat down somewhere and lit a cigarette. I laid the match in an ashtray which still held the ash from my father’s cigar. The linen curtains were half lowered. My parents always lowered the curtains if they were traveling. The yellow light that this created in the rooms carried a sense of traveling and not being home.
‘There’s no one here,’ I said out loud, ‘and no one will ever come home again. What shall I, the owner, do?’
I stood up and walked through the rooms. My heart beat nervously, as if I had stealthily broken into a stranger’s house.
‘Leave everything as it is,’ I thought, ‘until a thick layer of dust forms, where first mold and later plants will germinate. The garden will go wild, the vines and climbing roses will grow through the broken windowpanes and mingle with the indoor vegetation. This must go on for so long, that whoever passes by will think about a green hill and won’t be able to see that there was once a villa here.’
If you just read that and were thinking only about what was going on in the story and what you thought might happen, and not paying attention at all to the sentence structure and vocabulary - then I've done my job properly. :) So I hope you did. LOL.
stormed at 08:13
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