miscellaneous stuff

A couple of thoughts on donating blood:

If the Red Cross is going to keep disqualifying potential blood donors the way they're doing, no wonder they've got a critical shortage. I think the system is going to have to change sooner rather than later, or they're going to get themselves down to such a small potential donor pool that it won't be a workable system any more. This is, of course, ignoring all the people whose blood is perfectly fine but are deathly afraid of needles, or things of that nature. I'm talking about people who are willing to donate blood and are disqualified because somebody they slept with in 1978 slept with somebody of the same gender in 1977.

On to other things:

No headache so far today, but I'm bringing the pills with me when I go out.

Apparently everybody's a little busy these days, since the entire French Literary & Cultural Translation class got an extension on yesterday's assignment. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's behind.

The parking lot is under two inches of solid ice. Driving on it must be fun. Walking on it is so much fun that I can't take my favorite short cut any more. I only slipped about three times yesterday. If next winter is anything like this, I'm buying an ice axe, or at the very least a walking stick with an ice pick at the end.

I think the Terminology and Computer Applications class is going to be a bit of a waste of time. Give me a book about Trados and I could learn it myself. 'Twas always thus with me and computer classes, though.

Right. Time to hunt up some lunch and then go spend the afternoon in the library and/or the computer lab.

snerk

Communicative translation can be fun if you get a good idea. It's taken me most of a week to get a good idea, but I think I've got one now. We're supposed to take Molière's "The Miser" and do something with part of the first scene. I'm translating it as if it were Nathan Detroit talking to Adelaide, so now of course I've got miscellaneous bits of "Guys and Dolls" stuck in my head.

I hope this works as well as I think it's going to. At least I'm (finally) having fun with it. It remains to be seen whether the prof knows what I'm talking about when I say "Chicago gangster version", though.

By the way, communicative translation is when you keep the intent of the original, but play around with the form and the language. I've been shortening up sentences and rewording things all over the place. It's still a play, and it's still a couple being sappy at each other, but it's nothing like the original or the translation of the same scene I did last week.

I just love messing around with languages. Hee hee!