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About computer, online marketing, translation, CAT tool
Karel’s letters written during travellingLetters written when working while travelling, part 18. About computer, online marketing, translation, CAT tool
You cannot imagine because I do VERY complicated things on the computer. Much more than Marketa, and I cannot even explain all the things I know, and all the problems I constantly run into. So many times I want to punch the screen and throw the little box into the ocean. Many times I feel there are devils out there who constantly frustrate my every action, lead me to anger, and I can imagine them just giggling, holding their hand over their mouth mischieviously. I can practically hear them giggle every time, and it infuriates me more, and I hear them giggle again. So I guess I can get sensitive when someone gives me a blank statement like, "Get your computer in order." It is a nonstop battle and if I wasn’t living on this beach but in some stupid big city I’d be pulling out my hair constantly. Two days ago I practically wrote Simona a fuming email to sink into Ruskin’s head the gravity of the problems he has caused me. He grabbed my ppc when it was next to me, I told him to bring it back, that it is for business, and now it is broken. I looked in Nicosia and they sell new ones for 300 Euro. I’m losing business because I cannot check my email regularly, and cheaply. All sorts of problems. Will have to buy something new as soon as I have cash. No one can fix it and I’ve tried a million times. It is too old and the manufacturer does not make the spare parts anymore. Once I was in London and Ruskin practically threw water on my laptop, like he thought it would be funny. Simona does not impart the gravity. Sometimes I feel that Simona is angry at men and the world and uses her children as a weapon. Sometimes I’m almost afraid to go to London for fear what they may do to my computer. My life depends on it. Especially now when I am earning so little. My life is on a thread, and I live in fear and trepidation that some part of my truck construction will fail, or my laptop... I no longer have any backup laptops. But I have reflected much over the summer and applying a different strategy for finding customers than before. Kind of difficult to explain, but I think I am going about things more practically now. Before I was writing articles, designing webpages and trying to get to the top of google, finding customers in that way. But I see now that there is still much more work to do. I am competing against large translation etc. companies who hire people, possibly several, to work on this full time. Nevertheless, I see that I am doing quite well compared to them, and I am reasonably near the top of google. Everything I have written and all the webpages I have prepared are still useful, I am just organizing them better. Right now my focus is on getting translation work for myself. If I can get enough of that, it will give me needed cash and some security. The good thing about that is, if someone doesn’t pay me for a job, at least I don’t owe money to someone else. And I can focus on one language combination only: Czech to English. And I know my own quality and do not have to depend on someone else. And it is not the end of the world if I turn down work. Once I start getting enough work, I can farm some of it to other translators and get back more into project management. Or I can work on everything I do in between translations, which I certainly do. But perhaps most importantly, when I make good money translating, I can hire others to write the pages for me. It is fun work and I can probably find some bozo American in Prague to do this for me. Basically I need to have pages made for each language combination I offer. It is a LOT of work and writing. Like on page from “English to German translations”, etc. Yes, my Iranian friend lent me his phone, through which I can check my email, although it is frustratingly slow. Nevertheless I can use it as a modem for my computer. But he needed to use it this last week. I guess he’ll give it back to me once he gets back to Iran. So now I’m using his even older phone. I set up an email address which sends a text message to my mobile, so for regular customers, if they have some work for me or something is urgent, they can do that, and if it is important enough, I drive back to the stinky city and get on the internet. Like I have to do tomorrow Saturday morning and drive away from my lovely beach. Picked up 20 pages over the weekend, so that will pay for half a month of costs. Also negotiating with one customer who has a thousand pages until half way through November, so even if I only get a hundred pages of that, it will pay for three months. I started advertising in the Czech Republic and am really trying hard to get new customers for myself. I really don’t need much work to survive. So hopefully this new strategy will work. It is the first time I’m actually paying for advertising on the internet. Well, have a good one, and hope everything will be fine with Jana. Would be nice if she came down for a visit. She likes the beaches here. Some sun could do her some good. Latero hmm, I thought there was another email of yours I was supposed to respond to. Perhaps I already did. Have to drive back to The Farm, as me and my Czech friend here like to call it, to do some internet in the morning on Saturday, boohoo, so I guess you’ll get a response sooner than later. Just got 20 pages translation over the weekend and they sent me 125 pages previously translated, so I need to download some software (my harddrive recently burnt and I lost a lot of important data) so that I can process it correctly and pump it into my special translation software, which remembers how I have translated things in the past, so I can translate and work less in the future. Great program and useful for repetitive text, which is the case with contracts and EU legislation and that sort of stuff. And remembering terminology for me so that i do not have to keep looking in the dictionary. With it I think I can translate 30 to even 50 pages a day, or possibly more, if I have enough memory, which I want to start building up now. I have done quite large translations in the past and very quickly. Anyway... * * * Island Hopping in the Philippines * * *
Published - August 2012
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I guess with email it can sound that way sometimes. Especially after all
my problems you say, "Get your computers in order." Something
like that does not help me at all. Or when my harddrive failed in London
you seemed to almost giggle on the phone that I would force turn off my
computer, contrary to what I had been warning you against all these years.
You say the computer is not your friend and that it frustrates you, but
you cannot imagine the constant frustration I have to deal with.
