Progress Report, Week 2:

Pages Translated: 15
Pages Translated Since Last Week: 10
Pages Revised: 0
Last Page Translated: 21

I’ve met quota every day, and exceeded it most days. I haven’t started revising, and I think I’ll put it off a while longer. I’m doing well with the rough draft, in terms of productivity, and want to focus on that a while longer. I’m also reconsidering whether I should even polish the entire novel: it would be good to do some of it, but once I finish my rough draft, I may try to produce a polished translation of a book there’s already a good English-language translation of, and compare as I go, one chapter at a time. Or I may do chapters from several different books, to see how different translators handle different situations. I’ll need to think about it.

It’s been nearly a year since I updated. My skills have grown since then, but I haven’t finished any more translations, or even studied anywhere near as much as I should have. I’ve started a couple of projects, but not gotten very far with any of them.

Last week I began reading and translating Vuk, a famous children’s book about a fox by István Fekete, and I’ve decided to post weekly progress reports until I finish. Yesterday I timed how long it took me to translate a page: 30 minutes, for about 170 words. Vuk is only ninety-four pages long, and I’m setting a quota of at least one page per day, so I’m setting a target date of the end of June to have a finished translation. I’m hoping to have a semi-polished translation done, but I’ll count it as a win even if I only have a handwritten rough draft. (I bought a blank book last week just to contain my rough draft. I may or may not revisit this procedure when I start the next book, depending on how well it goes.)

Progress report, week 1:

Pages read: 5
Pages read since last week: 5
Pages translated: 5
Pages translated since last week: 5
Pages revised: 0
Pages revised since last week: 0
Total pages in book: 94