it's all about language

I spent most of my weekend translating from English to Arabic a 50+ page-report for a Dutch-managed, German-funded project in Egypt that I've been working for for over a year and a half. Not exactly interesting to be reading about drinking water and wastewater systems, but at least I am expert on the subject now :) Despite having lots of other language-related things to do, a little extra money won't hurt, right?

Actually, it has been taking me a longer-than-usual time as it has been a while since I last typed in Arabic (plus I have been all the time simultaneously finishing up a bag of chocolate raisins which at some point became too distracting when, for example, I choked on one). So basically I started off by employing the boring two-finger typing method, but that got better with time. It soon turned out that I still remember where all the letters are, and I also still hate the fact that the letter (ذ) is banished up there to the left just under the escape button. I kinda feel sorry for it, it's not fair for this letter and it's annoying for me. But that's not the only problem you can have in typing. The tricky thing about having a keyboard with the letters of two languages on is that if you slipped into the habit of focusing on the wrong ones it can slow down your work considerably. But it's almost done, and now I can start thinking how I'm going to spend the money (as if I hadn't already :) ).

Now to the more exciting news: I finally got my very own copy of the corpus in the mail today. Can't wait to go home and try it on my computer. Fingers crossed that all goes well. I just thought to blog you about it now just in case I go home and begin to install it then my laptop explodes or something :)

Mai