Translating with a toddler

Monday, 19 July 2010

Ways to tell a home-based freelance translator who has a toddler:

• Your optical mouse doesn't work because there's a raisin jammed in the sensor.
• There's an odd smell in your office that you can't quite identify.
• You find 20 of your business cards in the linen basket.
• Your left-hand typing is impaired by a huge toy woolly mammoth sitting on your desk.
• You have more lullabies and nursery rhymes than "real" music on iTunes.
• You find an iPhone screen full of settings that you didn't know existed.
• Your expensive Sennheiser earphones are wet and slimy for some reason.
• Your DAB radio is tuned to a station you've never heard of.
• Your recently completed tax return is screwed up in the bin (actually, that might have been you).
• You think you have a defective monitor, but it's actually splodge of pureed pear and broccoli.
• You find the word "Jungleland" in the patent specification you translated the previous day.
• You avoid proof-reading between 8.15 and 8.45am because of the apocalyptic screaming coming from 2 floors up.
• You finish work at 5.00pm on the dot because the aroma of eggy bread from upstairs is driving you nuts.
• Sand occasionally flies in through your office window during the summer.
• The words you hear most often are "I said DON'T eat that".
• There's compost on your office chair.

The toddler in question