School Stuff

Some of you may perhaps dimly remember that I went back to school last year. I'm not sure I've really posted much about it since then, but I'm still there. I've just started my final semester, and I'm getting pretty excited. And scared, of course, because after one leaves school, one is supposed to do something productive with oneself — ideally something related to the thousands of dollars one has just spent educating oneself. That didn't work out so well last time, although I did eventually end up working as a proofreader, and could still be there if I'd wanted to be. But I have a pretty good feeling about it this time, given that I actually do want to do the thing I'm studying. I never really wanted to be a journalist, and definitely didn't by the time I was done j-school. But I went into this translation program wanting to be a translator, and I still do. Interestingly enough, I think it will also open some of those editing doors I wanted to sneak through before, so it's kind of a double bonus.

In any case, the last three semesters have gone really well. In addition to quite enjoying translation, it turns out that I'm also pretty good at it, which is obviously handy. I didn't even do too badly on the English-to-French class I took last semester, which was not only into my second language, which is already much harder than the reverse, but the main topic we focused on was marketing and advertising, which meant actually trying to be clever and witty in my second language. That, my friends, if you've never tried to do it, is effing hard. But I came out of that with a B+, which makes me feel like I can do anything!

This semester I have another E-to-F class, but it's a more general one, and the prof is not quite as demanding as the one I had last semester, so that one should be pretty good. Then I have a specialized F-to-E class, which kind of amounts to just more translating practice for a prof I haven't had before, so that's always good. Then I have an English grammar class and a writing techniques class, both of which focus quite a bit on editing, which is pretty awesome, and both the profs for those are ones I've had before and who are really great, which is even more awesome. And my final class is actually a graduate seminar (which apparently I'll have to take again if I decide to pursue grad studies, but maybe I can get out of it...) on old-school translation theory, specifically those theories revolving almost exclusively around the language aspects of translation (Yes, there are other aspects. Don't get me started.), so that's kind of cool.

So it's shaping up to be a pretty good final semester, and then I'll have to get out there and make a living. Crazy.

On a somewhat related note, one non-knitting related goal I have for myself this year is to resurrect/brush up a bit on my German. Not with the intention of speaking it (at least, not yet), but with the intention of trying to translate it into English. Having a third language to work with is pretty much guaranteed to be beneficial for me, so I want to try. I could also try Spanish, and I know there's tons of work from Spanish (most S-to-E translators in this city are swamped), but what can I say? I really like German. And while there's less work there than from Spanish, I suspect there are also fewer people handy who do it. So that's another plan for the year.