"working on my faults and cracks..."

9.23.2008

translation for nothing, headaches for free

Something about using my free time to slog through a co-worker's private Chinese-to-Japanese-to-English translation of an awesomely boring and cryptic academic document on the history of China's dingleberry kanji brigade (god knows what, honestly), didn't exactly inspire my creative juices. And neither did the prospect of doing it for free. Obviously, I had been systematically dodging Ms. Oh-No's translation requests by saying it was "far beyond my capabilities" for several months, but my good luck has finally taken a turn for the abysmal. Exercising an unusual level of assertiveness for a Japanese woman, she has taken it upon herself to place it "well within my alleged capabilities" by straining the turd through a free online translator and copy/pasting any juices that managed to squeeze their way through. Who would have thought that Yahoo knew shit about China and their dingleberries? Well, much to her delight, and my continued dismay, apparently it does. Or just enough to convert unintelligible kanji into only barely less unintelligible English:
"Xixia is a country where Song, Liao, Jin etc. and the medium grade exist until it is founded a nation in the China Song age and it is destroyed by a Mongolian empire chief leader Li Yuanhao Tangut family the Tanguts cribe called oneself for Song's penis sandwich emperor and declared independence of Snog in 1038 in the Christian. The Tangut family that was the dominant ethnic group of the Xixia divided and resided from the taking the place present's reflecting on Tsinghai Province district of Tang Dynasty in tribes such as and a Ping Xia parts and Dong Shan parts to the Inner Mongolia autonomy district Oldos provinces and Shanxi Province northern part etc."

Oh yeah, that's much better.
So I guess this means I'm still expected to do it, still expected to meet yesterday's deadline, and still expected to do it for free.

Retch, barf.

6 contributions to this piece:

Anonymous said...

Anything that includes the phrase "Song's penis sandwich emperor" has to be worth reading. Doesn't it?

Dagbert said...

I was wondering if anyone would be able to pick that out of the mess.

And no, not even a penis sandwich can save this train wreck.

Anonymous said...

I have to say, ending my night with the phrase "penis sandwich emperor" is just about perfect.

Thanks for that one

Dagbert said...

Penis sandwich emperor is a good way to end any evening.

Glad to be of service.

Kimbrolynn said...

So which is it: Song? Snog? or spite?

Dagbert said...

That was her typo, but I left it in because I figured she had bigger problems, what, with a penis sandwich emperor sneaking in and wreaking sensical havoc.


 
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