As my project progresses, I have slowly shifted from only translating to also analyzing my translations. I look at the stylistic choices of the original writers - Ovid and Vergil - and think about the specific ways they are evoking emotion within the reader and how I can best replicate that in my translation. It’s interesting work that requires a lot of deeper thought and literary analysis. However, it is taking up a significant portion of time.
Something that I have found very useful throughout my Signature project is tracking the amount of work that I am doing. I do this in the form of my tracking document; every day that I work on my project, I write down what work I did. This helps me figure out what days I am most productive, as well as watch the ebb and flow of my project.
For the first several months of my project, tracking came in the form of word count. Words are a good, consistent unit of measurement, and this format worked very well. By shifting to more literary analysis, my word count per week has dropped dramatically. Even though I am still putting in the same amount of work, on my tracking document, it looks like I’ve severely cut the amount of work I’m doing.
All the people with access to my tracking document- me, my signature manager, and my two teachers - know that this isn’t true. We all know that it’s simply the main portion of my work shifting. However, try telling that to my number- and data-obsessed brain. In my brain, a dropping word count is a dropping word count and the only way to fix that is to start working even harder. And not fixing that problem means that I am a lazy schlub.
For example, look at this day from late November:
I'm now averaging more like 100-200 words a week, instead of 250-400 that I was in November. And my brain is throwing a temper tantrum about that.
In conversation with my awesome friend Izzy, she suggested a solution that’s pretty ridiculously simple: shift my unit of measurement. Start tracking time, not word count. While that’s a little bit more difficult - I often hop onto work for only 3 or 5 minutes between classes - it’s still very feasible.
(Above: Izzy and I. Izzy is the best!)
Tracking my time is more reflective of the amount of actual work I’m putting in, because it takes into account my meetings, my time spent writing blog posts such as this one, the literary analysis I’m doing, AND the actual translation work.
Basically, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes of translating, and Izzy helping me figure out a way to reflect that work in my tracking document made my brain very happy. Huzzah!
Here's a glimpse of what my new tracking document looks like:
Also, Izzy is working on a fantastically cool Signature project about concentrations of sap in milkweed and how those concentrations affect butterflies. It’s awesome. You can find her portfolio right here- go check it out!
Below: Izzy inspecting some wild milkweed on campus to see if it could be of any use to her research.
