A4.3.2 meta: o překladu

I have added this meta task into my list of things to do each week because I need a place to vent about the feelings, frustrations, thoughts, and observations that I have as I try to scale this ridiculous learning curve of becoming a translator.

I picked a little corner of Wikipedia to start to put my tiny little shovel into. It is the list of Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian noble families. It's totally interesting to me and doesn't exist in English. Yet. 

Also, the articles are really short.

I have started to translate, but I don't really know how I will go about actually like, sharing what I've been doing.

Here is a word which I learned and which was surprisingly difficult to translate:

příslušnost

I guess it is like affiliation, or membership even, but that didn't really work in the sentence I was going for; it didn't sound at all natural. I thought it was a lot more natural like this:

Znak Vévodství slezského

Tato stránka odkazuje na seznamy šlechtických rodů seřazených podle abecedy působících v jednotlivých zemích Koruny české. Příslušnost rodů k dané zemi je vázána především na držbu svobodného majetku jako jednoho z hlavních atributů šlechty.

This page contains an alphabetical list noble families of the lands of the Bohemian Crown. Free ownership of property is one of the most important criterion for families to belong to the nobility.

That is how I understood that sentence, anyway. Also, it is a bit annoying that "lands of the Bohemian Crown" is also found elsewhere as "Bohemian Crown lands" or even "Crownlands." I don't know which is right. I also don't know which sounds more natural: "Moravian Noble Family" or "Noble Moravian Family." I think the first sounds a bit more like Moravian is modifying "Noble Family", so I will go with that. But the second is more likely to be something I would actually say. So I'm not sure.

Dunno why there is that white space up there, but I can't fix it. 

The other big translation project which I'm working on is Narození a smrt. I really enjoy working on that project with my friend Tom - I've invited others, but it's really mostly just us working at it. It is fun! But for some unspoken reason we are currently taking a break. I suppose we will pick it up again later.

For me, the block is that it is not really broken into small enough chunks for it to be satisfying. Maybe if I could will myself to translate at least one little paragraph per day, that would work. But I also know that this is not the way that I typically like to work on projects. I am a sprinter, not a slow and steady person. Sigh. I just want this book to be done so that I can read it all the way through in comprehensible English. Reading it slowly over time for the construction and naturalness of the language is not at all the same as reading it for the ideas. 

So basically, I feel like a slacker this week. But in my defense, there have been a lot of obstacles in my way, like stupid stupid stupid snowdays.