What to do when you got nothing to do?
OK everyone, I need your help. I am not very busy right now and I would love to do something worthwhile to keep myself occupied. I am expecting some things coming in next week, but I am going crazy right now. The occasional hundred words that come in a couple of times a day don’t keep me busy.
So far I have cleaned up files on our documentation network drive, zipped and archived old projects, done my homework, read an extra chapter in my ASP.NET book, and hassled my boss to give me stuff.
Can anyone recommend anything for me to do? It can’t involve noise, getting off my a$$ or anything that would suspiciously like “non-work” to a person passing by. I keep hearing people talk about maintenance on their TMs but I don’t know what to maintain there. Any suggestions welcome!
This may sound like the sweet life: doing nothing all the while getting paid - let me tell you, not so much. I am ready to shoot myself if I can’t find anything worthwhile soon. I know it will come pouring any time soon, some new software coming up and a translation into Russian that will give me plenty of in-house post-processing, but for now - nada, njet, nothing, überhaupt garnix!!!
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4 Responses to “What to do when you got nothing to do?”
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We really are twins. We didn’t coordinate our posts today at all. Too funny. Glad I’m not the only one going crazy with boredom. The HTML page is on its way to you.
here’s what the members of our team (English->Italian) do whenever there’s a slowdown in work (it happened 2-3 weeks ago but business has picked up again for us):
- look for websites on the internet which may be relevant to the material you usually translate, try to find high-quality translated material on the sites and build a translation memory by aligning source and target
- develop a style guide using a wiki system. Update all relevant information regarding your end clients and any peculiar style deviations from the standards that they may require.
- develop a general style guide for your end language, update it when you have the time and share it with your colleagues (using a wiki). This helps consistency.
- create specialized translation memories that you can use for reference, e.g. including ISO country names, currency names, language names, etc.
@Jill: I’m on it!
@Roberto: I really like the style guide suggestion. It also reminds me that I always wanted to compile a glossary for our terminology, maybe even a termbase.
Unfortunately, I believe I already have all the material for my area that is out there
I’ve been through this too… If the temptation to watch DVD movies was great, I resisted and kept myself occupied learning how to use new softwares I didn’t know yet: CAT tools, Quark Xpress…
I also refreshed my Spanish and started to learn a new language (German). Oh, and I launched my blog, but this you already did!
Would it be possible for you to do some freelance work during slowdowns ?