Pretty fucking proud of myself.....

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Posted by monster Online!
6/18/2025 6:50 pm
#1

My main/only project when I started my job -like many of our projects- is a survey administered in both English and Spanish.  Us Brits don't necessarily learn Spanish in school -French is mandatory, then I went with German for the second one.  I had to send out mailings in both languages, and some of the documents were very similar, so we had a cheat sheet in words I didn't understand for everyone to be able to check the right document was being sent.  So I decided it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to learn some Spanish.  About 3 years ago.  My linguist child recomennded Duolingo which I know is mocked by many but ...I started..... and I'm still going with a current "streak" of 980.  I'm very tenacious.  And can say things like "my cat drove me to the swimming pool where we swam together while the cow was cooking dinner".

I have caught a few errors on documents in Spanish, in passing since I started this... so today they asked me to glance over a 30-page questionnaire -the Spanish version- to see if anything "stood out". 

(1)  I COULD UNDERSTAND THE WHOLE DAMN THING!  Including questions like "In the last year did you travel for business where you stayed away from home for one night or more" and "When you retire, do you expect to spend the same amount of money as you do now?"

(2) I found a typo the translator made while translating the updates (it's not a new survey) and an inconsistency in their translation ... but I also found a shitload of discrepancies between the Spanish and English versions and some ghosts of questions past that had been removed from the English version and missed for the Spanish.  Turns out no-one had thought -until this year because they now have a nit-picker on board who has some basic Spanish knowledge- to get a second set of eyes on it after it had been to the translator.   Nothing was fatal but....I rock

I'm pretty chuffed with me.  The Spanish translation of that makes me sound like the bastard lovechild of Shrek and a seagull, so I'll stick with English.


The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity  Amelia Earhart
 
Posted by griff
6/18/2025 7:13 pm
#2

That’s freaking awesome. Foreign languages were always a weak point in my schooling. I really wish I had a little Spanish or French. I was trying to chat with a Mexican guy at my nephew’s concert. We both suck. But we tried.


If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you. - Louis Brandeis
 
Posted by monster Online!
6/19/2025 8:23 am
#3

Do duolingo


The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity  Amelia Earhart
 
Posted by Anon
6/19/2025 5:09 pm
#4

monster wrote:

I'm pretty chuffed with me.

'IwlIj jachjaj

 
Posted by fargon
6/19/2025 8:07 pm
#5

All the link does is take you to a translation page, with nothing to translate.


I Love my country, I fear the government.
 
 
Posted by fargon
6/19/2025 8:19 pm
#6

Did you get it out, monster?


I Love my country, I fear the government.
 
 
Posted by Anon
6/19/2025 8:52 pm
#7

fargon wrote:

All the link does is take you to a translation page, with nothing to translate.

Copy the link phrase and paste it into the translate-from box. The translation will automatically appear.

(It’s one of my favorite phrases for wishing someone will be so happy/proud/excited… etc. - Think of kids on a roller coaster.)
 

 
Posted by monster Online!
6/19/2025 9:56 pm
#8

fargon wrote:

Did you get it out, monster?

um....?  


The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity  Amelia Earhart
 
Posted by Flint
6/20/2025 5:19 pm
#9

I'm completely monolingual, so this is very impressive to me. Interesting that you understood better than you expected. Learning, done with effort, seems to accumulate in the background, and after an incubation period, pop up as an intuitive, or more effortless understanding.

Either that or it gets pushed out and just falls off the edge.


signature s c h m i g n a t u r e
 


 
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