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Does constant availability affect your life?
Thread poster: Robgo
MK2010
MK2010  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 01:31
French to English
+ ...
I think... Jan 29, 2017

...I definitely want to check that place out!

 
MK2010
MK2010  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 01:31
French to English
+ ...
@ Sheila Jan 30, 2017

I should also ask: how's the food? Spain is one of my favorite countries (I lived in Alicante for a while a while back, plus traveled around the pais), so if I can't find a good paellla and good tapas on your rock, forget about it ! Not to mention what I hope would be lots of great dishes from all the international activity there.

Seriously. I count great food among one of the top reasons for traveling, or, in this case, trying to live the digital nomad lifestyle...


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 05:31
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Off topic Jan 30, 2017

MK2010 wrote:
if I can't find a good paellla and good tapas on your rock, forget about it ! Not to mention what I hope would be lots of great dishes from all the international activity there

This is getting seriously off topic but I'll answer your question. Firstly, I've heard that most of the paella that's everywhere isn't great, just as there's very little flamenco dancing on the island. Mainland Spain is an enormous place with great regional variations, and it's thousands of kilometres from the islands. We have our own culture and our own food specialities. For a start, there are more goats than human inhabitants, although the humans are working on redressing the balance each mealtime! But yes, you get all the Spanish standards here of course. Plus Italian, Asiatic and Indian restaurants aplenty too. Then in my town we have other restaurants serving dishes from the owners' own cultures: Belgian, Dutch, Polish, Danish, English, Scottish, Irish (no Welsh as yet), Caribbean, Brazilian and Argentinian. As well as the inevitable Tex-Mex and burgers. At the moment we need French, Indonesian, Greek and Russian restaurants to open, if anyone has contacts. But many businesses here fail so I'm not actively recommending it.


 
Robgo
Robgo
Austria
Local time: 06:31
Member (2016)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you Jan 31, 2017

Thank you all so much for your input, that's all very interesting.
What does puzzle me a bit is that there seem to be only quite experienced translators answering who have established themselves in their field. I suppose that for people just starting out this is all a bit different. They have to take on more jobs for one thing. And they are probably not yet 30 and may have a different attitude towards technology and more or less regular working hours.

Preston Decker wrote:

I'm in my early thirties, so a bit younger than many who post here, and I'm enormously thankful that I wasn't born a few years later. I'm convinced that my generation is the last to know what true BOREDOM feels like, which I think is very underrated as a conduit for creativity and the growth of the soul. Remember those days in middle school and high school sitting on a bus? Boring as can be, but I used to think and dream about life--the girls I had crushes on, basketball dreams, or just what was going on outside. None of that would have happened if I had a smartphone, except maybe once in a blue moon when out of battery.

Susan and others have brought up reasonable arguments for cell phones and smart technology helping our world. I'm still not entirely convinced, however, particularly when it comes to work.


Wow, you make me feel old at 42. I guess that for my age I'm very open to technology and I have embraced the internet as soon as it became available. Also smartphones- I look things up all the time and they allow me to go away from my desk and office and still be available. It may seem like a strain sometimes, but it also allows me to do things that would not have been possible a few years back.

As to my original assumption, that (constant) reachability affects one's life, I suppose I was too pessimistic. At least as far as this forum goes and some translators I personally know and have talked to. You/they seem to be handling your working days in a healthy manner. Being available from 9 to 5 and working when it suits you, that's a good way of handling it. For my personal situation it's a bit difficult because I'm not only a freelancer, but that's another story.

I am going to have to rethink my original assumption for this paper. Or find people who do suffer from that aspect of their working life


 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 06:31
French to English
forum dynamics and job satisfaction Jan 31, 2017

Robgo wrote:

Thank you all so much for your input, that's all very interesting.
What does puzzle me a bit is that there seem to be only quite experienced translators answering who have established themselves in their field. I suppose that for people just starting out this is all a bit different. They have to take on more jobs for one thing. And they are probably not yet 30 and may have a different attitude towards technology and more or less regular working hours.

...
As to my original assumption, that (constant) reachability affects one's life, I suppose I was too pessimistic. At least as far as this forum goes and some translators I personally know and have talked to. You/they seem to be handling your working days in a healthy manner. Being available from 9 to 5 and working when it suits you, that's a good way of handling it. For my personal situation it's a bit difficult because I'm not only a freelancer, but that's another story.

I am going to have to rethink my original assumption for this paper. Or find people who do suffer from that aspect of their working life


I think perhaps there's a forum dynamic at work here. For starters, it's mostly experienced translators who answer most of the threads. Probably the most common threads here are "hi I'm a noob please tell me what to do" and "I didn't get paid what do I do" and "oops I can't handle this what do I do", all posted by relative beginners, then the old hands dispense their advice and recount how they messed up as beginners.

Also, lots of translators use their actual name here and can thus be identified. This is good advertising, it also means that they need to be careful what they write. A message in which they lament the fact that they're totally stressed out because they have too much on their plate would not look good, and a client who googles their name could easily turn up that message, because these forums are public. They might be a little more forthcoming in a private message.

You would also get more response if you were to contact former translators. The fact is that most of us are translators because we like translating and are prepared to work at making it work. I do know of people who chucked it in because they couldn't stand the pressure, not sure that I can get hold of them for you though!


 
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Does constant availability affect your life?







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