Translator's Diary.

Bismi'llah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim...for the sake of Prophet Muhammad saws and Sheikh Nazim may Allah protect his secret.


30th March.2005.Orgiva.Granada.Spain.

08.00.HRrs.

Just a quick go at the old diary before I start work . That's a new phrase! It would be so great if I really had something to do of my own... and something I could do that is suited to my temperament . I've got some translation work to do and I think I'm doing it O.K. The money's not too bad even as a complete beginner and I don't think that they pay that well.
They say ten pages and pay 25 € per page,but,from what I understand a page should be about three hundred words (the A4 sheet had about twenty lines and one could write about 15 words a line on average 20 X 15 = 300 ).
Their pages seem to have about 450 words each (as the article has 4,500 words according to MS Word. and is ten pages long.) Dividing 250€ by 4,500 gives me a price per word of 0.055. and I understand that a good price is 0.10 (about twice as much.) Anyway I was going to price myself at 0.035 per word when I first started looking the possibilities of translation work and bidding on agency sites for work.It seemed to be the cheapest and 0.10 seemed to be about the best.
I had the lucky opportunity to speak to a professional about the subject the other day.It turns out that Clara's first father in law, young Lucas's grandfather not only does translation work but teaches it at university in Madrid.He told me a couple of his main rules that he gives his students.1) Don't price yourself low in order to get work and 2) Make sure of keeping deadlines.(If two people do a translation and one does it well but slowly so as to make the work late and the other does it not so well but on time,the publisher will nearly always take the one that's on time.)
Getting it done rather than being perfect seems to be the rule.
I started yesterday and am quite pleased with the results.I got about a quarter done and hope to do at least that again today.I am not going to bore with all the details of how things went with Itziar on the run up to this eventuality,but there were a few misunderstandings and still I've ended up doing it,so I just take that as a sign that this is fated for now.
All is perfect and it happened when it was supposed to happen rather than earlier or later.All part of the Perfect Plan,or His Perfect Plan ..
Everything is Allah looking at Himself through everything else (in His own mirror of Himself.) Why find two where there is only One? As has often been said,the seeker and the Sought are One.
Hey that'll do for now...I may just stick it on my Blog for something to do..It's more or less how I would work if I was travelling I suppose,unless I had a mobile wih a direct internet link..but I'll leave all that speculation for another time.I need the camera first! .. and to get out there and travel..and before that a new battery for the lappie! (Maybe that's what I should attend to first?Get it over the net I suppose..I did find a site one time where they had copies for less than half the price of the brand name one.)
So-o-o , the 'real bit' ... Meditation is the state of being with that which is like no other thing .. sometimes known as the Eternal Uncreated .. often called God or Allah.
" Qul Hu Allahu Ahad,Allahu Samad,Lam yalid wa lam yewlad,Wa lam yaqu'n lahu qufuwan Ahad."
"Say,He is One,The Eternal support of all,He was not born and nothing was born of Him,and He is not like any other thing."

One of the shortest verses in the Koran and one of the most important,the nearest we can get to a description of what Allah is like (He's unlike any other thing and it is therefore prohibited in Islam to think about Him in His essence ... one can't ..it's presumptuous and it would drive you mad.) and it's recitation is equivalent in value to reciting one third of the Koran!

Time for work soon (oh joyous phrase!)

I have been so concerned lately abou how Bilquis takes so much responsibility for our economy and she is really not that strong in health right now.

I have been doing more EFT and it seems to work well.I have been encouraging Bilquis to try it because it would seem that she might be an especially appropriate candidate for its curative properties as she has a certain amount of dyslexia and a tendency towards cancer,both of which seem to be connected with a disruption or reversal of energies in the body's system,and both of which seem to be helped by EFT's energy balancing or re-directing effects.
I want her to try it with her tobacco and coffee addiction as well,but that requires much persisitence and I have to encourage her a lot.Which reminds me that there is an article called resistence to EFT part II in my e.mails and I must go and have a look at it.
I'll just bang that in I think.
I'm still on this internal discussion of EFT versus sufi practices as a help with psychological and emotional problems but I think it might just give me a headache to try to get into all that this morning..so...