Forced by circumstances, I go after some translation jobs: freedom as to workload, reasonable return… I fill out my resume: vast experience in the industry, knowledge of several languages, etc., etc. They send me as a test, from the land of Shakespeare, the manual of a stupidly modest portable air conditioner. I look at it and almost laugh. From English to Portuguese it is a piece of cake! I have been translating a thousand words a week for years… And what about the domestic machine? I have a diploma that allows me to design boilers, pressure vessels, loading lifts, industrial ovens, stoves, combustion engines, cranes… and I already know that it will not take me fifteen minutes to pour out the extremely banal five hundred words and guarantee my new source of income. I read Shakespeare, Blake, Walt Whitman… Easy money! And then I get to work; in thirty minutes, the result is ready and revised. I send it by email to the contracting company. The next day, the answer: translation rejected! “We are so sorry, sir. You did not pass the test this time.”
Easy Money!
