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***
How it all began. Genesis of a translator from a Polish backwater. For who in the world heard of Grabowko? When I was about 13 years old, I was doing quite well in primary school and my father suggested that I should get interested in a foreign language. My brother-in-law had an old English course book for self study, so the choice was to learn English. I took to it with such zest that my father started to ridicule my enthusiasm, which in turn resulted in shelving the book for a few weeks. But, as I caught the hook, when he wasn't looking I smuggled the book back to my desktop.
When I continued my education in secondary school, I already had my mind set on studying English at a university. And with two years of English self study before the secondary school (comprehensive/high school) I found coping with the harsh English teacher much easier. He was certainly an expert in English, but not everybody liked his discipline. However, it was him who recommended that I should continue my English education at the Adam Mickiewicz University English Philology Institute in Poznań.
I passed my written exam with a lower score than I would have wished for, but the oral exam was a "flying colours" one. At the "Mecca of applied linguistics", as some visiting lecturers used to call the Poznań University, I was taking between ten and twenty hours of practical English classes per week in the first and second year of study, and several other courses, some of which I enjoyed more, some less. Now I would approach some of them with a different attitude, but unfortunately time goes only one way. I had the opportunity to take classes and lectures in semantics, syntax, sociolinguistics, and computer science (which was not compulsory and rather theoretical, so I had to learn computers myself the hard way — by the way — does anybody remember computers where you had to park the HDD head?). In 1992 I passed my M.A. exam, got the diploma and returned to Kwidzyn.
Now it was high time to look for a job. The high school I had left was very eager to hire me as an English teacher but I hardly considered this option because of low pay. The local private entrepreneur, a relatively new species at that time in Poland, wanted to turn me into a travelling sales representative, while the local state-owned paper mill was ready to give me a job as a translator/interpreter. I chose the latter option, although the pay wasn't at all better than at school. But a month later the paper factory was privatized and the financial aspect was much improved. So, they had a new English translator (the others had left earlier because of low pay) with no knowledge of the pulp and paper industry.
The chief process engineer recommended that I spend a week in each area of the mill. So I did, touring the areas, reading documents and flow sheets, gathering vocabulary. I wasn't able to complete the last leg of my tour, as the management was wondering where their newly acquired translator was...
The first document I translated was a pulp consistency transmitter description. Then came more translation and interpreting, and with them more experience. I can't say that after sixteen years I have gained all the experience in the world, but I certainly know how to approach the varied and diverse translation assignments I receive. During more than 7 years of my in-house career I managed to assemble a vast array of dictionaries and handbooks, both from the mill's library (these, for obvious reasons, had to be returned before June 1, 2000) and my own.
On June 1, 2000 I went over to greener pastures and devoted myself solely to freelancing. I was contemplating quitting the in-house job for some time before, and at the end of February I turned in the notice of termination. I was released after the three months statutory notice period. Since then I have enjoyed the path of a freelancer I chose...
I might add that my favourite word processing software used to be WordPerfect, and that I think I have mastered its macro programming language quite well, in the process of automating repetitive tasks. [ A few months after writing these words I said goodbye to WordPerfect, as its current owner, Corel, does not seem to have any interest in Polish users.] Later I switched over to Lotus Word Pro 97 - several years ago they released the English version of their software in Poland for free, a great idea! At the beginning of 1999 I switched over to Word 97, both at the paper mill and at home. So here's how Mr Gate$ pulls even the most reluctant ones to his fold... ;) Since then I have also been testing the Star Office suite (another product which was free at that time) and I was impressed. Having evaluated StarOffice 6.0 beta I can say that it's a superb office suite, but as they went commercial soon afterwards, I'm going to stick to OpenOffice, StarOffice's open source (and free) equivalent. For the first time since 1998 I have finally made friends with Linux and used KDE's Kate HTML editor to edit and update this page.
2008 was a breakthrough year. No Ms Windows on my new laptop, with Linux being its only production OS + my favorite CAT software, Swordfish.
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