Saturday, September 17, 2016

Well, THAT Ship Has Sailed....

Hey, everybody.

I tried and tried to get a German translation going with Andre Winter, but it was just one thing after another.

I am  going to be honest with you all: when I 'Friended' Andre Winter on FaceBook, I was immediately carpet-bombed by an endless string of hard Left propaganda defending the Islamic onslaught of Europe and celebrating, frankly, perversion. I did not agree with most of this, but felt it should not get in the way of the project.  But nevertheless, I had a feeling this was not going to turn out well.

Leftists as a rule do not believe they have to follow the rules of right conduct if they are dealing with anyone who disagrees with them.  In that, they share a lot with Islam.  I was nervous that Andre, having discovered from my indignant comments that I was of the 'Other', would simply decide I didn't deserve his valuable time - contract be damned.

I still don't know if that is what went on, and I will never know.  But personal problems of one kind after another - funerals, bipolar diagnosis, vacation, piss-poor communications, trouble with word selection, other more pressing work - kept pushing the actual performance of the translation back and back and back.  And that is when Andre Winter even bothered to respond to my emails and FB messages.

It's been nearly a year.  Here's how it went:  "The Lyran section will hit you next Monday".  Monday comes and goes, nothing.  Lather, rinse, repeat about a dozen times.

I finally got sick of the empty promises and asked for my money back today.  He won't give it back. I immediately received a flood of excuses (mind you, he's been dead silent for a month and a half).  I Unfriended him and blocked his messages.  First time I have ever done that to ANYONE.

 So now I am out $300 and have nothing to show for it but a couple of translated pages and a worthless contract that Andre Winter violated at the beginning of February this year.  Oh, and a string of empty promises.

This guy has some serious problems.  One of them is that he's a damned liar.  I dunno - guess he figured I was just another fanboy.

If you need English-German translation done, I suggest you look elswhere.  Meanwhile, here is the contract:





Thanks for stopping by.  Sorry to disappoint you all.

Regards,

Steve

Saturday, June 18, 2016

German Translation... Eight Months Later.

Hello, everyone.

Well, I signed the contract sometime in November and sent some money off in February.

Still haven't seen a thing.  I have proofreaders who have been promised time and again by the translator that something was coming.  

For a long time, nada.

Finally something showed up with Thomas and Nadja, the proofers, about the time I decided to pull the plug and ask for my money back.

So... I relented and we are all keeping in close touch on Facebook.

Draconis Combine is done, I think, and the Lyrans are next.  Slow going and there are issues of format (the German language often uses words that wind up not fitting in the same area as the original English text), but we should have something that works for German BattleTech fans soon.