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
4 comments:
That sucks, and losing $300 greenbacks while not the end of the world just sucks. Damn, sorry.
You're right, it's not the end of the world. But I'd really hoped to have this translated and Andre, when he was actually turning stuff out, was doing good work. But he was unpredictable and in the end, unreliable. Working with him reminded me very much of my attempts to work with Lee Madison. Same experience: excellent art work, a couple weeks rapport, then *boop* he would be gone for four or five months. I believe Lee suffered from mood swings as well.
Translating the TRO:3063 is a large amount of work, to be sure. There's a LOT of TRO there - just strolled through it myself about a month back and was surprised to see so much unused art in the 'Art of the TRO' alone! It just goes on and on. I think I have the Draconis Combine actually translated now, but am not sure. I will have to go and look.
Oh well. I'm not going to badmouth Andre, despite all the hair-tearing I have done. I am sure he did his best, at least from his perspective. Bill and I have promised things to people in the past (a Union Class Dropship for Chris Sumner that is still sitting in my garage... Bill lost interest about the time we were to resin-cast the interior) and not delivered. So Andre is not alone.
Hey,
I've contacted you a while back - although it seemed that I needed to contact your "translator" via facebook first. But Karl Streiger doesn't exist on facebook ;-)
However I will gladly lend a hand if you need one.
I'm pretty sure that I can convince some guys from the MechWarrior Online community to help.
We have some very gifted writers there.
Maybe it would not be as perfect as a "regular" translator could manage.
When I read about your idea to translate, I contacted Ulysses Games (Translate and sell Catalysts products in Germany) but they didn't want lend a hand to translate this outstanding work.
But while I have a couple of other BattleTech related fan works ongoing, I would translate the TRO 3063 step by step. Say 1 article each 1-2 weeks?
A very first version (one day work)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TqX3y6OqLbGokiTq2q6yAM2yuEF_7j_Sk4mGbw_eaYw/edit?usp=sharing
Although I might only be able to provide text-only, the format is the concern of others ;-)
Please let me know, but please no fratzenbuch wall again
Sure, you're welcome to give it a try. There were several issues with choosing which words to use. Thomas Lagemann is on Facebook - you might wish to get in touch with him, as he and Nadja were part of the team that was to do this translation.
My email is ssatak@yahoo.com
Best of luck. I still have InDesign ready, to drop the translation in when you finish it. One page at a time...
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