I love what I do right now; I am writing scroll texts and teaching classes about writing scroll texts, and it is amazingly fulfilling. I was joking with some friends the other day that around July of 2018, I was feeling like my pace was a little slower than the previous year, or at least that I had written fewer scrolls than the year previous. In 2017, I wrote something like 35 scrolls. This year I did 41. So much for that theory.
For that first year, I had focused on poetry-inspired scrolls that were fairly similar in format. In 2018, I took a turn to really try to make the works historically inspired. I have put together an A&S portfolio, finally, and started really diving into the bardic arts as a vehicle to support my scroll texts, and started (barely) to draw up the framework for a Wordsmithing Guild. It’s been a really fun journey, and I have had the opportunity to do some tremendously fun research!
In the fall, Quintavia hosted an event called Iron Scribe, which was basically a group churn event. There is so much potential there, I really hope that they do it again. In somewhat casual conversation, Signet Mom came over wondering if I knew anyone that spoke French because there was a slew of French-language awards coming up, with Twelfth Night being held in the Barony of L’ile du Dragon Dormant. I replied that I did, and asked how I could help. Her eyes lit up as she galloped off and I mused on what I assumed would be a nice neat assignment that let me stretch a little bit.
Now, let’s be totally honest here about what I mean when I said that I speak French. From seventh to twelfth grade (some mumble mumble years ago…) I took French in school in New Hampshire, about four hours south of Quebec. When I was in college, I studied linguistics, art, and poetry at different times that all had French-language understanding suggestions. When I did my Masters degree, we read D’Indy and Boulez, translated, but often went to the originals to try and determine how good the translation was and pick up on nuance. When I was in Barcelona last year, I remember sitting on the train hearing what I could have sworn was French, sometimes, and Dutch other times; come to find out that it was Catalan, and the languages are similar enough that with a little effort you can read Catalan and understand it with a French mindset. All that to say that I feel like I understand French pretty well, but I am not fluent nor even really practiced. This was going to be a really interesting assignment!
Or five. And two of them were translations, which, I will be the first to tell you, is an ENTIRELY different skillset. And the turnaround time needs to be about a month. Hooboy, onset of Scribal Anxiety in Three, Two…. OK! Relax, you’ve got this.
In all seriousness though, there were several lessons that I learned, all almost immediately and certainly the hard way. First, when the batch of assignments came in, I let Nataliia know that I was going to be at capacity for Twelfth Night because of the turn around. It’s important to know how much time something like this is going to take, and translations/adaptions of your non-native language, by my estimate, took me three to four times as long. Second, I know enough French speakers that I could get my translations reviewed for accuracy and general French-ness. That was going to be really important because, as one said to me, “Grammatically you are correct, we just would never say that because it sounds weird”. QED, that bit about UNDERSTANDING French but not necessarily speaking it properly. Thirdly, and this was really important, don’t duck the job; I was surprisingly nervous about these assignments, far more than any others, and it was somewhat paralyzing. I had to move through that, and the only way to do that was to actually sit down and do the job.
It really came down to understanding my limitations, and that was something that Nataliia and I talked about afterwards. Translations are not my forte, but the actual interpretation of period works into scroll texts was a lot more natural, and I feel like I got better quality output (I have a second post coming about that part of it, including some neat resources that I found). And she was perfectly happy to send me work until I said “Stop!”, which is a word I have a hard time saying especially when it comes to the friends that I have made and the work that I really enjoy doing.
There were a lot of lessons to be learned in this batch of work, and I am really glad that I took the last couple weeks of the year off to really reflect on it all, polish up my A&S portfolio, and spend time with dear friends and family. Batteries are fully recharged, and The Scribmatorium is back open for business! Don’t mind the dust.