I like it a lot. I am such a visual person that reading things with eyes and making them over into another language in writing is always something I love and good at. But after sitting there translating a legal request in a drug dealing criminal matter for a whole day, my heart and body just don’t vote for it.

Well, translation is not always full of joy. Sometimes it feels like working on a renovation job on a shabby and small old house, or working on an alteration job on an old piece of cloth. You don’t have the complete freedom to be able to be creative enough and you know that there is always a limitation that you can’t go beyond it.

You can renovate your little house to give it an eye-catching and stunning new look, but you can’t make it a masterpiece. You always work UNDER its original author’s shadow so there is always the struggles between following no-matter-what, bad or good, and what’s-the-best. The problem is you are not THEM. You can hate what you did on your translation, but you can not hate what to be translated.

Like this one I had been working, 3 Chinese guys smuggled 10 cartons total 250 kg cocaine from China to Australia, and remitted over millions of AU dollars into Chinese banks. There are AFP, DPP, DAG and Restraining Court Orders documents all together to be translated so they can be sent to China authorities to act on “proceeds of offence”. There are nothing else but legal words, not mentioning that I had a strict deadline and intended to chase up the unpaid contracts down the tract about 3-4 months ago with the agency. I felt so used, as a tool for communication, instead of as a person for creating beauty of literature or conveying charms of another culture.

Looking back, I sort of loved my previous translation work for NG’s travel notes. They were harder, bigger, more time consuming and really killed my brain cells. The pay was actually much lesser, but in some way, they were quite satisfying. So who said we sold our soul for money??