This morning I got a German-Spanish translation. The project manager said: «It's urgent». «Sure, like everything else in life, except living, of course», I remember I thought. The text in question was a bad photocopy of a medical report. I don't know how much ink I spent to print the damned report, but I work out it was about 1 euro worth. Well, the person who had digested the text was not native, which meant she misspelt «Arbeit» ━ she wrote «Abeit», fine ━ and «Kante» ━ she wrote «Kannte», great ━. Apart from that, it was plenty of abbreviations. And you know what happens with abbreviations: you need some three hours to find them all, unless you invent a few of them, which is the last resource.
After some four hours I was done with the translation. «Nice work», I thought. Then I counted the words: 250. Well, that meant 10 euros gross. Do I mean the agency pays me 0,04€ for a medical report DE > ES? Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Shittish, isn't it? But that's the matter, you take it or you leave it. However, things grew even worse. I remembered I still had to give almost 25% of what I had earned to that vampire-faced Finance Minister who seems a clone of Mr Burns. His face came up to my mind. I saw his hyena smile while I was paying that fucking 25% of taxes, which meant that I'd hardly earn 8 euros, to which I should also subtract one more euro of ink (remember I had to print the document).
Guess what? I did the translation for free. Yes. I preferred not to imagine the Finance Minister's vulture-like expression having an actual financial orgasm because of the fucking four euros he'd obtain from me. This time, I wouldn't provide him with any tax pleasure, not even a miserable four-euro-tax orgasm.
Frantz Ferentz, 2014
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