Freelance Copy Editing - Purely By Chance.

[sechan19]

Yesterday, Kato-sensei asked myself and two other American students (the ones she considered the smartest, or so she said) to look over a hiragana learning pamphlet the school is putting together and make sure the English is correct.

Well, in my natural anal-retentiveness about the English language, I began making various corrections (involving mainly commas and inappropriate instances of the word "which," but also including some word-order issues and instances of style-preference). After we'd gone over the pamphlet everyone departed for points West.

Cut to today, when Anraku-sensei came down to the class and asked me to go up to the fifth floor. At first, I thought she wanted to discuss the school BBQ with me. (Anraku-sensei was very worried about me carrying 3 kilos of meat from home to the park, despite my continuous protests that I was honto ni jyoubu desu - "really buff.") However, it turns out that the organizers of the hiragana learning pamphlet had gotten wind of my "mad English editing skills," and they wanted me to go over the pamphlet with them once again. I spent an hour changing word order, discussing various nuances of meaning in English, and struggling to properly identify the sound of the Japanese character "wa" in an English word. (Neither "wonderful" nor "wagon" were quite right. I suggested "watt," but how do you draw a mimetic picture with that as your basis?)

My fee? Two pieces of delicious Japanese pastry, including a matcha/red-bean-paste roll that I'm saving for later, and a cheese-cream puff that's already been devoured. The cheese-cream puff was not kidding about its description. It was a powdered-sugar sprinkled pastry puff with a light frosted cream and chunks of sweet cheese (seriously) on the inside. It was surprisingly delightful. I'd been craving pastry, actually, so their thank-you gift was timely and apropos.

After I got home, I headed out to the supermarket to buy the aforementioned meat, where I succeeded in amusing the living daylights out of the butcher who filled my order. I guess it's not everyday that you see a little tiny gaijin come in and buy over six pounds of assorted meat. At one point, I had to reassure him that yes, I really did want three kilos, and that yes, I really knew how much three kilos was. Now it's up to the kids in class to eat them - with seasoning and garnish, but of course!

In further BBQ news, today I got volunteered to be one of the eight people competing in the giant jump-rope contest. I'm not sure how it keeps happening, but I'm not complaining. As long as we don't get rained out, I expect the day to be a lovely romp.

And I'm off to chop some chicken.

Comments

[reteva.livejournal.com]

I thought of water today at the BBQ. Part of the problem with the "wa" sound was that they already had a helping icon in the shape of a wagon, and the teacher used the phrase "wonderful wagon" in the dvd example. They were kind of stuck at that point. To the Japanese speaker, both wonderful and wagon have the "wa" pronunciation (naturally). I don't think they realized the disparity until they'd shown the dvd to American students and we all went, "uh..."