11:17pm, Feb 10th 2007, after finally posting the last part of the translation, I closed my eyes and almost collapsed in my chair. It’s DONE, and I did keep my promise.

It started on Tuesday, Feb. 6th, the day I found an Amazon box lying on my doormat as I was unlocking the door. It’s here, already! The Shadow Chronicles! Actually, I was expecting it on the 9th, because according to my experience, amazon’s snail-shipping can never get you anything on its “release date”. But this time, things changed. But it’s a bad timing, I was going to have a presentation on the 9th, and couldn’t spend too much time on the movie. Fortunately, I am not a very last-minute person, and the slides for my presentation were almost done by that time.

So, I spent the whole night trying to rip the movie and extract the subtitle. Obviously, ripping was too hard for me, as soon as I saw people already posted download link of the movie, I just gave up. It was almost midnight already. Then I tried to get the subtitles out, following a protocol xiangkeng once sent me, but there was a file I just couldn’t find. Thanks to herobot and xiangkeng again, I managed to get the subs out, but I went to sleep before I can see the result, it was almost 1 o’clock in the morning.

The next morning, I saw herobot already posted the sub package. What a wasted night last night! I told to myself, and couldn’t wait to take off and start the translation. That evening, the first thing I did when I got home, was to get the text out from herobot’s file, even before I ate my dinner. But I still had a presentation to do on Friday. I decided to try translation for a small portion before working on my slides. Partly, because I myself was impatient to know what the movie was about. There was Afu came up on MSN, asking me how soon I can finish the translation. I replied nervously, -- see, I have the joint group meeting presentation to do on Friday… but I promised him I will finish it by this coming weekend. He seemed amazed, and kindly reminded me there is a lot to do. I was clearly aware that this is a 90-minute movie after all, but I was pretty confident because the lines were relatively simple to understand and to translate. That night I made about 120 lines.

Thursday, I felt I REALLY should be working on my presentation now. And that was the day I had a deadly bad stiff-neck, pretty much unable to move any part of my body above chest. So that night I directly went to bed after dinner, leaning on a bunch of pillows so that my neck wouldn’t exert too much force to keep the head up. I finished my presentation around 10:30, and spent the rest of the night working on the translation. By the time I couldn’t stay up any longer, I completed the first 200 lines.

Friday, the day of my presentation. It went pretty smooth, even my picky advisor has found it pretty good. Whew… now I can concentrate on the translation. By the end of the day, I found my friend Cindy, with whom I used to have dinner on Friday, was even busier then I was, so the dinner was cancelled. This left me a little more time. However, there was another thing I had to do before I could officially start. A friend of mine was going back to China the next morning, and she promised me she could bring some of kiki’s stuff back and send to kiki. So, I had to take the cargo to her place. It took me about 1 hour to complete the round trip, although it’s only about 15 miles. At her place she asked me if I wanted to stay a little bit, and I said no and told her, “I’m translating a movie, and I’ve got the fans from all over China waiting there!” As a matter of fact, Friday night was more of an under-achieving night than I expected. I had a bunch of phone calls to make, and I only added 100 lines on that day.

Saturday. I couldn’t sleep through all morning like usual. The first thing I thought about after I opened my eyes, was “I’ve got this translation to do, I should start it as soon as my mind clears up!” Then I started my task around 9:30, and posted another 100 lines after about 1 hour. Then I blamed myself for putting so many experiments on Saturday, so I had to go to the lab. What’s good about was that most of the experiments had long waiting time, which I could devote solely into my translation. And it was the most productive day, I did about 500 lines in the afternoon. I had been determined to get it done before Sunday, so I continued to work on it the same night. It’s getting tougher, for some strange reason; the biggest problem was that I couldn’t figure out to whom a line belonged. You’ve got to put feelings in when translating: the same words, could be translated into different phrases if they were said by us or by the enemy. The last resort was – to watch the movie, more specifically, the ending. Obviously this was something I don’t like, but on a second thought, since I already read through and studied thoroughly all the conversations, would the movie be any kind of surprise any more? It’s all the same by now.

Then I finished the last line on 11:15pm, just before my boyfriend called. I told him I was exhausted but very happy. At this point I suddenly realized I missed my favorite drama Ugly Betty on Thursday night, and I hadn’t watched the animation I downloaded earlier. What a week!

Looking back at these couple of days, there has been definitely more fun than suffering I would say. Because that was something I really enjoyed. Reading transcripts is even more fun than watching the movie, especially when you haven’t watched the movie yet. You are going to pay attention to every single details, see how they are linked together, and the hardest and yet the most fun part is to figure out who said those words. Sometimes it’s very easy, for example Marcus’s harsh words against the Invid, they were so obvious; but sometimes it could be very confusing as well, like the final battle, between Marcus and Maia, see who is saved by whom. There have been times that I almost jumped out of my chair, like at Louie’s sigh when he first entered Deukalion, -- no one has survived, including our beloved Dr. Lang and Exedore. There have been times that I really wanted to kill Marcus, -- frankly, even he changed his mind at very last, he is still by far my favorite character. And there have been times that I recognize similar scenes from other places, like Vince took Scott to activate the missiles, have any of you been reminded of the scene where Col. Rodriguez took Karl Riber to activate the synchro cannon?

So far I haven’t watched the movie yet, but I definitely will. From the transcript I would say this is a great movie, as it hooked me on all the way through the end, despite the fact that I was working on translation that most people would find tedious. And today is Sunday, I decided to write down my feelings before I forget them.

中文版

　　2007年2月11日晚11点17分，当我把翻译稿的最后一部分贴上网之后，我闭上眼睛几乎瘫在椅子上。终于完成了，我守住了诺言。
　　整个过程是从2月6日星期二开始的，那天我下班回家看见一个Amazon的纸盒放在我的门毡上。一定是《暗影编年》，竟然已经到了！实际上，我是指着它9号才能收到的，因为凭我的经验，Amazon的寄送都慢的跟蜗牛一样，完全不可能在DVD发行的当天就收到。看来这回的确不一样。可是早到对我来说并不是一件好事，星期五我还有一个报告要做，不可能把太多的时间放在电影上。幸运的是，我一贯不会把事情拖到最后一分钟，而我的报告当时已经完成不少了。
　　于是，那天一整个晚上，我都在努力压缩电影，提取字幕。但看起来，压缩对我来说实在是太困难了，当我看到已经有人贴上电影的下载链接的时候，我就放弃了。那时已经到12点了，我便开始提字幕，用的是xiangkeng给我的方法，但是有个文件，我却怎么也找不到。多亏了Herobot和xiangkeng的再次帮忙，我终于把字幕提了出来，但是在完成之前我就去睡了，那时已经接近1点。
　　第二天早上，我看到Herobot把英文版字幕的压缩包已经贴出来了。昨天一晚上就这么浪费了！我不禁这么想，但仍然盼着早点下班回家开始翻译。那天晚上，我到家以后的第一件事就是把文本从Herobot的文件里提出来，连晚饭都没顾上吃。但我周五还是得做报告啊！于是我决定先开始翻译一点，然后再开始做我的正事。一部分原因也是因为我也很好奇，想知道电影到底是讲什么的。接着阿福在MSN上出现了，问我什么时候能翻完。我不无担忧的回答他说，我这个周五有一个大组会我要做报告……但是我答应他本周末就能够完成。他有些吃惊，好意提醒我会有很多要做。我很清楚这怎么说也是一部90分钟的电影啊，但还是相当有把握，因为对话都比较简单，容易懂，也容易翻。那天晚上我完成了120行。
　　周四，我现在是不得不认真做我的报告了。而且那天落枕，肩膀痛的厉害，胸口以上几乎不能动。于是那天晚饭后我就直接躺到了床上，靠在一堆枕头上，这样脖子和肩膀就不用太费力。大约10点半，我的报告完成了，剩下的时间我就全部用来翻译。等到我支持不住必须去睡觉的时候，我做到200行了。
　　周五，做报告。做的还不错，就连我那挑剔的导师也觉得不错。呼……终于可以专心翻译了。下班的时候，发现经常和我出去吃饭的朋友Cindy那天好像比我还忙，所以就没有去吃饭了。这样就多些时间了。但是，在正式开始之前还有一件必须做的事情。一个朋友第二天要回国，她答应可以帮我捎些东西回去，于是我打算让她带些kiki放在我那里的东西回去寄给kiki。我得把那些东西送到她家去，这来回一趟，花掉将近一个小时的时间，虽然只有大约15英里距离。在她家的时候，朋友问我是否要多坐一会儿，我说不行了，告诉她因为“我正在翻译一部电影，有全中国的粉丝们都在等着我！”事实上，周五晚上比我想象的要糟糕，并没有完成很多任务。还有一堆电话要打，那一晚我只翻了100行。
　　周六。我竟然没办法像平时一样睡懒觉了。睁开眼睛想到的第一件事就是，要翻译，等脑子足够清楚了马上就要开始干活。于是9点半左右我就开始干了，约一小时之后贴上去100行。接着我开始怪自己干什么要安排那么多实验在星期六，这样就非去实验室不可了。好在大多数实验都是要等的，我就可以用来翻译了。周六的确是最高产的一天，一下午完成了大约500行。我决定要在周日之前做完，于是晚上又接着干。不知为什么越来越难了，最大的问题是我没法估计出一句话时谁说的。翻译的时候需要把感情放进去，同样的话，在敌我双方是要翻成不同的句子的。最后一个办法就是看电影了，更确切的说，是看电影的结尾。这实在不是我想要的，但是再一想，把所有的对话都读过一遍详细考虑过一遍，这电影对我还怎么可能有什么悬念了呢？完全不会了。
　　接着我在11点15分完成了最后一行，紧接着男朋友就打电话来。电话里我跟他说非常累但是很高兴。这时我才发现这个星期我都没有看最喜欢的电视剧,下载的动画片也没看。这一周啊！
　　回顾这几天，其实还是快乐多于痛苦的。因为这是我十分喜爱的事情。而且我觉得，读剧本比看电影还要有趣，尤其是还没看电影的时候。必须要注意每一处细节，看它们是如何环环相扣的，最难但是最有意思的部分还是去猜一句话是谁说的。有时十分简单，比如Marcus那些咒骂因维人的话，非常明显；有的时候就会很迷惑，比如最后一仗，Marcus和Maia到底谁救了谁。曾有些时候我几乎要跳出椅子去，比如路易面对丢卡利翁叹息的时候，——没有人活下来，那就是说我们热爱的朗和埃克西多都不在人世了。曾有些时候我简直想杀掉Marcus，说实在的，尽管他在最后态度有所改变，但他决不是我最喜欢的角色。还有些时候，我会联想到别的地方的场景，比如当Vince带Scott去激活中子弹的时候，简直就跟《火星基地》里面罗德里格斯上校带卡尔·瑞博去激活同步大炮一模一样。
　　到此为止我还没有看电影，不过我一定会的。从剧本看来我觉得这是一部不错的片子，自始至终把我牢牢吸引住，哪怕我是在做翻译这种很多人都觉得无聊的工作。今天是星期天，我决定写下这些感想，以免日后忘记。
　　
　　写于2月11日