I has a jay oh bee!

I haven’t had the time to write a post about it before since the whole thing went so incredibly fast, but by now I’ve had my first working week as a junior translator at IBM. Last week I got an e-mail on tuesday, in which my boss at TechText told me IBM was looking for a fulltime translator on a project basis, meaning that it’s unsure how long this job is going to take. I might be there for the minimum of six weeks, but they could also ask me to stay longer. Of course, I went ahead and said yes the second I could, and I’m now working there for 4 days a week via TechText (the fifth is reserved for my MA-thesis). Translating at such a big company is a) nice for my wallet, b) nice for my CV and c) an extremely good piece of experience.

I’ve noticed that this week already. IBM has a self-developed translation tool, which is boringly called Translation Manager. I don’t like it as much as TRADOS, but it’s workable and I’m getting the hang of how to handle XML tags in the documents I get. Funny thing: when I was studying about XML in college, all my nerd friends told me “XML is so nineties!”, but in fact, it’s all I’ve seen so far. At my internship most of the texts I got were XML as well. In any case, my manager has already approved of the work I’ve done so far, and monday I have a new text waiting for me, which looked just as challenging. I get to puzzle all day! I’m loving this ^_^

The company itself is big, perhaps a little too big for my taste. There are three buildings: a huge one that has all the techy people in it, a slightly less huge one (but still) for management and other services (like the translators), and a smaller building for the security of the other two buildings only. This is where they make sure the right people get into the right places (and nowhere else), and they make the passes. I have one with my picture on it and everything, and I have to bleep gates and doors with it to get in and out.

Their solution for workstations is just cute! They have thinkpads which can be docked, and a typical dock has an (ancient) CRT-screen, a keyboard and a mouse attached to it. There is some evil IBM-version of Windows installed on it though, but then again, at least I got to install Firefox. I’ve been succesfully keeping away from the evil IRC and other chats, and as a result I’ve been working my arse off.

Lunch is also quite nice, they have a restaurant with a lot of cold and warm meals which are cheap by any standards. Thursday is fish day, so they got all kinds of fish on the menu. My manager has a strange hobby though… he walks the stairs from the 2nd floor (where the restaurant is) to the 9th floor (where we are) every day after lunch. Because I wanted to show some goodwill and I sincerely thought I would be coping fine, I walked after him the first day, but the outcome was rather sad. However, I’ve decided to keep doing that, and not be out of breath anymore the day I have to leave there.

So all in all, I’m going to have a good time there me thinks!