Che caldo

"You should see if you can get some research experience at the hospital," says a well-meaning acquaintance one fine day during a conversation about my future and my staying in Reggio another year. "At the very least, some translation work."

This strikes me as a good plan, and so I offer my services as a combination research assistant/translator/editor/general voluntary slave in a series of emails written in very carefully worded Italian. (Seriously, every time I have to write an email - or anything - in Italian, it takes me the better part of half an hour just to bang out three or four lines.)

"Yes, absolutely we'll take you on," says a young man who does something related to psych, "we have loads of stuff that needs translating."

I ponder this for a moment. I do not generally translate for free and I can't really justify doing it for him if I make everyone else pay for it. I am trying to figure out how to extract myself from this situation when he presents me with a book in English.

"This, for example." I look at it.

"Wait, but I don't usually do English to Italian - my Italian isn't that great," I protest weakly. On the other hand, this partially fixes my situation: I can't possibly charge anyone anything to translate from English to Italian, because I'm so far from qualified for it that it's not even funny.

"No, no - your Italian is fine. I saw it in that email you wrote," he reminds me. "I'll just have my secretary copy the parts we'd like!"

TWenty minutes later, I am holding a packet of rather overwhelming thickness (it's not actually that thick, but do you know how many words there are on a page? and how many of those I don't know how to say in Italian? well, it starts with 'a' and ends with 'lot').

And that is how I find myself here on a Sunday night, slogging through the third page of exceedingly dense stuff at a pathetic pace while sweat all but dribbles down my back despite my being parked less than a meter away from the fan and the fact that I've taken at least four showers so far today (the sweat is because it's hot, not because I'm stressed about translating... just, you know... to be clear).

On the other hand, I now know how to say "evidence-based" in Italian, and surprised myself by coming up with "spicchi d'aglio" (cloves of garlic) all by myself a few minutes ago. I have no idea where I heard that or how I retained it, but I'll take what I can get. It's nice to feel, sometimes, that pian piano, my Italian is indeed improving.

In the meantime, though, it is ridiculously hot for 10 at night and apparently it's only going to get worse next week and I have the window wide open despite having the light on... which puts it at risk for bats coming in, and if a bat comes in I will scream so loudly that probably they will hear me in Scandiano. Also probably a million mosquitoes are going to bite me in the next hour or so. Also I am hungry but if I cook the kitchen will be even hotter than it already is. And also I will have to wash the dishes after. Quite the dilemma, clearly.

Sighhh.

Oh, in other news (well, not really news), happy birthday to the land of air-conditioning and 24-hour pharmacies. Um, and freedom, etc., of course.