Translation ADD??

I  have been sporadically working on an English translation of a French language history of Carcassonne.  I have joked that it will be required in lieu of payment from any future guests who stay with me.  And there will be a quiz!!  

The book is not long--only 198 pages, but it is slow, slow going.  So what's taking me so long?  I have used guests as an excuse, but the truth is that I am my own obstacle.  One of the benefits of age??? retirement?? is observing myself and wondering why I do what I do.  In the matter of this translation, it's really not my guests who have stopped my forward progress....it's something akin to ADD.  I am constantly wandering off on some tangent.  (Funny, I seem to have the same issue with housekeeping!)

I can't seem to keep my eye on the goal of finishing the project.  I get sidetracked by curiosity about things I do not know....you might recall Tectosages.  Since then, there's been a side trip into the Visigoths, and then into Roman engineering.  I have also made several forays into the life and times of Charlemagne, and oh my, I had to stop and read some about El Cid, who I thought was a much later historical figure.  He actually played a tangential role in getting Barcelona to release its grip on Carcassonne.  Wait??!!! Carcassonne was tied to Barcelona???  Oh yeah. 

The there was Roland--the one in The Chanson de Roland--Charlemagne's nephew, and his battle against the giant.  I seem to remember reading this in my freshman French literature class at Duke, but oh my, that was several lifetimes ago. I had to look that up and learn, or maybe re-learn about him.

Now I have discovered a work called the Liber Feodorum Major--and I can't seem to proceed with the translation until I find out more about this--this library of illustrated documents detailing the development of Aragon.  I need to see this work with my own eyes.  And it preserved in, of all places, Barcelona.  I don't know if its keepers allow the unwashed public to see it, but I am going to find out. 

The above illustration is from Wikipedia and is also in the book I am translating.  It shows the exchange of money for control over Carcassonne; that was some big deal back in the 11th centure!!!

So, the problem is not really the frequent consultations of the dictionary, because I can translate entire paragraphs now without having to look up a single word.  That's encouraging.  The problem is not the complex sentence structure and advanced vocabulary of French historians; I can cope with that.  (Although I will say it took some getting used to once again.  Back in the Duke days, I could read and write those kind of complex sentences with advanced vocabulary myself, but had fallen out of practice)  

The problem annd the joy is that I am more focused on learning, filling in the considerable gaps in my education, and satisfying my curiosity than I am on just getting the book translated.  And that makes me so very, very happy.  I still love learning for its own sake and find it one of the best ways ever to pass the days  in retirement, here in Carcassonne.

And prospective house guests can rest easy--it looks like a quiz will be a long time materializing.