The first draft of the translation of Euthymius Zigabenus’ Commentary on the Epistles of Paul is almost complete. In the last week I quickly started and finished off Titus and Philemon.

According to my Translation Progress Report, I am 87% of the way done, with only the commentary on Hebrews left to do. A trip to the Dominican Republic, away from responsibilities both at work and at home, allowed me to work feverishly on the translation, and in six days I managed to get nine days ahead of schedule, progress which I have never seen before. My motivation for working on this project is completely renewed because of this, and even yesterday I translated 500 words instead of the daily quota of 200. For anyone looking for a way to keep motivation high, I recommend keeping track of some quantifiable measure, like how I’m doing, and use that as motivation. I recently discovered that Jerry Seinfeld does something similar, and his method has been named the Seinfeld Strategy. If it works for him (and for me), then it might also work for you. It just takes discipline.

My thoughts keep going forward into the future, past the editing phase, and looking at the next work that I want to translate. I am not sure if it will be possible to simultaneously edit this work and start translating another work just because of the sheet amount of time that doing something like that will take, but it might be worth trying when the first draft is completed. I have to send off some emails though, one to a subject matter expert in his field, to investigate which work I should translate next.

There is a lot of work to do, and I love every minute of it.