Following on from yesterday's blog, it became apparent that I would need the research questionnaire translated into Russian. I showed the Hebrew version to a few people near me and their faces took on the same expression that mine does when shown something when I'm not wearing my glasses.
There is no need to examine whether these people are even representative of the general Russian speaking population; if they can't read the questionnaire (or reading it would require an extortionate amount of time), then they are not going to answer the questions, which means that I lose people from my population.
So, as I suggested yesterday, I built a temporary version of the questionnaire by copying each sentence (questions, answers and surrounding text) into Google Translate, then copied the Russian text into a file, maintaining the same order. There are some answers which I didn't bother translating, as either they are solely numerical (e.g. 26-50%) or they are answers which repeat themselves (I agree, etc).
I am well aware of the fact that translations prepared in this manner are somewhat lacking (I've been on the other end of this, having had to correct a translation from Hebrew to English) and so I decided to ask more capable Russian speakers in my company to revise the Russian. I sent off four or five letters, and to my pleasant surprise, received affirmative answers within minutes. At least one said that the writer would be only too pleased to help. I suggested in the letter that the questionnaire be divided into sections so that no one has to translate/correct more than ten questions, but one person offered to correct the entire questionnaire.
It seems that I am not used to such kindness any more!
On another matter, this is now my 800th blog. With the help of the analysis program which I wrote a month ago, I can easily show what the hot topics of the last 100 blogs have been.
| Tag | Count |
|---|---|
| DBA | 32 |
| Holiday | 16 |
| Health | 12 |
| Personal | 12 |
| Sorrento | 9 |
| Programming | 8 |
| Sicily | 7 |
| ERP | 6 |
| Cooking | 5 |
| Films | 5 |
| Israel | 5 |
| Excel | 4 |
| Kindle | 3 |
| Mobile phone | 3 |
| Statistics | 3 |
| TV series | 3 |
| 1975 | 2 |
| Computer | 2 |
| Delphi | 2 |
| Jewish holidays | 2 |
| MIDI | 2 |
| Maccabi Tel Aviv | 2 |
| Meta-blogging | 2 |
| Obituary | 2 |
| Office automation | 2 |
| SQL | 2 |
| DCI Banks | 1 |
| Enigma | 1 |
| Firebird | 1 |
| Food science | 1 |
| Habonim | 1 |
| In-basket | 1 |
| Kibbutz | 1 |
| Literature | 1 |
| Olivia Williams | 1 |
| Organisational behaviour | 1 |
| Peter Robinson | 1 |
| Psychology | 1 |
| Richard Thompson | 1 |
| Robert Silverberg | 1 |
| Sandy Denny | 1 |
| Swell Season | 1 |
| Yoni Rechter | 1 |
No real surprises there. DBA and holiday together comprise 48% of the blogs (every 'holiday' blog was either also 'Sorrento' or 'Sicily', so these latter two labels don't count) and if I add in health, then 60% of the blogs are covered. So now we know what has occupied my attention since April 2014.
The interesting thing is that subjects which used to occupy me - programming, music, books and films - seem no longer to be the subject of attention. Does this mean that I am becoming more focused as I become older? Or could it mean that there are fewer and fewer pieces of new (to me) music about which I want to write?
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