First Exam Down!

I just took the first exam of the semester, and it went well!

The exam was for Translation from Middle High German. I knew going in that I would be given a poem about 20-30 lines long and would have an hour to translate it. A Medieval to Modern German dictionary and a German to English dictionary were my aids. To prepare, I essentially just looked up a bunch of medieval poems that fit the bill and did practice exams, comparing my translation at the end to whatever other translations I could find.

I had been getting pretty nervous about the test. Half the time I could make sense of the poems without too much difficulty, but then a line would pop up that I would entirely misinterpret. I could either ace or fail the test depending on which text the teacher chose.

Imagine then my shock when the poem he gave me was one of the first ones I'd practiced with. I am proud to say that I did tell him that I had seen a translation of it before. However, he decided that since I had seen it while preparing for the exam, it was still fair game. Instead of worrying about figuring it out, I could focus on choosing the most suitable phrases.

The only major problem was how to translate "Obedience to God". Since I knew what the poem meant, just not how to say it in modern German, I asked the professor. He gave me the term Ehrerbietung, meaning homage or deference. Unfortunately, as I discovered when I looked it up just now, I misspelled it as Eherbietung, which, if it were a word, would mean offering of marriage...ah well.

I have two exams next week to prepare for, Heat and Mass Transfer and Introduction to Literary Studies. Since the former is required for graduation and the latter is electronic, multiple choice, and 21 questions long, I think I'm going to focus on Heat and Mass.