Erick Van Houtte

caféLounge for Erick Van Houtte's community….within context

Back home….ready to go….and blog again

Jul 31

Posted by Erick Van Houtte in General, Molière à Westford, Van Houtte Story, within Context | No Comments

I have been offline since early May….and am now re-engaging with my online activities. This must be taken within context. After a year on assignment in France with wife and children, we took a little time off in Spain to reset and headed home. Between work, getting organized after a year of absence, fixing the house up and time to spend with family during a beautiful summer (at lake or pool every weekend), little time has been left for my hobbies (no matter how things are sliced, family will come first).

 

Now home for two months, settled-in, and on the eve of vacation, I can focus on these projects:

 

Status of projects

-          Translation of the Van Houtte family story: much behind schedule.  If it rains during the vacation, there will be progress and I am confident I can catch up

-          Molière à Westford:  Ironically, we wanted to kick-start this to improve our social life back home as for the sustainability of the French language for our children.  Well, our social life, make that our quality of life, has much changed since we left for the France to our return in the US; this is largely due to our children being out of the toddler stage, giving us those extra minutes every day for adult time, and having met all our neighbors and are thrilled with our new life here.  BUT…we will get back to Molière in Westford, though much slower that initially expected.

-          Within Context / wiContext:  this has taken on a new life.  As already indicated, I’ve received feedback suggesting to separate this from my personal website.  Done!  www.wicontext.com is active, so is the new blog.  I now must organize.  More to come

-          erickvanhoutte.com:  I will remove the wiContext blog and let my personal website be precisely about that, a personal website; about the Van Houtte family story, general interests and writing projects (many related to wiContext)

 

Back to basics.  I have defined a partial process for translation of the Van Houtte family history.  I have been experimenting with and discovering tools for online presence.  I must organize wiContext.  I will use my experience and leverage on general knowledge from friends and colleagues.

 

Chapter two of my online presence begins.

Retour aux USA de la France en Mai 2012

Apr 1

Posted by Erick Van Houtte in Molière à Westford | No Comments

Ce premier ‘post’ n’est que le début.  Nous retournons à la maison, Westford, Massachusetts USA en mai 2012.  Dès notre retour, nous allons activement poursuivre la réussite de cette communauté.

Si vous habitez Westford MA ou une ville avoisinante, nous vons invitons à commenter sur le blog.

La première action pour ce blogue étant de “l’ouvrir”, ce qui est fait, il faut maintenant l’animer…le faire vivre.  Ceci nécessite du temps, et surtout, des participants.

Nous (notre petite famille de quatre) sommes encore en France, avec un retour prévue à Westford, MA USA pour le mois de mai prochain.  Les enfants iront probablement dans un daycare de Westford (Next Generation Children’s Center – NGCC de Westford).  C’est une fois que nous serons de retour à Westford que « Molière à Westford » pourra être plus actif.

Déjà, nous avons commencé à en parler….connaissances, NGCC et autre.  D’ailleurs, aujourd’hui je vais informer la Ville de Westford de notre projet.  Ainsi, avec un peu de chance (et surtout de l’effort), nous aurons un certain momentum une fois les enfants à NGCC.

Un sujet demeure : la communauté s’appel « Molière à Westford » alors que nous hésitons aussi avec « Molière in New England ».  Le premier est plus intime, le deuxième un bon jeu de mots et plus ouvert.  Pas important pour le moment, car ceci peut toujours évoluer, et j’aime la vue « intime » avec Westford.

Dès notre confirmation avec NGCC, nous allons essayer d’activer les choses et en parler à nos voisins et des connaissances de Westford.  Par la suite, nous devrions voir un petit effet boule de neige.

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Progress on translation of Van Houtte Family story with new method

Feb 26

Posted by Erick Van Houtte in Van Houtte Story | 1 Comment

I’ve had a few interesting discussions about my approach for the translation of the Van Houtte Family story, mostly about if this approach would be more effective overall.  In the end, it may prove that there is not much of a difference, but for one thing:  feeling of advancement.

There is no  doubt in my mind:  until this weekend, I had translated some 2,000 words (from the French).  This weekend, I translated almost 1,900.  Granted, I’ll have more reviewing to do, but I also believe this will be the case for the first set of translation.

Bottom line, I am much more encouraged as I now see the words and paragraphs accelerate in translation.  This feeling is worth quite a bit.  Once I have my raw translation, I will enter a new mode and mind set.  Also, I’ll be able to share the draft with others to dig deeper into the content, from all angles.

Out of a total of approximately 61,000 French words, I now have 7%.  If I maintain  the pace of this weekend (which is probably about three to four hours (say 4), I’ll need about 100 to 120 hours, or 35-40 days at that pace.  So at 3-4 hours a week, that a will be about nine (9) months.  I suspect I’ll improve my translating abilities (not because I’ll be better in one language or the other, but because I’ll be more comfortable and have better rhythm.  This means expect to see the raw material ready for the end of 2012.  I’m going to try for September or October, by counting on improved efficiency and ability.

Planning for Publishing and Distribution

In parallel (part of my time for this project), I have been reading up on blogging (go figure just by this blog) and ePub.  This is all clearer to me now, and will require time to set up my actual plan for publishing and distributing the book.  Since I will not be going through a traditional publisher/editor, I will considered as an ‘indie‘ author.  This is more and more popular.  So extra research still required to do this well.  Such as:  Amazon or Smashwords (or both, but how), get an ISDN number, copyright, etc.  If any of you are ‘indie,’ let me know, I’d love to share experiences.

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