作为自由 择稿人（freelancer)， 深感为人民币服务的辛苦，因为有的文章英文实在很差。

所以，当我有了一个“为人民服务”的机会，校对“Water 4.0" （书），我 （这里没有副词）答应了。

You can tell how reluctant I was to accept this responsibility. I wrote to XR in late October 2014:

"Translation is very time consuming, something I try to avoid. No only that, it requires broad knowledge.

Enclosed please find two SciAm articles, the original and its Chinese version. I helped to translate it into Chinese. To me, translation is like a mother bird trying to feed her newborn chicks, if you know how that goes :) I am not totally happy with the end result, partly because I had no final say of some changes that appear in the printed version.

Most of the translated books on the market are less than good. Some are dreadful. If you can find someone who knows the content of the book as well as you do, please ask that person to help you. If you work with me, you may find I am VERY picky :)"

At the end, I accepted the challenge. What a challenge this has been! The book has 13 chapters, as you can see the author does not mind the number "13." (I would have done away with 12.)

Chapter 6 is "The Chlorine Dilemma." What a dilemma it is! I had to deal with Word "dilemma" because the file was corrupted (no tracking allowed, and no comments allowed). What a pain that was!

However, I have to say that this is the chapter that concerns US all, since we all use tap water daily. You may drink bottled water, but you can't avoid using tap water. So, I would recommend everyone to read it. If you don't like to read English, you can wait for our translation. Our translation deadline is the end of Feb. 2015. So, the book may come out in 2016. Stay tuned.

I kept on asking myself why I am doing this (hard work for so little pay). I guess it is because I grew up with a mother who was a water expert, and because I have a brother who is a water expert. Finally, I have something to talk to them about!

In short: 为人民服务也很辛苦。