posted
I hope this is a good small amount of text to be posted in here. This is from my already published novel; it was published in my own language and now I took to translating it. So you are welcome to comment on the language as well as the story...
The supervisor of the city's docks ran as fast as he could. He jumped onto a horse and galloped to the city as if mad. People jumped away while he was shouting at them to move. A cloud of dust formed behind him.
The official dismounted the exhausted animal before the Theban palace. Although the guards recognised him, they blocked his way.
"Back off!" he shouted at them. "Important news from the port. He is coming!" The guards looked at one another.
"Are you mad?" said one. "He crossed the King's Wall only ten days ago!" "You think I don't know that? But I've seen his ship with my own eyes!"
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 06, 2007).]
This may be partly due to translation issues, but the wording comes across as rather abrupt and jerky, in my opinion. The actions don't flow from one action to the next in a logical, smooth sequence. It's also a bit wordy, using several words to describe an action where one strong word would do better. Also, what point of view are we in? It seems like omniscient from the details you give.
quote:The supervisor of the city's docks ran as fast as he could. He jumped onto a horse and galloped to the city as if mad. People jumped away while he was shouting at them to move. A cloud of dust formed behind him.
would read better as something like
quote:The supervisor of the city's docks dashed from his office, jumped onto his horse, and galloped into the city while shouting at people to move.
'Dashed' replaces 'ran as fast as he could.' I couldn't figure out what '...as if mad' meant. I'd assume people are moving out of his way if I know he's galloping the horse and is shouting at them to move. Unless it's important to establish dry weather and dirt roads, I'd drop the dust cloud bit...especially if this story is from the supervisor's POV. The rest of the 13 lines could use similar fixes like the above.
Also, who is "He" in the "He is coming!"? Just tell us! Finally, what is a pharaoh doing in an office? Perhaps they had offices, but it struck me as odd that this fellow assumed his god-monarch would be slaving away in an office like, well, one of his officials.
posted
You see, this is why I joined this group. When it comes to talking or writing plainly like I'm doing now, my English is OK. When I go translating a story, I cannot stop myself from going into literal translation word by word. English is full of synonyms and phrases of which I no nearly nothing about and even those that I know I forget to use as I translate.
Which means me publishing abroad is not going to happen any time soon...
posted
Who is 'he'? Well, I only had to put 13 or so lines so if I had permission to put more lines you would see who 'he' is.
Please don't take this like I'm patronizing you but I think you didn't do much research about pharaohs, especially those from the later dynasties. Where do you think a pharaoh should be?
posted
Since English isn't your primary language, I probably wasn't clear enough about the 'office' problem. Sorry. I was in a hurry at the time.
Okay, the use of 'office' in the sense of "a place for conducting business" was first recorded in c.1565. So a pharaoh might have had a room where he conducted business in private, but it wasn't called an office at the time. My second point was that I have the idea of "working class" attached to the word "office." As in, I mentally think of the working class or officials as having offices all together in one spot. If you wrote that someone hurried to President Lincoln's office, I wouldn't have a problem. However, having a pharaoh apparently in an office right next to his officials (which is the first mental image I got) jerked me out of the story because it didn't seem to fit with the time period.
Where would I expect the pharaoh to be? In his private rooms, if he wasn't doing something in public at the time.
When I asked "Who is 'he'?," I wasn't asking you to explain this to me outside of the first thirteen lines. I was asking why you didn't just put that in the first thirteen lines. I was asking why you were hiding this information from us. Why not just tell us WHO is coming from the start?
[This message has been edited by DebbieKW (edited June 05, 2007).]
posted
I wouldn't get too discouraged by foreign publishing. There are translators out there and, if whatever publishing house picked up your native language work is intrerested in sending it overseas, they should be able to suggest ways of getting it translated. Translation is an art form, and a difficult one at that.
posted
The publisher of my work is too small to think about publishing my stuff abroad. It is I who want to publish my stuff abroad and I began translating the thing that actually got published.
I used 'he' because the people (two guards and the official) talking know exactly who 'he' is. Plus I'm making the reader guess who that could be since in a moment you see that pharaoh is just as surprised to see 'he' here as anyone else.
Do I have permission to add the following 13 lines or should I send the whole thing I translated so far to you via e-mail, DebbieKW?
Since I didn't say it before, congratulations of having a published novel. That being said, why do you think I'd want to read the rest of your novel...or even the next thirteen lines? I didn't ask for that. I also have no desire to put hours of work into someone else's novel...especially after you assumed that I had no idea of what I was talking about instead of assuming I had a valid point that was not communicated well.
Since you didn't specify your needs in the original post, I thought that you looking for help with your translated first 13 lines. If you are mainly looking for someone to help you smooth up your whole novel after you translate it into English, then you need to state that along with the word count so that people know how much they are committing to. I expect that you'll end up having to pay someone for their help as that seems like a huge job to expect a person to do for free. But I could be wrong.
[This message has been edited by DebbieKW (edited June 05, 2007).]
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Finally, what is a pharaoh doing in an office? Perhaps they had offices, but it struck me as odd that this fellow assumed his god-monarch would be slaving away in an office like, well, one of his officials.
