by hatami
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PLOT: When Darien stops spending time with Serena, and is seen in the company of one of his female classmates, Serena decides to get even. With the help of Andrew, she's going to make Darien regret laying eyes on another woman...
NEW CHARACTERS: Madison, Mark
LENGTH: 13214 words
RATING:PG-13
COMMENTS: I have to admire an author who translates their stories into other languages, in a way. Its an interesting way to get a wider viewership, for one. It's a way to expand your own horizons. And sometimes, if its done right, it's just downright cool. Heck, I even attempted it once - translating one of my older stories into Russian. (Note to self: I don't know that much Russian.)
Unfortunately, this just isn't one of those times. The author, who is Mexican, decided to translate this story into English, for all of us to read. But instead of reading like something passable, the author seems to have opted, instead, to use Worldlingo, Altavista or some other online translation system, which turns what might have been an ok fic into something out of an early Bruce Lee movie - not a very good one at that, and much goofier than what was originally intended. Much of the dialogue makes much sense, and we have people going "Jajajajajajajaja!" an awful lot (I know it's the Spanish spelling for a laughing sound effect, but how many people who don't know any Spanish would know that?). We also have several moments of dialogue that wasn't even fully translated from the original Spanish - further proof that the author just used an online translator to do his/her work for her.
I have nothing against writers of other languages. That's not what I'm getting at here. What I'm getting at is, translating a fanfic is probably a lot harder than writing a fanfic - particularly if you're doing it on your own, without help. The best idea would be to just leave it as it is. It's just fanfiction. It's not Shakespeare. Keeping it English - or Spanish, or French, or German - does not detract from the value of your work. Nor, on the other side of the coin, will translating it neccessarily get you more readers.
This is the other side of the coin. Yeah, it's in English, kind of, but it's atrocious. No effort was put into it at all. So, what could have been a decent fanfic because, by virtue of the failure to successfully break the language barrier, a truly bad one. Me siento mucho, pero es muy mal, mi amigo hatami.
Sailor Moon and related characters are copyrighted ©1991-2006 Naoko Takeuchi.
