Khamel
Fantasy Short StoryThis making-of contains spoilers
In October 2014, I participated in a challenge to write a complete ebook within eight hours and then publish it.
My decision was to create a fantasy book in a brand new setting based on my German hometown of Mönchengladbach (Gladbach or MG for short). I had just recently read the opinion you cannot do fantasy short fiction well because there is no room for world building. So I set out to disprove that notion.
Convinced of the possibility to create a sufficiently fleshed out world just by hinting at the details and the larger world surrounding the events of the story itself, I started to cast pieces into scenes as I accompanied young witch Larina through town. The town grew building by building as she passed them, based on the historic center of my hometown atop a hill. Her reasons for being there grew alongside it.
I had this idea of taking the biblical saying about a camel passing through the eye of a needle before a rich man does as a literal event, though I replaced the camel with a man named Khamel so a conversation was possible. Coming up with a reason for Larina to perform her trick, I developed this implied system of witchdom rankings. She ultimately fails to give this story both a twist and a moral: Finish what you do, or nobody will appreciate it. This is something I learned both from writing and my involvement in politics, though not nearly as harshly as poor Larina visiting Calmrill.
Calmrill is the fantasy equivalent to Gladbach like I said. The name is a simple translation into something that sounds like an actual town in English. The glad part of Gladbach refers to the calmness of the creek (Bach) originating near the town center, so I used calm and added rill for being a sort of water feature close enough to a creek to make sense while sounding much better as a town name than Calmcreek would do.
So, this all was rather nice. And then I deleted it.
Well, not outright delete, I just managed to save the translation into German over the original file, losing it in the process.
Translating a story into English is far harder than writing it in English, at least it is to me not being a native speaker of English. When writing, you enter the so-called zone, you reach a state of flow where words manage to string together just the right way while writing. You are mostly free, even if you know where you are going it is your decision what way you take there.
Translation is far more limiting. The story has already been told, you are just repeating it as faithfully as possible. Creativity has done most of its work plotwise and worldwise, your only remaining decision is the words to best convey the tale in another language. The true art of translation then becomes how to give the illusion of flow the same way the original did. I am fully convinced the loss of the original is a sad thing, even if a few details got added or made more logical when translating it into German. I would have much preferred to do the translation, then retrofitting any changes during translation back into the original to improve upon it.
Regardless, this is the way it turned out to happen. Even with the original lost, it is still a nice story.
I also still had fun translating back the made up verbs for the spread of fame, even if the originals are lost to time.
October 2014
Available in:
How to Sing Butterflies
