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The number of words I translated... it's... it's...
Under 9000?
Jeez, nevermind then.
5407800
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/32100000/DBZ-Memes-dragon-ball-z-32173143-499-372.jpg
This is a good story hmmi.ytimg.com/vi/fo99TMgUEtE/hqdefault.jpg
Greetings and welcome to one of our reviews. I am Simon o’Sullivan, and this is my beard, appropriately called Beard. Here are our thoughts on your story.
This fic was sent to me for review, but I assume they didn’t take into account that I was one of the reviewers who actually earns a living (or tries to; things are slow as hell) as a translator, for over five years. Suffice to say, I was kinda looking forward to reading this. I don’t have the original fic in French, so I can’t tell if it’s correctly translated. Now, if the translation is faithful, there are issues with punctuation and spacing as the ones below:
Extra space before the colon, which shouldn’t be there.
Unnecessary comma.
Now, in these cases, the author is to blame because I assume these issues were in the original. However, even if that were the case, the translator working on the project should also fix minor typos and issues in the original. My problem came when I saw this:
Translation may look easy for a lot of people, but even as someone who has been speaking Spanish for 28 years, English for 23 and French for 14, I can assure you that translation is not easy, especially when localization comes to play. Localization, among other things, focuses on using the equivalent expression, if it exists at all, which I can assure you it’s not the case most of the time, especially with sayings. If the original was “perdre du temps”, I refuse to believe that to be the result. For all that is holy, people keep making these mistakes. Here are the words with their opposites:
LOOSE =/= TIGHT
LOSE =/= WIN
For further research about surprisingly common misspellings, take a look at this comic; it’s really worth it http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling
With that said, it should be “without losing time”, and even then it’s much more common to use the form “without wasting time”. Look, I know this friend of yours did this for free, but that is not an excuse for a flawed work. This story needs a proofreader/editor, regardless of the language it’s in.
With that out of my system, let’s begin with the story itself. There’s a repeated structure that is quite common, getting the “I did this, then I did that, and then I went there.” It is a tedious issue common in most 1st person narrations because it’s a limited perspective, which is understandable—on the other hand, for obvious reasons, especially if the story is being told as it goes. I can’t deny, however, that the reading gets a bit wonky and heavy when most of the sentences are a different form of “I verb the noun.” Then again, I am aware that, unlike in Spanish, French doesn’t have the option of omitting the subject, which makes for an issue when it comes to translating into English.
I don’t recall that much of the character, I don’t even think he’s given a name. I couldn’t really wrap my head around the concept, and I had the words “Mary Sue” whispering behind my head. A Pegasus who had his/her wings ripped off? And with basically a blank check to get anything needed, no questions asked. If it was such a simple job, as the client addresses, why in the Nine Realms would he allow the spending of what might easily be hundreds of thousands worth in material? And how friggin’ good is this guy of yours that gets chosen despite being physically handicapped instead of other pegasi? Really, they could just fly or hover there, get whatever the client wanted and fly back. It’s like when Gandalf didn’t grab Frodo and teleport him to Mount Doom so the hobbit could destroy the ring without having to make a 3-book-long journey. Then again, this is not a place to start LOTR flame wars.
There’s a moment in the story that caught my attention, and it was the part where he mentions the forest is so dense he could only move a yard every hour. First, I always laugh at the wording “dense forest” correct as it is, because I picture a bunch of trees and the wind blowing among them with a “duuuuh” sound. But my point here, aside from making a stupid joke, is that a yard is kinda similar to a meter. A yard might be a bit longer than a meter, but still, it’s almost a stride’s distance, two if you’re a bit short. If you can only take a couple steps every hour, that’s not a forest; that’s a damn palisade.
Another thing that I noticed is that there doesn’t seem to be a moment to rest, because as soon as the story is done with one event, a new one starts immediately afterwards. This is not only detrimental in pacing to a lesser extent, but ends up in an eye-rolling “oh, come on!” scenario for the reader. It also adds, and I apologize for the coarse language, a “calling bullshit” moment when the character just keeps going regardless of injuries and suffering he goes through. Even if we can openly state that adrenaline and being able to mentally force you forward can work, there is a moment when even with that, the body says “screw this, I want a bed and a fountain of nachos!” All that jumps out of the window after the timberwolves, for the following reason.
There’s this part where the guy’s vomiting blood. Now, I know you want to make this character as badass as possible, probably ignoring the Mary Sue warning, but let me tell you something I learned during my private security training. What this wingless Pegasus is suffering is called hematemesis, and not only does First Aid say it’s serious shit, but also any doctor will say “is an important sign”, for it’s a medical emergency. This guy has a hemorrhage that’s filling his digestive system with his own blood. That is not something ANYONE can just shrug off. And healing gel is not some magical videogame healing potion; what it does is stopping hemorrhages. Any other broken thing is going to remain broken: bones, muscles, nerves, etc, and of course, lost blood is not recovered. Even with the adrenaline rush, fighting with less blood on your body is a bad idea. What I’m trying to say is, fighting and surviving the timberwolves? Sure, it’s epic enough, and can wrap my head around it. The follow-up with the dragon? Especially after seeing how he is after the previous fight? Can’t buy it, lad. And waking up in the middle of somewhere I don’t know, having been fully healed and with extra gear to replace the lost/broken stuff? I stopped reading there. If there’s any more—and there’s half of a fic left—I don’t care about it.
The story is riddled with convenient parts (the millionaire client willing to pay for whatever the hell you needed), the character having basically a tool for every single issue in front of him, and getting restocked and fully healed like a videogame character after a boss fight. The issues he wouldn’t be able to solve right off the bat are mostly due to clumsiness and mistakes of his own, which makes me further wonder why he was chosen instead of another, probably more qualified mercenary. All and all, the story looks more like a power fantasy than a work of literature. I can probably see this working with a bit more realism, but then again, that would mean using a normal Pegasus to fly there, grab the microchip and leave. Bam, end of story. But you want to go more for the adventure, making emphasis on how difficult the path is. I usually have an idea of what to say about how to improve the story, but I am blank here, because every scene is connected to one another, and changing one would at least force to change the following one as well, if not everything after it. Still, there is room for improvement, and it’s possible for this to work, maybe lowering the number of wolves, getting the dragon trapped or stuck instead of killed… there are a few ways, but I know in the fic time is limited, so going slowly or making the events take longer to occur is not viable.
Don’t let my words discourage you, though; keep on writing and keep up the good work. You might even prove me wrong and make this awesome.
Simon o’Sullivan and Beard, WRITE’s Manly Reviewers of Manly Fics, signing out.