Poll: Should I translate my Moomin fanfic into English?
Loading ...Until now I’ve held back, because I wanted to stay true to the original, which is very hard. Tove Jansson wrote in a very special way, in (Finlandic) Swedish. I’m far from certain I can manage that in English. Then again, I have read one of those little previews on Amazon and found that the English translator hadn’t done that at all. It was written in good, ordinary English, not in anything that can be compared to Tove Jansson’s original language. That’s probably not even possible. So maybe I should try it anyway. What do you guys think? If you’re interested, please answer the poll above, or just comment on this post.
New fanfic and fandom – again
I’m almost embarrassed to flood you guys with my latest writing efforts, but well, since I have a little more to say than just ‘hey, I’ve written another fanfic’ I will do it anyway. And of course you can ignore it if you prefer.
This new fanfic is also in a new fandom for me (to write in). It’s Desperate Romantics. I have mixed feelings about it, but since I did have an idea and since I got it to work for me, I decided to write it. A couple of years back I wrote a review of the series and in that I mentioned my mixed feelings about the setting and the people.
First of all, the women’s situation made me sad. Secondly, though I’m absolutely crazy about Aidan Turner, I didn’t like his character very much. I found him too – coarse, too unfaithful and too false. I also didn’t like most of the other characters, though they did fascinate me. The only one I could really like was John Millais, because he was such a good guy, but at the same time, he bored me a little. Typical, right? One is never quite happy.
Another opinion I have concerning this series, won’t make much sense to English speakers but I’ll mention it anyway. For years now, Swedish tv (and the ones who set the titles for movies as well) have chosen not to translate most of the English titles. On the one hand, I almost prefer them not to try if they’re going to substitute one English title for another, instead of translating it, but I would much prefer them to make an effort to find a Swedish title. Sure, sometimes it’s not going to be nearly as good as the English one that might have a sort of pun or double meaning in it, but on the other hand, they should make the effort. This is our language. We can’t give up on it, just because some simple souls find English ‘cooler’. Sure, it’s cool, but so is Swedish. So, to summarise, this series has the exact same name in Swedish as in English. I’m very disappointed. I can think of a couple of Swedish translations that would work, but no one even tried. Really sad.
Sorry about the whining.
