“Working as a translator is nothing like most people think it is.”
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we write a “statement” given by someone who had a supernatural/creepy experience, in the style of The Magnus Archives.
For those unfamiliar with The Magnus Archives, you can check out the transcripts of the stories here. They’re very well written and I recommend starting with Episode 1 or 2 to get a feel for the style.
Watch the video here or scroll down for the story.
Chat voted on this prompt for our statement: A translator gets asked to translate some Lovecraftian stuff.
Here’s what we came up with:
Working as a translator is nothing like most people think it is. When the average person, who’s only spoken English their entire life, thinks of a translator, they probably think of one of those fancy UN simultaneous interpreters, with the earbuds and high-pressure talks. Or a literary translator, struggling to figure out how to translate the made-up words from their favorite fantasy author.
But real-life translators like me are much more mundane. We’re the ones who keep the wheel of our international world greased by churning documents from one language into another. Land sale contracts, business letters, advertisements. I even once had to translate the divorce paperwork between a couple who didn’t speak each other’s language. Wonder how they thought that was going to work out.
Anyway, the point is, when you finally do get a decently fun-looking assignment, you pounce on that. So when I got the e-mail about translating a text from some Chinese monks, I was excited. Anything was better than translating another knockoff martial arts dojo pamphlet, and the price they were paying was unheard of. At 74 pages long, it would take me around a month to complete, but they were practically paying me for an entire year. I accepted and started that same day.
Another reason I was so excited about it was because it was written in old Chinese. It’s kind of like reading the King James Bible, or Shakespeare, only even older than that. I’d studied it back in university and loved translating the old Lao Tzu and Confucius texts, so this brought me right back to those days.
Best of all, the entire thing was completely digital. Usually for translations, I was lucky to get a poorly scanned PDF to work off of. But this one, every single character was copy-paste-able, making it easy to look up the more archaic ones that I didn’t recognize. Kind of ironic that the monks were keeping up the old traditions in a more advanced way than most businesses.
I really enjoyed the freedom that the client gave me in translating it. Usually they just want a one-for-one equivalent, and any sort of slight aberration from the original is met with contempt that I have to explain while holding back sighs and groans. Here though, the client was very specific in requesting that I translate it into English however I thought best. It felt good to finally flex some creative parts of my brain that had grown dusty and creaky over the years.
Laymen probably think that translators’ brains are like conveyor belts: one language comes in, the other comes out. But there’s a lot more nuance to it. Sometimes you’re lucky and get easy word-equivalents across languages, but much more often, you have to get creative, especially when translating beauty.
There were several sections of the text that rhymed in the original Chinese, and it took every ounce of mindpower I had to convey the same rhythms in English. I can’t even tell you how many dictionaries I had open on my desk, ones I hadn’t touched since graduate school, and how many tabs were open in my Internet browser. I learned words that I didn’t even know existed in my own native tongue, but I figured the more archaic the better, to match the tone of the original.
It’s incredible, how taxing it can be when we really use our brains. I must’ve worked ten hours straight that first day, and only got through the first few pages of the text, before I collapsed in bed exhausted. But the next morning, I was up with my coffee and computer and ready to keep going.
A few minutes in was the first time I noticed something was off. I looked over the pages I’d translated the previous day, and I noticed that I’d gotten a few sentences wrong. That was especially strange, since I’d been so entrenched in translating them accurately, I wasn’t sure how they’d slipped by me. With a slap to my face and a promise to not overwork myself again today, I fixed up the mistakes and moved on through the text.
Of course, I broke my promise. I barely remembered to eat dinner much less stop working at a decent hour. For the first time in years, I was having fun translating, and I felt like I wanted to deliver the final product to the client as soon as possible. I figured if I could knock the socks off their expectations, both in quality and speed, I could get another contract with them soon.
But after two days’ work, I was only seven pages into the 74 total. If I was going to impress them, then I needed to kick it into high gear.
The next morning though, I was heartbroken. Looking over yesterday’s work, I’d made so many mistakes. Nearly half of my English translations didn’t match up with the original. It was as if I’d been working off a completely different document.
The first time this had happened, I could pass it off as a mistake. But now, I started thinking maybe this was just a giant prank. I e-mailed the client to ask them if they’d made any changes to the document, and honestly I expected them to reply with a “gotcha!” or something like that.
Instead, they deposited another month’s salary into my account, and sent a single message: “Just translate it as you see it.”
I was used to having to decode strange English from Chinese clients before, but this one felt different. It didn’t seem like they were making a mistake or anything; it really felt like they meant to say it.
So I thanked them and went back to work. I started with fixing the changed sentences, and once they were done, moved on from there. I didn’t even really notice when it was dark outside and I’d forgotten to eat both lunch and dinner. Even knowing that, I still found it hard to push myself out of the chair. The only way I did it was by saying, out loud, I’d just pick up where I left off tomorrow.
The ham and pickle sandwich I made in the kitchen tasted like charcoal, and even though I fell asleep right away, all I dreamed about was translating the text.
You might guess what I woke up to the next morning. More and more incorrect translations. By now I was used to it, and I swiftly fixed them up to match the original, but something felt wrong. Not that the sentences themselves had changed, but what they had changed into.
My original translations were all rhymes about nature and joy, chants that I assumed the monks wanted to use to spread their word. But now they’d twisted into something darker. No longer were there rhymes about ponds and leaves and birds, instead there were oceans of blood, sharp claws the size of mountains, and someone called “The Recordkeeper.”
The chapter of my life translating poems of sun and song had set; now I wrote nightmares into both paper and reality.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it. If I was going to even meet my expected delivery date of one month, then I had to blaze through the changes and get to the new stuff.
I’ll be honest. I don’t remember if I ate. If I slept. I must’ve though. At some point. Since I do remember waking up to fixing more and more of the text that had changed.
Any semblance of the original text’s beauty was gone. Now every sentence was unquenchable fires, seas of writhing tentacles, the giant eye that watches all.
I don’t know exactly when I started writing the translation instead of typing it. It must’ve been when I’d finished the first draft, all 74 pages, in just one week. Somehow, I’d condensed a month’s work into seven days, including the time for fixing the changes. I don’t even want to think about how that was possible.
I only knew it was a week only because of my food delivery on Sunday. The doorbell ringing zapped me out of my translating trance, and I yanked open the door, barely holding myself back from growling at the delivery woman. She was probably thankful to be gone quickly, the way her wide eyes darted around me and my apartment. I was just happy to get back to work.
Nothing I wrote the translation on was satisfactory. I went through every pen in my apartment, every sheet of paper. Piling them on the floor, hanging them on the walls, nothing conveyed the same feeling as the original. But that didn’t stop me from trying.
I wrote on everything. I mean everything. I wrote the translation on my walls, my couch, all over my laptop. When I ran out of pens and sharpies I carved it with a knife, and when the knife went dull I bit my fingernails to tips and used those to scratch the translation into my skin. All 74 pages.
The words beat against my mind, echoing through my organs oozing out of my holes with every labored heartbeat. But still it wasn’t enough. I needed to preserve the translation on something else. I had nothing though. Everything that could be written on, had been.
That’s when my doorbell rang again for food delivery.
You don’t have to believe me when I tell you I don’t remember anything past that. It’s not even a blur. Just blackness. All that I know is that when I woke up weeks later, my apartment was torn to shreds, I felt like I’d been burned alive.
And there was a book sitting on my desk. A tome the size of a laptop, with a thick cover bound from something smoother and lighter than leather. I don’t know why I was compelled to open it, but my fingers moved on their own accord, pulling open to the first page with a moist moan.
There it was. My English translation. Every letter written in blood. In my own handwriting.
I slammed it shut. I tried to get rid of the damn thing, believe me I did, but it was impossible. I may as well have been trying to throw away my own head.
Of course I checked for e-mails from the client. There were none. Not even the ones where they’d sent me the document. My trash was empty, and my bank account was full.
Now here I am, writing this statement to you. I’ve heard that you collect these sort of artifacts here, so I brought the book with me. I don’t think I need to tell you what I fear it’s made of. I will say though, when my food delivery came last week, it was a new girl. The old one had gone missing, apparently.
This tome, it likes to change. Change the world into something like it knows. The Recordkeeper was itching to be, and has come into the world by my hand. My clicks. The e-mails I sent to my translator colleagues in other languages.
I’m sorry.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso