Chapter 23
“Rolls Camel, student.”
“Yes, yes, sir…! R-Rolls Camel! Present!”
“You don’t have to be so nervous. I’m not that great.”
“N-no, sir!”
Rolls Camel. The short-haired girl with wavy hair was stuttering in her nervousness—she was the very student I intended to borrow some skills from for my new piece.
“Really. In fact, I need your help, Rolls Camel, which is why I set up this meeting.”
“R-really…?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Heh, heh-heh… Author Homer needs my help…”
She seemed like she was a bit out of it, but that wasn’t the most important thing. After all, as they say, a cat just needs to catch mice, and a writer just needs to write well. In that sense, Rolls Camel was the crème de la crème of cats—a seasoned and fierce feline that could catch not just mice but rabbits too.
“I’m going to be direct. What do you think is missing from my novels, Rolls Camel?”
“L-lacking?! How could I even dare…?”
“Just be honest.”
“…Um, I think there might be a slight lack of wordplay? You know, the grammar and such… it feels like you focus more on the delivery of the ‘story’ than the language itself… Ah! O-of course, this is just my personal taste… I’m not saying Author Homer’s novels are lacking at all!”
“Ha ha. Thanks for your honesty.”
Rolls Camel was… a genius of wordplay. She had this knack for playing around with words and grammar. She could mix math with grammar to express language in a structured way and, if necessary, whip up some convincingly new words.
A natural-born genius when it comes to language. That was the unique charm of a student named Rolls Camel.
“Actually, I think if your ‘intellectual playfulness’ gets included in the novel I’m writing, it could become quite… an amazing work.”
“I’m honored!”
“So let me ask, do you like fairy tales?”
Before I could even finish my question, Rolls Camel’s eyes lit up and she raised her voice.
“Fairy tales are the best! I mean, my second favorite novel by Author Homer, right after Don Quixote, is The Little Prince! Fairy tales catch the pure essence of childhood!”
Rolls Camel continued her praise of fairy tales, stammering not once. There was this delightful madness in her enthusiastic celebration of art.
“─So a girl is the purest and most beautiful─ Oh, ah, I’m sorry!”
“Keep talking; this is interesting.”
“N-no, sir!”
It was genuinely fascinating. The original author of the novel I planned to ‘borrow’ was strikingly similar to this stuttering girl. Maybe there was some sort of correlation between a writer’s skill and their personality. This thought crept into my mind.
“If you have nothing more to say, that’s okay. The reason I brought up fairy tales is that the novel I want to write will also be a fairy tale.”
“Wha?! Y-yes! If you’d just give me a chance─!”
“So, we’re writing this together…”
“T-thank you!”
Hmm. A collaborative project with this student. Would that really work out…?
* * *
In my previous life, I was a translator. The kind that was a little too proud and called myself a ‘translation author.’ My translated e-books generally received good reviews from readers. But even I had some works that were notoriously tricky to translate.
I’m not talking about overly complex and avant-garde works like Finnegans Wake. Works like that verge more towards the realm of annotation than translation.
What I mean is more about famous, widely recognized pieces—so well-known they get quoted across humanities, natural sciences, biology, mathematics, logic, and economics. Just the fact that it was originally written as a fairy tale gives you an idea of how… peculiar it is. The name of that famous fairy tale is—
“Alice in Wonderland. That’s the title of the novel we’re going to write.”
“Y-yes! I think that’s a fantastic title! Hehe….”
Alice in Wonderland.
“I usually sketch out the storyline first and then fill in the sentences and details later. So, I’ve got a rough outline written out… and I’d like us to read it together, so you can help me finish it.”
“Hic! H-Homer’s treatment… H-hehe….”
Alice in Wonderland is notoriously challenging to translate.
To be precise, any work by the author Lewis Carroll is essentially a nightmare for translators. And why, you ask? Because Lewis Carroll was famous for his wordplay and coining new terms!
Take, for instance, the phrase that represents the Cheshire Cat: “Was it a cat I saw?”—a palindrome that reads the same backward and forward.
All the sentences in Alice in Wonderland are filled with such linguistic hijinks. So for translators, it’s like diving into shark-infested waters without a cage.
“Do you want to read it first?”
“Y-yes! Hoo-ha, hoo-ha….”
As Rolls Camel took the manuscript of “Alice in Wonderland” from me, she began flipping through the pages, practically wheezing with excitement. Watching her shudder like she was on the verge of a seizure was a tad nerve-wracking. Was she actually going to have a fit?
“Haah… This is the best fairy tale I’ve ever read… H-hihi.”
By the time she turned the last page, Rolls Camel had melted like a wax candle. She slid down from her chair and plopped directly onto the floor.
“It’s like you’ve transferred a dream directly onto paper… The scene transitions… the paradoxes and puzzles woven throughout… Can someone like me really touch such a masterpiece…?”
Rolls Camel’s hands were shaking as if she was scared of the great role she was about to take on. But I, having seen my fair share of ‘aspiring translation authors,’ could sense a certain lust for creativity sparkling in her eyes.
“Honestly, you want to rewrite it, don’t you?”
“H-hic, how could I even dare…”
“You want to rewrite it, right? Isn’t that true?”
“…”
The desire to tear apart and rewrite sentences. The urge to completely redo the dialogue and narrative to localize the work perfectly. That’s a feeling every aspiring translation author knows pretty well.
“Yes. To be honest, I want to rewrite it in my own sentences…”
That desire flickered brightly in Rolls Camel’s eyes as well.
“This pure and dreamy story… if I could tear it apart and rebuild it from scratch! To completely modify it so that the original sentences are unrecognizable! Oh, just thinking about it makes me ecstatic…”
“Go ahead; feel free to rewrite as much as you want. Just don’t change the story.”
“…”
Rolls Camel’s trembling stopped. She brushed herself off, stood up, and sat back in her chair to start reading the manuscript from the top again. But this time, she didn’t go in order.
She skipped from page to page, as if she were investigating or contemplating something. Every now and then, she jotted down notes on the manuscript with a pen.
If President Dorling, who adored preserving original manuscripts, saw this, she would probably faint from shock.
“Um, here… Ah! Author! Could you give me some manuscript paper… or just some blank sheets?”
“Sure.”
I pulled out a stack of blank paper from the drawer and handed it to her.
She immediately began scribbling furiously, as if she was in some sort of a frenzy, clearly not lost in thought but rather vomiting every sentence that came to her mind onto paper without any particular organization.
The ink in her pen ran dry three times, and I had to swap it for a new one each time.
She was pouring out an astonishing volume of text. I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount exceeded five times… no, maybe even ten times the length of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ I gave her.
“Heh, heheh… Sir, what do you think about this?”
And then, after she had used up every last drop of ink in the fourth pen and sorted her work with the fifth pen, I couldn’t help but be amazed as I read her piece.
“The sentences… are incredibly fascinating.”
“Heh, heheh! The story you wrote felt like a dream, and I was just expressing that in words!”
She delivered results that exceeded my expectations. A miracle made possible by her innate talent for language, a talent any writer would envy. Her extraordinary ability intertwined with ‘Alice in Wonderland’s’ fantastic narrative blossomed into a breathtaking piece.
In this moment, as a translation author, I was utterly convinced.
“It’s… wonderful. I want to read it and savor it over and over again.”
“Heheheh…”
Translating ‘Alice in Wonderland’ beyond this point would be impossible.
“Rolls Camel.”
“Yes, yes, sir!”
“It’s excellent.”
“Heh, heheh! Th-thank you!”
I carefully placed the manuscript completed by Rolls Camel into my bag. It seemed I was in for a long night. The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ reborn from Rolls Camel’s hands was worth rereading all night long.
* * *
[Alice in Wonderland]
[Authors: Homer, Rolls Camel]
“Gasp! M-my name is right next to Homer’s! Sniff…”
“Congratulations on becoming a great author, Rolls Camel.”
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