episode_0023

“Rolls Camel Student.”

“Yes yes, yes… ! Bye, Rolls Camel! I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay not to be too nervous. I’m not that great of a person.”

“Oh, no!”

Rolls Camel.

The girl with wavy, short hair who stuttered nervously was the student whose skills I would borrow to write a new work.

“Really. Rather, I need help from Rolls Camel students, so I organized this event?”

“Is that so… ?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Hehe, hehe… . The author of Homer needs my help… .”

He looked a little crazy, but it wasn’t that important.

Since ancient times, a cat can only catch mice well, and a writer can only write well.

In that sense, Rolls Camel was the best cat.

A skilled and fierce cat that can catch not only mice but also rabbits.

“I will ask you directly. As a Rolls Camel student, what do you think is lacking in my novel?”

“Boo, are you missing something?! How dare I… .”

“Honestly.”

“… Oh, it’s a bit of a play on words, isn’t it? I think it’s lacking. Well, the grammar, things like that… Aren’t you focusing too much on the ability to convey the ‘story’ rather than the sentences…? . ah! Well, of course, this is just my personal preference… . Ho, Homer’s novels are definitely not lacking!”

“Hehe. Thank you for being honest.”

Rolls Camel… He was a genius at playing with words.

She had a knack for playing with words and grammar. He had the skill to express language morphologically by combining mathematics and grammar, and to create plausible new words when necessary.

A genius with an innate sense of language.

That was the personality of a student named Rolls Camel.

“Actually, if the novel I am planning to write this time contains the ‘intellectual play’ of a Rolls Carmel student, it would be very… I thought it would be a great piece of work.”

“Woah, it’s an honor!”

“That’s why I’m saying this, do you like fairy tales?”

As soon as I finished asking the question, Rolls Camel’s eyes sparkled and his voice began to raise.

“Fairy tales are the best! Among Homer’s novels, my second favorite novel after Don Quixote is The Little Prince! Because fairy tales contain the innocence of children!”

Rolls Camel continued praising the fairy tale without even stuttering.

The unique madness of artists was felt in the praise filled with exaltation.

“─So, a girl is the purest and most beautiful─, ah, ah, sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Let’s talk more. It’s fun.”

“Oh, no!”

It was really fun.

This is because the original author of the novel I am trying to plagiarize this time was also a person with similar tendencies to this stutterer.

Perhaps there is some correlation between talent as a writer and inclination as a human being.

Suddenly, that thought occurred to me.

“If you don’t have anything more to say, it’s okay. The reason I brought up the topic of fairy tales is because the novel I am writing this time is also going to be a fairy tale.”

“Huh?! Yes net! Please give me a chance—!”

“So, we’re going to use it together… .”

“Thank you!”

hmm.

A joint writing project with this student.

Is it really okay… ?

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In my past life, I was a translator.

A highly skilled translator who prides himself on being a ‘translator’. The e-books I translated generally received good reviews from readers.

However, even for me, there were some works that were difficult to translate.

I am not talking about blatantly esoteric and avant-garde works like Finnegan’s Wake. Such works are not really translations but more like annotations.

What I’m trying to say is that it was rather a very famous and popular work.

It was a so famous and influential book that it was cited in humanities, natural sciences, biology, mathematics, logic, and economics. Given that the work was originally written as a ‘fairy tale’, how… I could guess that it was strange.

The name of that famous fairy tale is─.

“Alice in Wonderland. That’s the title of the novel I’m writing this time.”

“Yes, yes! Joe, I think that’s a great title! lol… .”

It was Alice in Wonderland.

“I usually write the story first and fill in the sentences and details later. So, I wrote a brief story… I hope that Rolls Camel students will complete their work while reading this together.”

“Huh! Ho, Homer’s treatment… . Hehehehe… .”

Alice in Wonderland was a very difficult work to translate.

To be precise, the work itself written by author Lewis Carroll was nothing short of a heinous obstacle for translators.

This is because the writer Lewis Carroll was a writer who actively used word play and new words.

For example, the question “Was it a cat I saw?”, which is also a sentence symbolizing the Cheshire Cat, was a palindrome that became the same sentence even if the letters were arranged in reverse order.

Every sentence in the novel ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was made up of this kind of word play.

Therefore, it was an extremely difficult work for the translators.

“Would you like to read it first?”

“Yes yes yes! Hahaha… .”

Rolls Camel accepted the manuscript of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ that I had written and began to turn the pages while snorting.

It was a little scary to see him shaking as if he was having an epileptic seizure.

Isn’t that really a seizure… ?

“Ugh… . My, it’s the best fairy tale I’ve ever read… . Heh, heh.”

After turning the last page of the manuscript, Rolls Camel turned like a melted candle.

This means that he fell off the chair and collapsed onto the floor.

“Ma, the scene changes as if they were copied straight from a dream… Paradoxes and puzzles are scattered throughout the work… Is it okay for me, me, myself to touch a work like this? ?”

Rolls Camel’s hands trembled.

It was as if he was afraid of being given a role that was too much for him.

However, having seen many ‘aspiring translators’, I could guess a certain desire shining in Rolls Camel’s eyes.

“Honestly, you want to tear it down and fix it, right?”

“… Hee hee hee, how dare I do that─.”

“You want to tear it down and fix it. Right?”

“‥‥‥.”

The desire to rewrite a sentence.

In order to completely localize the work, the desire to rewrite the dialogue and text itself from scratch.

It was a desire that any aspiring translator would feel.

“… yes. Honestly, I want to rewrite it in my own sentences… .”

It was also the desire that flickered in Rolls Camel’s eyes.

“This pure and dreamy story… Well, I’m going to edit my sentences and just do it! Write it again from the beginning! Basically, if the first sentence were completely changed without even leaving its form, I would be really, really ecstatic… .”

“You can modify it as much as you like. As long as you don’t change the story.”

“‥‥‥.”

Rolls Camel stopped shaking.

She got up from the floor, sat down in a chair, and started reading the manuscript again from the beginning.

But this time I didn’t read them in order.

She went through page after page of the manuscript, pondering and exploring things. I sometimes left notes on the manuscript with a pen.

If CEO Dorling, who likes to keep early manuscripts, had seen it, he would have been horrified.

“Ugh, here… . ah! Writer! The manuscript… No, can you just give me a few sheets of white paper?”

“Yes, yes.”

I took a stack of white paper out of the drawer and handed it to her.

She was soon scribbling a pen on the paper and writing something down at a rapid pace. It didn’t look like he was thinking about something; rather, it seemed like he was just spewing out every sentence that came into his head onto paper.

The ink in the pen ran out three times and had to be replaced with a new pen.

That’s how much she spewed out a lot of sentences. Five times as much as the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ I gave you… No, it was a line of text that seemed to be well over ten times longer.

“Hehehehe… . Come on, writer! How about this?”

and.

When she finally used up all the ink in the fourth pen, she used the fifth pen to organize her writing.

I couldn’t help but be amazed as I read the article.

“The sentence… It’s very interesting.”

“Hehe, hehe! Well, the story itself written by the author is very dreamlike… I just expressed it in a sentence!”

She gave me results that exceeded my expectations.

This miracle was possible because she was born with a sense of language, a talent that all writers envy.

Great talent was intertwined with the great story of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to create a great work.

At this moment, as a translator, I was confident.

“Very… It’s great… . It makes me want to read this over and over again.”

“Hehehe… .”

It is impossible to translate the work ‘Alice in Wonderland’ any better than this.

“Rolls Camel.”

“Yes, yes!”

“It’s the best.”

“Hehe, hehe! Okay, thank you!”

I carefully put Rolls Camel’s completed manuscript into my bag.

I think the night will be a little longer today.

‘Alice in Wonderland’, reborn in the hands of Rolls Camel, was worth re-reading all night long.

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[Alice in Wonderland]

[Author: Homer, Rolls Camel]

“Hey, hehe! Ji, my real name is, ho, next to the author Homer! Kkkk… .”

“Congratulations in advance on becoming a great writer. Rolls Camel student.”