The Unwanted One

That's the end, folks. After nearly a year, I have ended it, though I was not the only person who has participated in this grand - at least for me - project. I thank these people: hazz - I doubt, that he'd read this, but I really appreciate his work. He's not in the fandom, nor he was in my plans as my redactor, but the fate had decided otherwise. Twilight_the_spy - thank you for the help. Though not much, but it's something. Lindenholz - the same. Occasional people in the comments - thank you for pointing at the mistakes. And, of course, thank you goes to the author of this damned story. It was a hard nut to crack, but I've done it. Now to the gloomy part of this post. In this... article, fuck knows, I want to describe my journey, which got fucked as soon as it began. The story begins in September 2021. At the beginning of the fall I had a couple of ideas for poems and prose about, well, fall, but then I decided I wanted something more. As you all know, the whole ponyfiction - Russian analog of Fimfiction - has English translations at the top, which, while excellent representatives of this literature, are still written from over the hill and across the Pacific. And looking at "The Unwanted One", I realized that I wanted to show our Western partners that the Russian part of this community is not made with one finger and is quite competitive. But, as everyone knows, Americans know 0.4 languages, so I had to think about translation. I had some experience (extremely bad, no special programs, no multitran - Russian (and not only Russian) online dictionary - and no proofreading, with constant killing myself to the point of automaton), but I decided to take it to the next level. In October of 19172021 I decided to take up the cause with responsibility. I asked my comrade AnDel about his participation in this endeavor, which at that time already involved about 200,000 words. He agreed, we split the chapters 50/50, me translating the 1st, 3rd, 5th and so on, and him the 2nd, 4th and on. And so it began: the first words were poured in and translated with a special program called SDL Trados Studio 2021 (which really sucks (or maybe I just didn't study it all)), every word was double-checked twenty thousand times and every episode was rationed: first I worked out a scheme where I translated ten percent of any chapter in the afternoon and then another ten in the evening. Eventually, I found this extremely unproductive and started translating 20 percent if the chapter was less than or about 4,000 words, or 40 if it was 2,000. As a result, two episodes a day turned into four or sometimes five in the summer, and I never took a day off, except when I had to change my HDD. Fall flowed into winter. Throughout the fall, I asked my comrade about progress, which flowed extremely slowly because of his...laziness, I assume. AnDel, you can defend yourself, but I will still think so. The winter of '21 started for us with incredibly funny news: the situation on the DNR-Ukrainian front began to deteriorate, and my co-translator lives in Donetsk... Winter had become a completely useless piece of time for me. Because of the lagging of the second one, I decided to be patient and wait for it, however, as it would turn out in the end, I just wasted two months waiting for something that never came. With this same period, I put the author on notice. At first he expressed average pessimism due to the lack of a good portfolio for this kind of projects, but I promised him to fix it. It was the promise of translation and motivation that drove me all this time. On the night of February 23 to 24, 2022 the Russian Federation began a special operation, a war, liberation, genocide, return of land to its native harbor, a meat grinder, call it what you want a new round. Total mobilization was announced in the DNR, a ban was imposed on any men under 60 years of age to leave the territory of the republic. My co-translator did NOT get in the army, but I FOR THE TIME had decided to not ask him about the translation, because after the 24th of February my mood dropped into a complete depression. Although I hadn't stopped translating, the feeling just pressed down on me. It cost me a great effort not to cry when I heard my mother say, "Did you hear there's a war on?" Ah, there they are, pouring right now... The first half of spring 2022. The front stopped focusing on the DNR for at least a period of time, my co-translator began to find time for computer games. For a while I still didn't show my utter desire to ask him about his part of the work. At the same time, I began to worry about finding English-speaking proofreaders for our translation. I found one, two, three, four... You know what almost all have in common? They all disappeared without a trace. The first one, after checking the first three chapters, simply stopped responding to messages. The second, after checking the first chapter, simply stopped responding to messages. The fourth checked nothing at all. The third was the only one who wasn't from the United States. Bangladesh. Checked the first four chapters and said that now - and most likely never again - will not be able to proofread, because he left with his mother to England, and the laptop remained at home, where his mother left it because of "breakage". That's right, in quotes. ALL of the people I found on the fimfiction discord or on it itself didn't get ten percent of the work done, and only one of them has a good reason. This will have its consequences. The second half of the spring of 2022. I started demanding new chapters from the co-translator. Zero. I stopped waiting for nothing and started translating the chapters I wasn't supposed to translate. Dry statistics: out of 56 chapters and two epilogues, I translated all except for chapter 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10. All the rest are my from A to Z. Summer of 2022. Stakhanov's efforts made the entire remaining translation, as well as the involvement of another person - hazz. This young man did not have to do anything at all, but in fact he was the best for his role. As a student in the Philology Department at university, this character helped me with the proofreading of the first couple of chapters and is still helping me now. The author helped me out a little and also helped me proofread them, plus he gave out new chapters before they were officially published so I knew our Nightmare Moon would be a pink-eyed girl on the throne before anyone else. In July, in coordination with the author, parts began to be posted, each new one a week later. So far the story has 30,000 views, 237 likes and 16 dislikes, 368 people waiting for the sequel and 1,057 shelves with the story in them (sort of like collections), another dozen have added the translation to their favorites and 102 comments. Now I want to retell my response to Professor Litmus' comment about the sometimes - or not sometimes - difficult moments in sentence construction throughout the translation: "This is not my fault that the English-speaking people I've found here and on the discord server are such... Well, trustworthy and answerable. You don't know how much of a strain is it to me to not just yell at the people sometimes when they ask about this. My blood is fucking boiling right now." To all readers, I congratulate you on the full writing of "The Unwanted one": the waiters have ended the waiting, myself included. I congratulate the author on finishing this long-build, but for him I will write separately. To my co-translator, I wish him not to die. Even though I'm still mad at him, I still need you alive, you freak. Maybe I'll end my sulking someday. I wish you all the best of luck in the new school year. The end.