With whom? Darcy, of course – or rather, the Darcy Amy Robertson (4giveMeJane) portrayed in her story “Speak not against the sun”. I read it all in a rush today (on the train journey back home) and wow – I was melting like wax right there. The timing of her posting was very bad for me as she started her story in February (when my stress level was on an all time high) and continued posting until just today and at least once a week Fiora would tell me: “You have to read Speak not against the sun – it’s simply amazing!” – but, alas!, I didn’t have the time. Until today, that is.

The story just sucked me in and it was great to read it all in a rush. As mentioned above, I fell in love with this Darcy – he was just swoonworthy, I tell you. Completely and steadfastly devoted to Elizabeth, incredibly charming, unfailing, honorable… I could go on forever, I guess. Elizabeth… All right, this girl was in love with him and she had very good excuses – but at certain points I just wanted to smack Elizabeth for her stubborness! In addition to the great chracterizations (the Colonel is also very cool, but you should know by now that I have a weak spot for him) there is a great storyline and a great style. And it has a tolerable angst-level – at least in my opinion.

And the ending… Well, I won’t go into detail about it in case you haven’t read it yet, but it was powerful!

Yes, you should definately read this (comparatively short – 14 chapters altogether) story. It has already a place in my favourite stories.

It’s available at AHA, DWG (the last chapter is still on the posting board) and FF.net

Writing is not always easy. Sometimes as an author you despair, because your story doesn’t want the way you want it.

As a reader it is even harder. You have to rely on someone else to provide you with the next chapter and you never know if the next chapter is published next week or next month.

In the German Austen Fandom I have observed – quite recently – that more and more people are willing to translate stories from English to German (where the Austen Fandom is quite small). That is a comfort for the people whose English is not so very good, but for other people – like me, I might add here – it can be painful sometimes to see how a good story is “destroyed” by a bad translation.

Generally I like the idea. As an author I would feel honoured that people deem my story good enough for a translation. As a reader I would be grateful to have a story brought to me in a language I am not familiar with.

But as a student of English I know that it is not an easy task to translate from a foreign language into your own. Not only your foreign language skills have to be very good, also your knowledge of your own language must be excellent, to get the right style, tone etc. Especially when it comes to regency Fanfiction it is quite hard to get the right tone, the perfect language in German (or any other language).

As an author, I would not want my story, my “baby” so to speak, to be handled carelessly in a translation.

What do you think?

(Do not misunderstand me, I have read excellent translations into German, but also some really, really horrible ones. But I won’t name any, because it would be unfair. This is just my opinion on this topic)