2.Translation of short stories
q When translating a short story, as a translator, you have to make first a crude handwritten draft that you never refer to again.
This is a necessary stage, the stage of ‘writing the reading’ in some palpable form.

Writing mechanically for page after page fixes the reading of each individual sentence; it shows up the problem points, the deficiencies in your understanding and the places where more work is needed.
q The next stage, which is as translation proper, involves writing and rewriting, crafting sentences, using dictionaries, thesauruses and encyclopaedias. By the time you have finished a translation, you may have several drafts including the initial handwritten scrawl. Significantly, though, you never have more than one draft or two exceptionally, when writing other types of text.
q You rewrite so many times in your head before sitting down at the computer that all you usually do is to make minor changes, certainly minor comparison to the number of drafts involved in translation.
Translating involves consciously and deliberately working through several draft stages.


Example
Now how would you translate the following excerpt taken from a short story called “The Little Snowman” and written by an eight year old child called Mustafa A Halimah (2012):

“Once upon a time in the far lands of Mount Everest, there lived a poor woodcutter named Fred. He lived all alone in a wooden house with no pipes and electricity. He loved making snowmen in the winter although he was not very good.”
So would you translate the above as A, B, C, D, or something else?