Consider something simple. Language.

Language.

We all use that thing every day.

We speak it, we hear it, we write e-mails in it and we read texts and [insert favourite messenger app] messages in it.

That’s where it ends for most people. Not for multi-lingual writers, though.

Sun-World.

This, on the left, is a Dutch book I wrote. It’s not naturist oriented. The title is “Sun-World, Shadow-World” (translated by me, for your convenience.

I am translating and rewriting this book into English, and I’m giving it a naturist-like twist. The main characters are not and will not be naturists but for their ‘work’ they have to take their clothes off, which works for me. The twist-part in this is why I added ‘rewriting’ the book. One of my brothers in writing-arms (his name is Robert, you may have heard of him) has read a part of the first bits and he gave it a seal of approval. That is a positive thing. That made me go on with it.

This is where the difficulty with languages comes in. The original story is in Dutch, as I said. That’s my native tongue. As I am working through this story (at the moment of writing I am about 1/3 through it, only some 73.000 more words to go), I find that my English often isn’t adequate to write down what I wrote in Dutch. Oh, sure, I can find a word that’s almost close enough and often that will have to do, but at times I get annoyed when I can’t find the English word that exactly hits the emotion, the nuance that I could put into the Dutch word.

I’m convinced that the result of all this writing, word-searching and cursing isn’t going to disappoint me, and hopefully it will do the same to you.

Who’d have thought that languages can be such fickle things.