Description: The anonymous team of Kyrgyz computer scientists was born between 1949 and 1968. Its interests include computer programming, databases, 5¼-inch floppy diskettes, and arrest by secret police for the crime of producing counter-revolutionary literature.
Development stage: Released
Translation: Up-to-date [Link]
About the translation:Although it was hard work, it was also very fun. At first, when I first experienced the game, I thought it was going to be a sad story about a girl in a war-torn country, ruled by a Socialist party. But, as soon as I arrived at my first ending, I then knew I was dealing with some crazy shit. With a narrator that seems to have a multiple personality disorder, and living in a world where everything is normal (from leaving nearby a real witch, to becoming the messiah of a religion lead by a blue hedgehog), this text is all about the absurdity, very similar to Alice in Wonderland, but less about grammar and sayings, and more about making fun of everything.
At times the narrator tries to be serious, taking jabs at the USSR with the use of metaphors, and at others the narrator just wants the child to go back to her civic duties as a proud citizen of Socialist country. Trying to balance these personalities was hard during translation, since not everything translated well and improvising was needed. But I tried my best to maintain the author’s style, while still adding my own original bits. The only thing I went against the author (and one could say I transcreated something new), was the use of bad grammar and broken English. During half the pages the author tries to keep the idea that this text was hastily translated by Kyrgyz people, so there are a lot of mistakes, but on the other half the pages are well written, using advanced vocabulary and sentence building. Since I found the broken English “joke” to be mostly overused and unnecessary, I removed it entirely. The reader doesn’t need to see a bad written text to know that it was done by foreigners, the culture, the metaphors, the fake poems and sayings, they are enough to create the feeling of an absurd world, of absurd people.
Highlights
Transcriação 