Not Lost In Translation

Translating someone else’s text is hard work. Even if you feel that you have the command of both languages and confident you can do it, it’s still not easy to convey the author’s intent in a different language without losing the original in your own interpretation. Here is my attempt:

All of us question the fairness of God’s and human judgment, and if you can still convince a person, the providence doesn’t accept any logic or prayers. “Why did this happen to me?” is the cry of humanity throughout the ages. “Whose fault is it that I am feeling so bad?” is their next most frequent search query to the world.
I know that some people often get everything while others get nothing, that many evil deeds go unpunished, that innocent beings are dying in pain and that the poor but virtuous Justine eventually got fried by a lightning bolt, while her sister lived a long and pleasant life.
But the most wrong, the most cruel, the most unfair is not even a natural disaster or dying kittens. The scariest thing God rested on is not even considered a tragedy, but still the human mind has a hard time coming to terms with it: Life is such that one good person may not fall in love with another good person. If you are not shocked by this, think it over for a minute.
You know this moment of love when two halves of a heart-shaped steel locket will fall in place and with a slight click will become one. Both parts of the puzzle are very good, ideally polished and look like a perfect match. But there is no click despite all the laws of physics and logic; one half doesn’t fit and the other one wobbles and falls out. Why? You decide that one part was after all defective, to save yourself from cognitive dissonance.
At first you blame yourself: What am I doing wrong? Does something stick out or is something missing in me? Where should I add on or what do I need to file down? You can change yourself like God reshaped the turtle, but still there won’t be any love.
Then the second stage: More often than not it’s initiated by relatives and friends: Doesn’t love you? What a jerk! Idiot and a talentless hack! A dirty whore! The strength of the adjectives is proportional to how much your loved ones love you.
You know, it’s not hard to check. In the palm of your hand there is your shiny half of the heart – pristine, bright, beautiful; ready to be strong, or soft and pliable. Just wish it to be so. You tried everything and he still doesn’t love you. So who is defective? Blind, heartless son of a bitch, that’s who. Most of us stop at that stage. With time resentment goes away but the bitter disappointment lingers, barely there like a drop of vinegar in a bucket of water.
Many people refuse to believe that this story is one without an antagonist. Because the sadness is so great, when, with your broken rejected heart, you realize that a great injustice just happened in the world: One good person didn’t fall in love with the other good person.

Original by Marta Ketro.

Special thanks to Chris “Tolstoy” Packham for his help.