What do you think about this text?

[Luis]

Hi!

My name is Luis Ortega and I'm an author from Spain.

I'm looking for an English translator and I've received a proof from a text of my book (La Constante del Caos) translated into English.

I would really appreciate if you tell me if the next text is grammatically correct and looks like a professional narrative text.

Thank you so much!



A faint memory brought a familiar voice into his lonely dwelling:
"Patience is a tree with bitter roots but sweet fruit".

Before starting his feast, he checked one last time that the tablet he kept under his ragged pants was still there. Despite having killed for it and having transcended time and space to find it, he could not even remember what it was for, or why he felt the need to protect it. Even so, stroking his fingers across the engravings on its surface brought him immense satisfaction.

Only then did he kneel over the body of his prey and swept away the frantically pulsating maggots with his hand. Then he took an anxious bite, tearing the flesh and gripping a piece tightly. He chewed slowly, tilted his head back and closed his eyes as the thick, cold liquid dribbled slowly down his chin. He felt dizzy with pleasure as the intense flavour of congealed fat and soft, pasty decaying human flesh flooded his palate. As far as he was concerned, he’d never had anything better in all his life.

The food would have had a sweeter taste a few days earlier, just hours after the boy had died and his muscles were still stiff with rigor mortis. But after all this time, the flesh had softened and the taste it had acquired after marinating was so much nicer.

Maybe his withered mind had twisted those words that he had heard in each of the countless lives he had lived – and would live in the future: Patience transformed the sweet fruit of life into bitterness, and he loved it.

[Brian]

This is a proper translation, but the content is very macrbe(grotesque, bloody, appalling) good translation of narrative though.

[Luis]

Hahaha. That poor translator is only doing his work. And it seems he is doing it well!

Would you say that text have been written by a native English speaker? Or, maybe, there is something weird? (Like my English, for example haha)


Thank you very much Brian!

[Natalie]

I only have a problem with this sentence:

Only then did he kneel over the body of his prey and swept away the frantically pulsating maggots with his hand.

Two different verb tenses. It should be:

Only then did he kneel over the body of his prey and SWEEP away the frantically pulsating maggots with his hand.

Also- I'd probably take out the word frantically. It neither adds nor takes away from the sentence. It seems to be just there for word count.

Having said that- I think that passage was appropriately GROSS. :D

[Luis]

Thanks for your observation Natalie! I really appreciate it :)

[[deleted user]]

Agree with Natalie on both counts. Better than most English speaking self published writing I've read lately!! Yet, gross.

Is the whole story that gross, or is it important to the immortality? Just curious.

[Luis]

That's the prologue, onward the book is barely gross. It's a logic and csciense vs supernatural and religion history, triggered by discovery of this creature and the artifact it's carrying.

Inmortality is related with methane consumption, rotten flesh in this case :)

[[deleted user]]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing, Luis!