Dawn stared at the text and turned back to her notes, it still didn't make sense. Well it did, sort of, but the two contenders she was working with were diametrically opposed in meaning.

She'd been working on this partcular document for weeks and had the basic gist of it, she knew it wasn't perfect, no better than a machine translation could provide in parts, but the essence of the text was there.

The problem was that Grettykol was a very nuance rich language that relied on tone to covey meaning and, as she couldn't pronounce the language and the Grettykol didn't deign to use distinct accents in their written script, she was left clutching at straws for some of the more esoteric passages.

"Penny for your thoughts." Spike interrupted her deliberation of a tricky compound character.

"Do Grettykol demons have a sense of humour?" She tapped the end of the pencil against her teeth.

Spike took a seat beside her and looked over the scroll. "They find killing small children amusing, but I don't think they're known for their great comic repertoire. Why?"

Dawn made another notation, crossing out her first guess and appending the second. "It seems that the hero of the story is either raining down fire and damnation on his enemies or entertaining a guest by slinging flaming jesters at them. I don't know enough about the species to even hazard a guess at their qualities as hosts, so the second may well be correct, as silly as it sounds."

Reading over the notes Dawn had made, Spike could see her problem. "Nasty. Although if I had the choice I think I'd opt for death by volcano over the clowns."

Smiling at the weirdness of the translation. Dawn had to agree, nobody deserved a clown.


15minuteficlets — word #91: translation
Part of the London!verse