Dear Publisher,
Attached you will find my file containing the Spanish version of your book. I'm finally done with the translation you asked me for, though I could nearly say the translation was done with me. I am aware my life has shortened after this translation, and please, don't take it as if I were blowing up this situation, it is absolutely true, my doctor has just confirmed it to me. During the long month I've been translating this indescribable text, I've experienced things no other translator would ever imagine. To start with, I will mention that the ghost of the painter whose life I was translating contacted me himself. He felt so sorry for me as I was fighting against that text, that he suddenly turned up in the middle of my studio. He said he didn't intend to scare me, but he was sure that an apparition of his would never cause me a stronger shock than the translation I was performing. He was right, there are different degrees of horror. Anyway, since that moment on, he communicated with me by chat, which is much calmer, just to give me pieces of advice about the meaning of his pictures. But that's not all I had to suffer. Since the language used by the text's author was so "original" and I couldn't stop looking up for info on Google, the Google Translator ran out of service. The firm called me, they intended to report me to the Interpol; they affirmed I had spoiled I don't know what megacomputer of theirs, given to the large amount of information concerning a non-existing language I sent to it... Well, the thing is still there, I don't know how it will end up, but in case of a trial, your publishing house will have to solve it, as I was working for you when the events took place. Anyway, not everything is so negative. Apart from Google, the NY University got in touch with me. The Linguistics Department was also interested in that new language, which resulted from a combination of the author's knowledge of archaic (almost medieval) Austrian German, sleepless nights wet in alcohol and "creative technology"; the language is reportedly suitable for films about aliens, as if it were a kind of new Klingon. Furthermore, I've even been whispered that the Swedish Academy is planning to create the Nobel Prize of Translation, whose first winner would be me.
As you can see, my dear Publisher, after I've finished the translation, I am a completely different person. And I mean it literally: a completely different person, I'm no longer myself and that's why my wife has abandoned me. Therefore, I beg you to reconsider the fare you initially offered me for this work. It's quite unfair such a short amount of money for such a lethal text that will be soon part of the History of Humankind.
Warm regards
Frantz Ferentz, 2014
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