Two Doomsday + PoTW drabbles

[kae_nine]

As promised to 

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[kae_nine]

Bit of a convoluted reply, but you asked.

I looked back on both versions for both drabbles. Let's start with Lost Illusions:

In French:
Elle colle sa tête au grand mur froid séparant les deux univers, espérant un son, un signe de sa réalité, le TARDIS apparaissant soudainement à ses côtés, le Docteur revenant la chercher.

In English:
She leans against the cold, white wall that keeps both universes apart, listening for a sign from her own reality, the TARDIS materialising, the Doctor coming to get her.

First, the verb "leans" isn't exactly like what I used in French. "Elle colle sa tête" means she's basically glueing her head to the wall, but that just looked way too weird in English. Still, there's something that got lost there. On the other hand, "the Doctor coming to her get" works better for me than "le Docteur revenant la chercher", probably because of what Nine said to Rose in Bad Wolf/PoTW: "Rose, I'm coming to get you."

In French:
Seuls les battements de son cœur résonnent à ses oreilles.

In English:
Only the furious beating of her heart answers her.

Again, lots of lost meaning there. In French, the beating of her heart is what's pounding in her ears, resonating through her entire body. In English, that whole meaning got lost, both because I never managed to find a way to convey the same meaning with English words and because I needed to keep it to 100 words.

In French:
Perdue dans le monde de Pete Tyler, la version parallèle de son père disparu, il lui faut quelques secondes pour comprendre que la brèche temporelle s’est refermée pour toujours.

In English:
Stranded in an unknown world, with a parallel version of the father she lost, it takes her a few seconds to realise that the breach has closed for ever.

I like the word "stranded" better than the word "perdue" (literally, lost) but... the meaning isn't quite the same, is it? The idea that Rose is lost in that unknown world is missing. Then again, I couldn't use "lost" then, because I had to use it to qualify her father ("disappeared" would be the literal translation of "disparu", but if I recall correctly, in English it wouldn't mean he's dead, would it?)

In French:
Sauvée des limbes de l’enfer par l’intervention de ce père qu’elle n’a jamais connu, elle se sent mourir à l’intérieur lorsqu’elle comprend qu’elle ne reverra jamais l’homme qu’elle aime.

In English:
Saved from the void by the hand of a man she barely knows, she feels herself dying inside as it dawns on her that never again will she see the man she loves.

I *so* wasn’t happy with that “saved from the void” thing... but I wasn’t sure you could use the expression “the limbos of hell”, and even if I could, it sounded just plain weird to me in English. Also, I had to slightly change the way she speaks of her father in English, because of the 100 words rule: in French, it’s the father she’s never known; in English, it’s the father she barely knows. And last but not least, I didn’t like the way I had to build the last part of the sentence: “... that never again will she see the man she loves” - I mean, if I’d said, “that she’ll never see the man she loves again”, it would have sounded a bit better to my ear, but it felt important that the word “loves” (“aime”) was the last one of the drabble.