The Soft-Hearted Prince and His Dragon, Chapter 1

July 8, 2022 14 min read writing
Galen is a prince alright, but he could not be further away from what his parents expect from an heir to the throne. Hoping to make more of a man out of him, they send him off to fight a dragon who is plaguing the Land Behind Nine Mountains and Nine Rivers. Or is it? Galen agrees not because he means to get into a fight - he’s not a barbarian after all - but because he’s never seen a dragon before and has always been fascinated by magical creatures. Except that the dragon’s not what it seems. And the prince’s journey takes an unexpected twist that his parents certainly did not see coming.

Getting into the arena

July 8, 2022 6 min read writing
Exactly two years ago, I finally picked up creative writing regularly. I’m saying “finally” because I’ve tried many times before, always failing after a day — maybe two, if I had a good run. I used to write as a kid. The first story I remember writing was about a band of boys running through an unnamed city, playing pirates and whatnot. Yes, I was very much into Arthur Ransome and Jaroslav Foglar, thank you for asking. Continue reading

English meets Czech II

June 13, 2022 10 min read translations
This is a continuation of a previous post, where I described some of the challenges I met when trying to translate the first two chapters of The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune into Czech. If you didn’t read it yet, it can be found here. Out of style Some things are always in style, like “the red lip classic thing that you like”. And style is important in language too. Continue reading

English meets Czech I

June 12, 2022 7 min read translations
In the previous posts (1 and 2), I talked about wanting to translate The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune into Czech. In those posts, I described how it all started and my very first translation puzzle, exclamations like “oh dear”. In this and the next post, I will go through several other domains in which I was challenged by the original text when trying to translate it into Czech. Continue reading

Imposter syndrom

June 9, 2022 6 min read writing

In the past week, I received feedback for my Ph.D. thesis – three texts, two from my readers and one from my supervisor. They all have been incredibly positive – something my supervisor predicted upfront but didn’t believe him. Don’t get me wrong, I know the readers, so I know what lovely people they are. I had no expectations of them tearing me apart like one does with a piece of paper with private information written on it. But still… I don’t know. I expected them awkwardly try to say something nice while it being obvious to everyone that they’re up for an impossible task.

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