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Write a story about something getting lost in translation — literally or figuratively.

Posted in Short Story on May 9, 2025

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✍️ 48 stories

The Day the Earth Said 'What?"

Submitted to Contest #302

Ambassador F*^#in’0s# (name untransliterable due to olfactory component) adjusted her musk through her scent glands and the artificial perfumes in her styling-pod. It was her duty to perform this first contact to perfection, as the chosen delegate of the People (ACTUAL NAME UNTRANSLITERABLE DUE TO OLFAFCTORY COMPONENT). Already, messages had been sent ahead via radio transmissions, announcing the arrival of her as a diplomat to officially welcome this new species (whose endonym the translation team had roughly translated as meanin...

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Phone Etiquette

Submitted to Contest #302

There is an unspoken public phone etiquette. That’s what Ben always believed. While he didn’t like technology much, there were various things he considered just fine for a person to use their phone for when in public. He considered silent scrolling annoying, but just fine when quiet. Anything that resulted in a person keeping to themselves was good; about the only thing that Ben used his phone for was reading, and public reading of any kind got Ben’s approval, even if it was done on a phone—this could be books, emails, messages. It didn’t ma...

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Instructions for the Rain

Submitted to Contest #302

The first word he did not understand made him cry—not from confusion, but from the echo of it. Henrique Duarte, twenty-seven, translator of obscure briefs, stared at the envelope left beneath his Copan Building door during the night. The handwriting on the label wavered like fireflies trapped behind frosted glass; still, it felt familiar, as though sketched in another century by a hand he himself had forgotten being. Inside lay thirty-two rust-colored sheets that smelled of lightning after rain. The printed symbols danced between balding ide...

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Did They Ever?????????

Submitted to Contest #302

"O tempora, O mores!" Pammy could smile these days at the current trends, each to their own, and anything goes. She hummed as the proceeded to muse while stitching gifts for her siblings and pals, whether they wanted them or not. Cool to be kind."Did males ever really change, let alone the little women who were swayed by their charms, so disarming?" Pammy cast her notions back to when she had been a married lay teacher, born to preach in a parochial primary school. There the allied nuns and her co-educators, all female, had a vocation to lea...

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The Family Recipe

Submitted to Contest #302

“I need you to take this to Grandma.” With that instruction, Mom handed me a yellowed piece of paper, folded up in fourths. I unfolded it. There were stains on the page, maybe of water, or oil. The handwriting was in cursive and, admittedly, I could not read cursive. The words were loopy and even angling my head sideways and squinting didn’t result in them being anything other than squiggles. Mom held the phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder. She talked to a friend as she diced vegetables for dinner on the cutting board. She wa...

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"Je Voudrais... You?"

Submitted to Contest #302

Jasper had only been in Marseille for five days, and already he was sunburned, under-caffeinated, and so deeply reliant on Google Translate that he’d started speaking in weird hybrid sentences like “Je need un café maintenant, s’il te please.”He had come to the south of France for art, peace, and one of those rustic “reconnect with yourself” sabbaticals that people always blogged about while wearing linen shirts and eating bread as if they had just discovered gluten for the first time.Jasper, a watercolor hobbyist and full-time overthinker, ...

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Good Boy

Submitted to Contest #302

Darting through the flexible opening, I shuddered to a stop. A bitter, vicious cold made me shake, wanting to retreat from the terror. No. I couldn’t do that and leave the others inside! My instinct surged, reminding me I was a guardian and a warrior. Appearing out of nowhere, some hideous, foul-smelling thing hovered above Josh (that must be his name as he always responded when the taller-two legged beings spoke it). The thing appeared as a misshapen black mass, with shadowy, sinuous arms stretching from the core. It had a will of its own ...

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In the Mischief of Misunderstanding: A Faeryland Adventure

Submitted to Contest #302

Faeryland’s Farm, a vibrant tapestry of laughter and life, bustled with its residents' daily antics. Overseen with love by Farmer Joe and his wife, Corabell, known as Ma to the animals, the sanctuary was a refuge for nearly 50 animals who formed an unusual yet harmonious family. Among these creatures was a buckling known simply as Nameless. His quiet demeanor set him apart from his boisterous companions: Perfect, Poison Ivy, and Holly Berry. One sunny afternoon, Nameless wandered a little farther than usual, following the flutter of butterfl...

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The Rotten Tooth

Submitted to Contest #302

I was exhausted. Drained. My stomach churned with hunger, and my head buzzed with the early whispers of pain. It had been one of those days when the city of Baku felt less like home and more like a labyrinth, coiled in traffic, noise, and fatigue.The dreadful traffic jam had me trapped. I watched the clock ticking as minutes stretched into hours. I had long given up hope of making it back to Sumgayit that night — to my small apartment, my own bed, my own silence. The mere thought of the endless road ahead, crawling with brake lights and impa...

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The will of the Gods

Submitted to Contest #302

The leader looked around the group, his gaze moving from one person to the next, but no one met his eyes.They probably know what I'm going to say, the leader thought.Gaby was uneasy; the leader's suspicion was undoubtedly true in her case. She had a feeling about where this meeting was going. Recent developments at the project site had not been satisfactory. As the lead developer responsible for the basic algorithm, she had a lot of responsibility for the actions of the players, and things were not going well. Not well at all.Sure enough, th...

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Getting lost between cultures

Submitted to Contest #302

The daily life of a newly immigrated Japanese teenager in the United States seemed, in fact, very difficult. Taiga, at 16 years old, had arrived on American soil only about three months earlier and had faced many challenges translating Japanese into English. After all, more than a language, Taiga was translating a life: all the good and memorable moments he had lived in the great city of Tokyo were being replaced by American memories and customs. And that was a big problem for the boy because he never wanted this translation. His body might ...

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Hear Me If You Can

Submitted to Contest #302

The ringing would not stop, Commander James Turner could feel the blood oozing down his left ear to his neck, it was warm, like it was in the morning when he started this wretched tour, of course he was incognizant of this wretchedness then, he probably doesn’t know it now, all he can register is the incessant ringing, yet the bleeding is none of his concern at present: it’s the bloody ringing! He lifts up his hands and covers his ears in a futile attempt to block a phantom external source from transmitting the ringing to his ears, he crumbl...

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Stagnant

Submitted to Contest #302

TW: Descriptions of drowning. A white mist of brittle air escaped from Wren’s lips. Cautiously, she tiptoed through rubble and broken glass, avoiding murky puddles and damp mould. She raised her gaze to observe the faded sea-green hair of the person blazing the trail ahead of her, dimly illuminated by the pitiful rays of blue light emitted from her torch.“Hey, Fran? How much further?” She called out to them, stumbling clumsily over a soggy scrap of cardboard, catching herself just short of a black mass of mould. She sighed, relieved.“Shh! Ke...

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The Very Holy Hat

Submitted to Contest #302

As soon as his feet touched the ground, he knew he was back. It felt familiar, the earth between his toes, the sun warming his back. Yes, this is it. This is the world he made. There are the trees reaching for the heavens, just how he left them, taller now, obviously. There is the sky, vast and limitless, stretching sideways as far as the eye can see. There is the sound of the wind, as gentle as breath, just as he remembered it. There is the scent of the earth, the flowers, the hot ground, natures perfume. Magic! There is the crumpled form o...

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Christy 'Beat' Welch

Submitted to Contest #302

Christy, Christy, Christy. What a character. Christy Welch was born in 1975 in the same place as his mother, his father and all generations before him: in Knockmacdoon, County Waterford, Ireland. It was a known fact that the Welchs could never conceive more than one child. By God, everyone in the village knew that they tried; in the pub, in the shops, even in Sunday mass. If they were to be successful, they’d have more offspring than a frog would have a knot of tadpoles. Christy wasn’t the brightest spark but he sure did have charisma. He wa...

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