Fang 1

House Fang

Tymoteusz Chajdas

Writing 2

20th August 2020

Pouring Roof

“Daddy, where are you going?” said Charlie to his father as they were sitting in front of

the door of their little house.

“Out to work, baby” Replied by Mr. Goodman, who is the captain of the 10th

Reconnaissance Troop.

“But today is rainy, dad.” said Charlie with his little polar bear toy on his hand, “

Can“Can you stay with me just one day?”

“Oh, Charlie.” Mr. Goodman replied and gently pitched Charlie’s little face, “I really

want to play little polar bear with you, my boy.”

“But I have to fight with bad guys, you know it.” Mr. Goodman put his military emblem

in front of his chest.

“How about this, Charlie. We split this candy paper.” Mr. Goodman grabbed a red candy

from the entry table, andtable and peeled it. He put the candy into little Charlie’s mouth, and tore

the candy paper into two parts.

“You and I both have half of it .Iit. I will keep it into my pocket, and you can keep it into

your piggy bank. When your piggy bank is filled, I will be back. Okay?” Mr. Goodman patted

Charlie’s head.

“But you just bought me a new piggy bank last week!” Charlie was yelling, while a

thunderstorm was coming outside of the house.

 Fang 2

The rain was heavier and heavier, but Charlie couldn’t stop himself from crying.

Mr. Goodman took a glance at his watch, it was already 7 o’clock, he really had to go.

“Okay, how about this.” Mr.GoodmanMr. Goodman said, “When I come back, I give you

a revolver as a gift.”

“Really!” Charlie stopped crying immediately, “you have to promise!”

“You have my word.” Mr. Goodman finally put his boots on. “Remember to protect your

mommy for me, okay?”

“You bet!” Charlie smiled and put the candy paper into his little pocket carefully.

Mr. Goodman finally left with his big Jeep, while little Charlie climbed on the window

and watched his father’s Jeep disappear into the rain.

It had been a month since Mr. Goodman left, and Charlie sent a letter to him every week,

but he never received one from Mr. Goodman. Actually, Mr. Goodman did send one letter back

when he arrived at the combat location, but Charlie’s mom couldn't read it to little Charlie. The

content of the letter makes Mrs. Goodman terribly worried, since her husband never write a letter

like this one:

Dear Emily and Charlie,

I hope everything at home is going great. We are having a very hard time. The

enemy is using gas last night, half of the soldiers in the camp are dead. I was outside the

camp for checking landscapes of this island, but the other captain of us is dead. We sent

an emergency alarm to the trooptroop, but they haven’t responded to us yet. The living

conditions here are terrible, some of us get malaria. I guess the water and mosquitos here

are toxic. The moist air rotted our food and firearms, and most of the soldiers are
 Fang 3

homesick. One of them even suicided yesterday. People here only want to be home. I

think we can’t make it if they don’t send reinforcements.

If Charlie asks you about me, you can’t tell him anything about this letter. This

damn place is rainy all day and night, and the candy paper is wetted by the stink rains and

stuck in my pocket.

Emily, my heart, I love you and Charlie so much. If you can’t receive my letter in

a few weeks, you can assume I am dead. Please, move on with Charlie. Find a nice guy

who likes Charlie and loves you. I have to go back to my people now. God bless us.

Noah

Goodman

Charlie felt lonely everydayevery day, since mother started to work during the afternoon.

He had to eat dinner by himself sometimes. While he was alone, he always recalled the day his

dad left.

“How nice if my dad is a businessman, justbusinessman, just like David’s dad.” Charlie talked

to himself while he was eating a marinara pasta by himself. “Then he can stay at home when it is

rainy. David told me that if the weather is bad, his daddy will stay at home and play with David

all day.”

While he was thinking, Mrs. Goodman got home with wet hair.

“Mommy, why are your hairs wet? Did you take a shower outside?” said Charlie while he

was handling a fork.

“Nope, baby. It is rainy outside.” Mrs. Goodman was wiping her wet hair while speaking

with her son.

 Fang 4

“Why did dad and mom always leave me while it was raining! I hate rainy days!” Little

Charlie suddenly started to yell to his mom and cried.

“Baby, people have to work no matter what weather it is, you know?”

Mrs.GoodmanMrs. Goodman took off her wet shoes and walked to her son. “Why do you think

that daddy and mommy don’t need to work when it’s rainy?” Mrs.GoodmanMrs. Goodman

hugged her little boy, and flicked his hair gently.

“David told me that his dad won’t go to work when it is raining. Because his dad said it

already makes people sad when it is raining.” Charlie was sobbing.

“That’s because David’s dad is the manager of an amusement park. People don’t go to an

amusement park when it is raining, since most facilities are outside.” Mrs. Goodman hugged

little Charlie tightly.“Whentightly. “When your dad comes back, we will go to play carousel

together. Don’t cry, my poor baby.” Mrs. Goodman was comforting her boy, while she also

worried about whether her husband could come back to them. The rain wouldn’t stop, with the

wind yelling outside and knocking on the door. She never felt so desperate since she got the

letter. She always had the faith that her husband would finally get back to them. But at this

moment, she was so afraid that she was losing her husband.

Another month had passed, Mrs.GoodmanMrs. Goodman still had to work every

afternoon, while Charlie was staying at home. Charlie got one dollar for candy everydayevery

day, but he didn’t buy even one candy after his dad left, and he saved every penny to fill the

piggy bank. It was finally full, just as Charlie expected, but he started to feel scared about

opening it. Since a few weeks ago, his little friend David told him that his grandma dieddied, and

that death means someone will never come back to you. He also told Charlie that people in the

army died everydayevery day. Charlie didn’t know about death, but he could not imagine if his
 Fang 5

dad would never come back to him. SoSo, he punched David and ran away. He told himself that

David is a liar for at least a hundred times, but he was still worried.

Finally, Charlie decided to break the piggy bank with his mom, andmom and hoped that

his dad would show up at the moment that the piggy bank broke, just like Superman. While he

was thinking, he heard the door was opened, and there were sounds of footsteps of a man!

“Daddy!” Charlie ran out of his room like a rocket.

“Hi, Charlie.” A man’s voice responds to him, but it is not from his dad. Mrs. Goodman

was standing next to this man, and her eyes looked like two red peaches.

“ Who“Who are you! I want my dad! I want my dad!” Charlie brayed and pushed this tall

man hardly, but he was not moving.

“Listen, Charlie. I am so sorry that you have to hear this: Your dad is the most

bravebravest man I have ever seen, and he was doing so great that he will be with god forever.”

The man was speaking in a solemn voice, just like he was at a funeral.

“No! You are lying! My dad never broke his promise!” Charlie shouted, “My dad will be

home when I can break my piggy bank!”

Charlie ran back to his room and smashed his piggy bank hard on the floor. It was broken

into very small pieces with a huge sound. Charlie closed his eyes, and waited for the miracle, for

his Superman, but no one showed up. The black clouds covered his house and started pouring…

After that day, little Charlie never used a piggy bank to save his money. Ten years has

passed, He gradually grew up to be a tall and strong young man and he was used to life without

his father. After he finished his college, he decided to create a company by himself which had a

special rule: people don’t need to work when it is rainy. The first year was tough, but he never

thought about giving up. One of his friends once asked him why he was so persistent about
 Fang 6

having his own company, and the answer was always: “I don’t want to work on rainy days!”

Charlies’ friends all thought that Charlie just wanted to be his own boss, but no one knew that

rainy days remind Charlie of the day his father left.

“Maybe it is not the fact that people feel sad when it comes to rainy days, just because it

reminds me the day my dad left.” Sometimes, Charlie thought about this in his mind, “I am just

trying to make people feel better during bad weather, even if it is not that necessary for them, it

still makes me feel better.”

The End of the story.

 Fang 7

Reflective essay

I always felt that the weather is related to people’s mood. As an international student, it is

pretty hard for me to come to a new foreign country and study professional topics using a non-

native language. I believe that the sunshine, beaches and the good climate in California can

release the pressure of my academic life, so I chose to attend UCSB. The article that I translated,

“Does the weather make us sad? Meteorological determinants of mood and depression in the

general population”, is a research article from the book Psychiatry Research written by Marcus

J.H.Huiber and other co-authors. This article talks about the possibility of bad weather

influencing people’s mood, especially depression, which is exactly what I am wondering about

all the time.

According to the article, the researchers set up the experiment by collecting data from a

large-scale screening programmeprogrammers for a depression treatment study. The result of all

studies demonstrates that there is no direct association between bad weather and low temperature

with depressive disorder (Huibers et al., 2010, 143-146). The authors analyze the data by chi-

square tests and logistic regression analysis, so it should be a quantitative research. And during

this process, the authors construct graphs and tables to show the possible relationship between

weather and mood. They also consider the different varieties like Meteorological factors,

clarification of seasons, age, gender, education and marital status to keep authority of the study.

I translated this article into a short fiction and named it as “Pouring Roof”. The main idea

of my story is how bad weather influences a boy’s mood by connecting the death of his father

with rain, which conveys an idea that people tend to think weather is related to their mood, but

they don’t actually have direct connections. The main character of this story is a boy named

Charlie Goodman and the story is unfolded by the left of his father. In my story, Charlie’s father
 Fang 8

is a captain of a military troop, and he left Charlie and his mom because of the war and never

returned back. The overt plot of the story is the death of Charlie’s father and the covert plot of it

is the rain. In fact, all bad events that happened in the fiction are accompanied with a rainy day.

The purpose of this is to demonstrate why Charlie connected bad weather with terrible events,

which finally leads to a negative attitude of Charlie when it comes to rainy days.

In order to translate an academic paper of psychology and statistics to a short fiction, I

analyzed the conventions of both genres and found that there are some major differences

between them. First of all, the structure of them differs majorly. The organization of the paper

that I translated has a typical structure of an academic article. It contains elements including

abstract, key words, introduction, method, result, discussion, and conclusion. Each piece of

writing is clearly classified to approach the goal of the sub-topic, and then all contribute to the

major argument, which is to determine whether bad weather is related to depression. On the

other hand, the organization of the short fiction that I translated into has more freedom in

organization. As long as it is appropriate to depict the plots, the background, personality and

actions of the characters, it is considered as good fiction. To change structures, I just abandoned

the whole organized paragraphs of the academic paper, extracted the main argument of it, and

created a free write describing my story that contains no regular patterns of organization.

However, I still considered the coherence of my paragraphs and sentences, andsentences to

keeppt my main topic on the track.

The second difference between the original text and my translation is the choice of word,

and this part is crucial since it partially forms makes a fiction as a fiction in the translation

process. For the purpose ofIn order to translateing a formal and professional text into a casual

and enjoyable fiction, I have to delete all complicated terminologies, numbers, analysis, and
 Fang 9

reference. And to replace them with gripping vocabularies to delineate plots of the story. At the

start of the fiction, I used a lot of detailed dialogues to show the close relationship between

Charlie and his father. And in these dialogues, I carefully chose the word to make the expression

of a loving father and a son who has a worship of his father. For example, I used “daddy” instead

of “dad” and “baby” instead of “son”. I also add a lot of detailed actions between them, like

“gently pitched Charlie’s little face” and “ patted“patted his little head” to display the great

rapport of a father and a son, which sets the stage of Charlie’s sorrow after his father’s death.

The third difference between these two texts is the discourse communities. The academic

paper has packed information, dedicated method of experiments, precise analysis of results, and

authoritative resources. It is not easy for people who haven't accepted high school education to

read or understand it. In addition, Itsits disciplines are psychology and statistics, which means

researchers, readers, and students in these fields of study will pay more attention to this article.

Instead of having professional readers, the audience of the fiction I translated to is more

comprehensive. From people who have low to high education levels, and from people who like

fiction to bored people who randomly read stories, all of them can be my readers. With the aim

of having more readers, I used a lot of easy words, and a very apparent line of the story. The first

part of it is Charlie’s father left on a rainy day in the first part of the story. Then his father

encountered an awful war in the rain, andrain and died. The last part is about Charlie knowing

the death of his father on a rainy day and his future life after he experienced all incidents. By

setting a clear timeline, I encouraged my readers to understand my story better and made them

feel comfy when they are reading since they don’t need to think about complex concepts or

terminologies.
 Fang 10

In addition to encouraging my readers to understand my story, I use rhetorical analysis to

draw my audience attention. Because my writing work is a short novel, it is hard for me to use

logos or ethos. Therefore, I chose pathos as my major strategy. For example, when Charlie and

his father said goodbye, his father splitted a red candy paper with Charlie and promised to return

home with it. During the war, the climate is so bad that his father’s candy paper is wet and stuck

in his pocket. On the other side, little Charlie put the paper in his piggy bank, and hoped for the

day of breaking it, which is also the day that his father would be back as he promised. All those

promises make my audience feel sorry about little Charlie and his mother. Another example is

his father’s letter from the war site. In the letter, his father wrote that “Emily, my heart, I love

you and Charlie so much. If you can’t receive my letter in a few weeks, you can assume I am

dead.” From these sentences, my readers can feel about the horror scene of the war, a man’s

homesickness, desperation and promises, which all contributed to moving them and keeping

them interested in my work.

At the end of my reflection, I want to talk about one of the concerns about my translation,

which is the length of it. I want to keep the personalities of my characters intact and rich, so I add

a transitional part between the leave and the death of his father. However, the part between them

looks a little bit longer than what I am looking for, but if I make it shorter, it may make my story

line rushed. After carefully reading through my story, I finally revised some sentences of the

transition part to make it flow better and I think I am all done.

 Fang 11

Bibliography

Huibers, M., De Graaf, L., Peeters, F., & Arntz, A. (2010). Does the weather make us sad?

Meteorological determinants of mood and depression in the general population.

Psychiatry Research, 180(2-3), 143-146.