2004-05-06 - 5:14 p.m.

So here it is:

Okay, I think anyone who reads this knows that I have an account at fanfiction.net, right? No, well, it's there. My username is tangledhair and I have three stories- one of which is a work in progress that gets about four thousand hits a week.

Well, this girl has been reviewing my chapters for awhile. I went to read her stories, but they're in German, so I didn't. But then, THEN, she asks me in a review if I would read this one story Krankheit (Illness). And I thought, well, I DO speak a LITTLE German... Maybe I'll go see if I can pick my way through any of it.

And no, no I couldn't.

At all.

But then my roommate Daena suggests that I go to freetranslation.com and read it through there.

And then I got a little devious, and I giggled madly, and I decided to pretend that I know more German than I do, and to read the story through the translation website and just tell her that my German's bad so that when I write reviews for her story through the translation website and they're all messed up, she'll just think, 'Oh, but at least she's trying.'

So I did that today for the first chapter. And I giggled madly through most of it, because those computer translations are WHACK! And also because I hardly ever lie, so I'm getting this 'bad girl' thrill from it.

But it was still a bit of a pain, a fun pain, but a pain. So I decided not to go any further in it. I just wrote the review in English saying that her English was better than my German- and it seemed like a good story, but I was only getting about half of it.

Case closed, right?

Well!

She emailed me a little later (my yahoo addy is listed in my profile) and said she was so thrilled that I spoke even a little German. She admitted that her English is only so good because of the translation software on her computer, and she offered to send me a summary of the chapters as I read them.

So, what do I do?!

Do I continue to play the game, and feel all devious and "bad girl"-ish and lead her to believe that my German is better than it is? Or do I come clean? Or do I go mid-way by saying, 'Hey! Translation software! Good idea!'

But more importantly, if I go with the first option... can any harm come from this? because I haven't attempted a deception of this magnitude since high school. And I feel silly on the one hand because I'm lying to some girl half a world away by saying I speak her language somewhat. And I feel silly on the other hand because that's so childish anyway. But then I get to giggling devilishly. So really, can any harm come from this?

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