- Look, it was hard enough getting Isekai-ed into a weird ass magic world and getting shoved into school again, but for the love of all that is holy-WHY IS THERE EVERY SPOKEN LANGUAGE EXCEPT ENGLISH?????
- Lost in Translation Summary.
Lost in Translation is a Twisted Wonderland fanfiction written by Broken_Synchronicity
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The story is a fan-novelization of the game with one catch. Everyone is speaking in different languages and English, of all languages, is considered an ancient language which resulted in lots of language barrier issues for Kallisto and everyone involved.
The story can be found in AO3 here, with side-stories and extra materials named Transcription Annotation that is also uploaded on AO3.
Not to be confused with the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles fanfiction of the same name. Or even the movie and webcomic with a similar name.
Lost in Translation contains the following tropes:
- Acceptable Breaks from Canon: The story was written before the novel adaptation was announced, and hence this story did not have the campus wide translation spell in application for the story and world-building.
- Adaptational Gender Identity:
- Cater Diamond in canon is male, but he is mentioned and implied to be Transgender in this story.
- Adaptational Origin Connection:
- In this story, Cater is hinted as the former Dorm leader before Riddle.
- Adults Are Useless: Averted Trope. Unlike the game, Crowley is a lot more responsible in regards to how he treats Kallisto due to the precarious nature of their situation and the language barrier that they are going through.
- All There in the Manual: The author's tumblr blog has story trivia's and other world-building notes to be had in mind for the story and organized in this post.
- Ascended Extra: Lilia Vanrouge has more narrative prominence due to being the only person at the point of the story to understand English and is willing to help Kal out to adapt.
- Big Eater: Both Kal and Grim qualify.
- Bilingual Bonus: The story contains multiple languages and the author provides translations for those who don't understand the language being used at certain parts of the story. The author also mentions what languages that the Twisted Wonderland cast locally speaks of outside of Japanese being referred to as the common tongue of Twisted Wonderland:Rose Kingdom: Irish (Northern Rosen), Scottish (Southern Rosen)
Land of Pyroxene: German (Pyroxese)
Valley of Thorns: French (Low Vale)
Olympia: (Includes Isle of Lamentation): Greek (Empirical Olympian)
Coral Sea: Cretan Greek (Oceanic Olympian), Italian (Coastal)
Land of Hot Sands: Arabic (Agrabic) - Bilingual Dialogue: Occurs in latter parts of the story as Kal speaking Italian allows them to finally be able to coherently speak to the cast.
- Deconstruction:
- Kal's form of magic is this to stories where the prefect of the fan novelization gained the ability to use magic after being magicless for much of their life. Most stories had the "prefect" having stable control to use their newly formed magic. Kal did not have such luck as the process of Kal being able to use magic was through a dangerous ritual that would have killed them and even if it succeeded, Kal's use of magic is rendered with Cursed with Awesome in the sense that while blot will not form, their form of casting is completely unstable and had to be used sparingly until Kal can properly hone it. Kal does not take having magic well when they are sure that they had been magicless and especially when they learn how using magic the way they do could get them killed if they're not careful.
- Kal's situation is also this for the canonical Yuu's situation, especially when their situation accounts for the Language Barrier that they are suffering from in this story and suddenly gaining magic on top of that when they are so sure that they had been magicless for a long time and Kal doesn't take it well. Additionally, unlike the novel where it's revealed that the school had an area wide translation spell, Kal has none of that in this story. The Language Barrier is why Crowley is far more responsible in regards to Kal's situation than he would with the canonical Yuu.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All the chapters are named after pronunciation of an English word.
- In-Series Nickname: Kallisto asks that they'd be called as "Kal".
- Language Barrier: The very driving force of the story is how things get affected as a whole over it. For starters, English, which Kallisto can fluently speak of, is considered an ancient language that only Lilia can speak of, while Japanese is the common tongue along with other languages based on the students' origins such as Low Vale being the French equivalent and Coastal for Italian among others. While Kallisto is comfortable with English, they had a rougher time speaking Japanese and understanding it, with the other languages they could speak being French and Italian.
- Named by Adaptation:
- The three Ramshackle ghosts are given the names Augusto, Phineas and Ezra.
- Original Character: Besides Kal, the story has original staff characters outside of the canonically known staff members of Night Raven College.
- Point of Divergence:
- For starters, Crowley took Kal's situation far seriously than he would with the canonical Yuu due to them gaining magic from odd means and how they are also unable to understand the common tongue.
- The language barrier means that Kal doesn't always understand some of the things going around them such as when Deuce tells and confides in Kal about his past as a former delinquent to them.
- Recursive Fanfiction: Lost in Translation is one for the Language Barrier AU by twsty-lav, albeit the story's points are heavily Played for Drama instead of the originally comedic and light-hearted concept that twsty-lav had.
- Unreliable Narrator: Due to the Language Barrier in place in the setting, the cast falls under this, with Kal suffering the worst of this at early points of the story. Kal can understand the context a little due to body language, but fully understanding what goes on around them is another story.
- What If?: The premise is what if there is a Language Barrier that make things difficult for everyone involved?
- Wrong Assumption: Due to Kallisto speaking English, which had been considered an old language for years, Lilia mistook them for a time traveler, instead of being a human who was Trapped in Another World.
- You No Take Candle: Because Kal only had a rougher understanding of Japanese, they speak in this manner when using Japanese to communicate.
