Thanks Elliot and Faralas - no need to console me, I am not easily offended, and certainly not by factual voicing of opinions on a topic where I specifically asked for advice. If I wasn't unsure of myself, I wouldn't have asked. And if I didn't enjoy this new experience of writing I wouldn't seek ways of improving.
on tense - it wasn't my choice, but a rule set in the story before I joined it - had I had my own choice, I would certainly not have picked present tense.
A lot of what you comment Faralas is choice of words in English, for which I am thankful, as it expands my vocabulary (no, that is not the whole truth - I should say "my active vocabulary", as the words as such I knew - mostly). I can assure you, that quite a number is as you advised in the German original.
This is not true for the grammatical style - there the translation is close to the original. Where there are incomplete sentences, there are so in German, and your comments are as true in German.
On the basic understanding (e.g. "following the knights"), this, of course is cited out of context, which would have explained some of your (otherwise valid) comments.
I will not take your comments apart in detail, I can differentiate for myself, which is English lessson (Thanks), which is translation loss (as I said, had I written this in English, though more difficult for me, it would have been different) and which is a valid point in the art of narrating a story. Thanks by the way for the book recommendation - I feel confident, that I can get a lot out of it from reading it in English, if no German copy can be found. (My speaking is not different from my writing, except for a German/American accent - as my English colleagues say "I am a bloody foreigner trained by f****ing colonists" - I learned English by Americans mostly and did some of my professional training in the USA <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />)
And thanks for your offer of reviewing any stuff I may write - I will smoke a pipe while pondering this question. But definitely, I will not translate anything I wrote (or will write in German). I have realised that writing, while certainly envolving work, has the charm of creativity - translation is pure work for me.
But I could be tempted to try and write in English - if somebody with a better vocabulary reviews it.
