The following is an excerpt from my literary translation. I'm worried that the female protagonist (Klara) is turning out quite unsympathetic, which was definitely not the way she was conceived by the author. It would be great if people could take a look and tell me how they feel about this character based on the following excerpt. Please disregard the horrible punctuation. Somebody will take care of that for me because I'm useless with English punctuation.
Klara was quite sociable but while she was socializing with people and allowing them to socialize with her, she was unwittingly creating a transparent and at the same time impenetrable bubble that surrounded her and separated her from others. She wasn’t doing it on purpose. Rather, her perennially terrified admirers did it for her. It was their own fault, of course, because Klara never asked them to fear her comments and think that she was making fun of people who made fools of themselves. She wasn’t laughing at them (like she cared enough for that) but simply because she felt like laughing.
Klara was quite sociable but while she was socializing with people and allowing them to socialize with her, she was unwittingly creating a transparent and at the same time impenetrable bubble that surrounded her and separated her from others. She wasn’t doing it on purpose. Rather, her perennially terrified admirers did it for her. It was their own fault, of course, because Klara never asked them to fear her comments and think that she was making fun of people who made fools of themselves. She wasn’t laughing at them (like she cared enough for that) but simply because she felt like laughing.
To give an example, Marik Steinberg, one of the top students in the entire city of Kharkov who was slated to receive a golden medal for his outstanding grades, fell in love with Klara to the point of stuttering. Of course, it is quite possible that he always stuttered, who knows? Finally, he decided to inform Klara of his feelings that were evident not only to her but to everybody else within a hundred mile radius. She burst out in a bout of compassionate (yes, compassionate, why can’t anybody understand that?) laughter so that her blush turned from pale-pink to aggressively red. In a similarly compassionate tone that suggested she only wanted the best for Marik, she responded, “Marik, have you ever seen yourself in the mirror?”
“Sure I have,” Marik responded. His face was covered with huge beads of sweat that looked like boils.
Klara stopped laughing, looked at him seriously, and concluded, “In that case, your actions are incomprehensible.”
She had nothing else to say, nor did she want to.
