Translating book to other languages

Arpeggio

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Duplicate thread sorry, I realize I miss-spelt the title then corrected which seems to have duplicated the thread. Please delete this one? sorry again!
 
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Arpeggio

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I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this? where did you look? who did you use? how much did you pay? how much should one expect to pay?

thanks, graci, merci, danke (and that's about as much as I know of foreign languages)
 

Old Hack

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My only experience is of working with co-publishers who arrange the translations themselves.

I know that it's costly to employ a good interpreter, and that if you skimp the resulting text is unlikely to be effective: it's not just a question of interpreting the words you've written and getting the grammar straight, your interpreter has to also echo your voice, the rhythms of your speech, the tone of your novel. This is very hard to do effectively.

I've seen some self-published writers use things like Google Translate to translate their books into other languages. It's really not good. Make sure you do it right, or not at all.

A few hints: use translators who move work from a foreign language into their own first language, as you'll get a more authentic voice that way; use translators who have already translated several books, which have been successful; and make sure you get everything you need translated--the book, the title, the blurb, and so on.
 

Arpeggio

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I've seen some self-published writers use things like Google Translate to translate their books into other languages. It's really not good. Make sure you do it right, or not at all.

Oh my! I guess I shouldn't be surprised at that.

A few hints: use translators who move work from a foreign language into their own first language, as you'll get a more authentic voice that way; use translators who have already translated several books, which have been successful; and make sure you get everything you need translated--the book, the title, the blurb, and so on.

I see why it would be easier for someone to translate into their own language rather than from it. I’ll be sure to include the description etc.

Thanks for the blog post link, I see why objective medical stuff will be easier to translate. Thankfully a book I have in mind is non-fiction with no “figure of speech” or anything culturally specific to the English language, so there would be less issue with rhythms of speech or tone as Old Hack pointed out.

One book is 5000 words, other books have only 1000 - 2000 words. Over half of it is illustrations. One place I found would do 5000 words for £350, 1000 words for £75. That might not sound too much but I’m considering translating several books into several languages.

I found some freelancers on various places who state good qualifications and are cheaper. I was skeptical of their relatively low fee so I divided it into the weekly average wage of their country, to find that if they did it 5 days a week they would make 208% more than the average weekly wage. So that seems feasible as one factor at least.
 
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TheCuriousOne

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An average of £75 for 1000 words is quite reasonable. Was just thinking - if you haven't been on this site already, visit Proz.com. This is a platform dedicated to translations (in comparison to freelance websites where you get anything and everything). From my experience it's one of the "better" sites.
 

davidjgalloway

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Regardless of what you choose, get a second opinion: have the translator do a few pages, then pay a native speaker of that language to read it and comment for you. Then you'll have at least some sense of whether the translator is getting it right, which is critical, but even more so if you're shelling out hard-earned money for the translation.
 

Arpeggio

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Thanks gallowayprof I will use proofreader. I wonder if anyone on these forums has had their books translated and would like to share their experience? I guess it's pretty straight forward really, with the main do's and don'ts already covered here.

I suppose another not yet discussed area might be how to get your book into those countries retail outlets as best as possible, in print and eBook format, with the channels usually available to self-published and smaller publishers.
 

davidjgalloway

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That's a great question--for instance, would you need an agent for foreign rights or is there some way to do it yourself? Would be great if there were a version of ACX-- a sort of foreign exchange--that would facilitate that sort of thing.
 

aruna

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My trade published books were sold to foreign publishers who take care of the translations. But I do have one self-published book which I hope to have published in German one day -- either I will offer it to trade publishers, or self-publish myself. The translation into German is being done (slowly) by a German friend. We have not talked about payment but I'm thinking I will do a royalty share with her if I self-publish. If a German trade pub takes it on then I assume they will pay her at the usual rate.
 
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Old Hack

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My trade published books were sold to foreign publishers who take care of the translations. But I do have one self-published book which I hope to have published in German one day -- either I will offer it to trade publishers, or self-publish myself. The translation into German is being done (slowly) by a German friend. We have not talked about payment but I'm thinking I will do a royalty share with her if I self-publish. If a German trade pub takes it on then I assume they will pay her at the usual rate.

You really should have sorted out rights and payments before your friend started work on the translation, aruna: what if she does all the work and is expecting a lot more than you're prepared to pay her for it? If I were you I'd stop her working on it right now, and make sure all these points are put into a contract before she does any more work on the book.

A German trade publisher is unlikely to take the book on and pay for the translation you've arranged. It would probably want to either take on a book already in German and have a contract with its author in the usual way; or it would buy translation rights and then have the book translated themselves. I hope you're right, but I fear you are not.
 

aruna

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I'm prepared to pay her whatever she wants! She's doing it slowly, chapter by chapter, whenever she feels like it. I know this sounds very unprofessional but -- well, that's the very nature of the project... we're doing things the Indian way!
ANd if a trade publisher takes us on, well, we could do it as co-authors and share 50-50. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
 
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Arpeggio

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That's a great question--for instance, would you need an agent for foreign rights or is there some way to do it yourself? Would be great if there were a version of ACX-- a sort of foreign exchange--that would facilitate that sort of thing.

My trade published books were sold to foreign publishers who take care of the translations. But I do have one self-published book which I hope to have published in German one day -- either I will offer it to trade publishers, or self-publish myself.

I think trade published books make more sense to go in the direction of selling rights. A larger company has a higher scare factor and resources to take it up if they are getting hoodwinked.

As a small publisher I won’t sell my rights because if I am getting ripped off in a foreign language I wouldn’t know and even if I did, it might be in the laws of another country.

I’ll be arranging the translating myself and going through the standard channels I already use for English books. This way all overseas retailers have to answer to 2 big companies who could rip me off me in English if they wanted (I guess), but I now have a track record with and am happy with. Rather than lots of different companies I have no track record with for foreign rights in different countries that could rip me off in lots of different languages.

I think another argument to doing it this way might be that the world is becoming “smaller”. Lightning source POD expands its facilities to Germany, Poland, Russia etc. Another place I use is in China and Germany. As English writers we might be at an advantage in this way because it is English language publications that are in demand overseas, so we could piggy back onto that with translated versions.

http://www.ingramcontent.com/Pages/POD_WorldwideDistribution_Poland.aspx

quote: "With a high demand for foreign titles—with English leading the way"

PS: eCommerce is only 6.7% of all US commerce, and set to grow. http://ycharts.com/indicators/ecommerce_sales_as_percent_retail_sales That's just the US, and not for example India.
 
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