Category Archives: Translation Diaries

Behind the Cost: Why Are Translations So Expensive?

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

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When I read on the Internet about translations, the words “hefty sums”, “expensive” and synonyms pop up quite often. While it’s true that the price of translations may look high (and some of them are, indeed, overpriced), there are reasons behind every translator’s fees. I understand, however, that not everyone might know what these reasons are, so I decided to write this post in order to give you an idea.

The first – and most important – factor behind a translation’s price is time. A translator has to work for weeks, maybe months to turn your manuscript into another language, and during that time they have to keep the lights on, the house warm and the dogs fed (tip: you don’t want to be in the same house with a hungry Springer Spaniel. They are noisy little buggers). Normally, translators don’t charge by the hour, simply because we have no way to prove to the client how many hours we spent on a project. But time is definitely a factor when we have to determine our price for a translation.

Woe to those who fail to feed the Beast

Woe to those who fail to feed the Beast

Then there are expenses. Yes, translators have expenses. For example, I employ a proofreader to make sure that everything I produce is up to the highest publishing standards; her services alone cost me about 25% of what I charge. Then there’s translation software and its updates, the cost of continuing education, and so on. It’s easy to forget how much money one has to spend in order to be able to perform their job properly. That, in turn, is reflected on what a translator charges. Chances are the little money will get you little quality.

Finally, don’t forget that translators are self-employed, meaning that all the money we earn from our work still has to be taxed. Depending on where in the world a translator lives, taxes can eat a substantial amount of their income, and what remains has to be enough to justify the time spent translating. Otherwise, our activity risks to shift from a laborious job to a laborious hobby, and we can’t afford that.

I hope I managed to help you understand why a translator has to charge certain amounts of money for their work. There may be other reasons, of course, but generally speaking, time, expenses and taxes are the three main reasons behind a translator’s rates.

The Translation Diaries, Episode 4: It Won’t Fit

11 Thursday Jun 2015

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One could think that a translator’s greatest enemy would be conjunctivitis. Or back pain. Or perhaps diabetes, since we work long hours sitting behind a desk and never get enough exercise. While all of these are huge threats to our health, they pale in front of the one who has given many a translator insomnia, hypertension and lack of appetite: the title that won’t fit on the cover.

You see, not all languages were made equal. Some tend to have longer words and sentences. While “longer” doesn’t necessarily mean “worse” in the age of the e-book, when it comes to words that have to go on a book’s cover, there are still lots of tears to be shed.

Suppose that you wrote a historical romance titled “In Shiny Armor” (I don’t know if such a book actually exists. I just made the title up. If it’s a real book, I apologize with the author). The closest translation I can think of would be Armatura scintillante (I’m dropping the preposition because it would just look too weird inside an Italian title, and because my job is already complicated as is). The problem with that? It goes from the original 14 characters, spaces included, to 21. That’s 50% longer! To make things worse, twelve of those character belong to a single word, which you obviously cannot break on a book cover. To avoid the cover designer’s wrath, I would have to come up with an alternative title that both reflects the book’s content and is short enough to fit on the cover.

“Wait, what do you mean an alternative title? You want to change the title of my book? I’ll die before that!” Please don’t. I may not know you, but I certainly want you to stay alive. And if you want to bless more readers with your wonderful book, you need a title that doesn’t need to be size 10 in order to fit on the cover. That means the Italian edition of your book will have a different title than the English one. It’s not a big deal. It happens all the time, both in traditional publishing and with self-published books.

Back to our example! To find a good title, I would carefully study the original. Is it a quote from one of the characters? Is it symbolic? Is it open to different interpretations?By answering those questions and more, I can come up with some solutions to submit to the author, who will them choose the one she thinks better.

Let’s say that the “shiny armor” of our imaginary title is the one don by your heroine to fight without being recognized as a woman. In this case, the fact that the armor is shiny is less important than the fact that it protects her from both harm and public shaming. Considering that, I would make suggestions like these:

  • Corazza (literally “cuirass”): this one is fairly literal. It puts the garment, with all its symbolism, at the center of the attention (and probably of the cover too), emphasizing its protective value. It loses the “shiny” part, but we are presuming that it wasn’t important in the first place.
  • Senza paura (literally “without fear”): this one plays on the fact that “cavaliere senza macchia e senza paura” is the Italian equivalent of “a knight in shiny armor”. The armor itself isn’t mentioned, but the symbolism is there.
  • Dietro l’elmo (literally “behind the helm”): this one is the furthest from the original title, but it’s worth mentioning because it sounds like “behind the mask,” both in English and Italian, and refers to the helm behind which the heroine conceals her identity. An advantage in working with a translator to produce a new title is that the author gets to see her novel from different angles, as the translator proposes titles that, in his opinion, sum up the book’s content and are captivating at the same time.

All these titles are appropriate (at least, I think they are), and they are all 14 characters or less. The author may choose the one she likes the most, and everyone will be happy. Including the cover designer.

 

 

Do you want to know more about the world of translations? Are you the author of a book titled “In Shiny Armor” and want to make an Italian edition of it? Contact me, and don’t forget to look at my Translations Made Easier page.

 

 

The Translation Diaries, Episode 3: Translating Personal Names

20 Thursday Nov 2014

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If you ever had to translate anything, it’s likely you came upon one of translation’s most quoted rules: “Never translate personal names”. As with many rules, this is true in a number of circumstances, but there are also many exceptions. It all depends on what exactly you are translating.

My main area of expertise is fiction. Now, in fiction, the translation of personal names is a complex issue. Generally speaking, “ordinary” personal names shouldn’t be translated. My own name, Ernesto, is of Spanish origin, and it shouldn’t become “Ernest” if I’m mentioned in an English discussion. A character named “Mary” she doesn’t become “Marie” in the French translation of the novel. The same goes for family names: it would be its own kind of madness to translate “Smith” as “Fabbri” while working from English to Italian.

As I told you, there are expection to the rule. They mostly come up in speculative fiction, particularly when dealing with meaningful names. Those are quite common in two specific genres: fantasy and science ficiton.

In fantasy, meaningful names may have the role of honorifics or express a character’s reputation: a powerful warrior might be known as “Skullsplitter” or “Steelhand”, for example. But there are novels where every character (or at least a good number of them) is named meaningfully: such is the case of Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker, where all the Returned have names such as Lightsong or Blushweaver. Such is the case of Stormbringer, Elric’s demon sword in Michael Moorcock’s stories. How does a translator deal with such situations?

My phylosophy is that meaningful names in fantasy need to be translated. Even when they work as personal names, such as in Warbreaker. The reason is simple: fantasy is modern epic, and epic characters’ names must be understandable. Obscure names lose their suggestive power. If I don’t know what “Shadow” or “Stormbringer” means, I might not understand those characters completely. I might get a good idea by reading the novels, but without knowing that “Stormbringer” means “someone or something who brings the storm” (a metaphor for cosmic disorder), I might fail to appreciate what the writer is trying to tell me (in Stormbringer’s case, that the sword has its own agenda. Notice the participle: it’s the sword who brings the storm, not its wielder).

Suspension of disbelief is another motivation to translate meaningful names. Finding an English name in a fantasy novel translated into Italian is confusing at best. To get an idea, imagine reading an epic novel filled with poetry and strong images… only to find a character named “Redentore”. Since you don’t know Italian, you have no clue about that name. If you don’t know that it means “Redeemer”, you might be confused and even miss a good chunk of the novel’s deepest meanings. Why, in a perfect English prose, do you have to stumble on an Italian name? Why hasn’t it been translated like everything else?

Now, science fiction is a different animal. Meaningful names exist there, too… but most of them are better left untranslated, especially the English ones (I’m not talking about translation into English, of course).

The reason is simple: English is, more often than not, the international language of technology and IT. Most people would expect a spaceship, gadget or tool to have an English name. Therefore, just like “Samsung Galaxy” doesn’t become “Samsung Galassia” in Italian, and “Internet” has (to my knowledge) never been translated, so English names in science fiction should be left as they are. There are exceptions, of course: I would probably left a technology’s name unchanged, but I would translate an individual ship’s name, especially if it was relevant to the plot. As always, contest is the key: if a name adds a level of meaning to the story, then it needs to be understandable. Otherwise, it might as well not be there.

As you can see, there is no hard and fast rule when it comes to the translation of personal names. As with many other things in the world of translations, it falls to the translator to make the right choice.

Did you write a novel full of meaningful names? Check out this page to see how I can help you reach new readers, and contact me for information and business proposals.

The Translation Diaries, Episode 2: Courtesy Forms

20 Monday Oct 2014

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In English, when you are talking to someone and want to show respect, you mostly do so by adding words. Calling someone “sir”, “madam” or “Your Majesty” means that you hold the person in front of you (or the person you’re writing to) in a certain consideration. But for the most part, the structure and content of your sentence remain the same: “Good morning” and “Good morning, madam” differ only for the honorific, but are otherwise the same sentence.

Italian, on the other hand, gets crazy with courtesy forms. The most shocking thing about it is that you show respect by changing person. That’s right, the actual, grammatical person of the verb you’re using. Sometimes you even have to change the gender! Let me show you.

Suppose that you meet a friend on the street, and you want to greet him. To say “Hi! How are you?” in Italian you could go with:

Ciao! Come stai?

Now, let’s say that you want to use the same greeting, but the person you meet is someone you’re supposed to show respect to (your teacher or your boss, for example). First of all, you need to use a more formal salute; not the colloquial “Ciao!”, but a more formal “Buongiorno!” But after that, to show your interlocutor the proper respect, you also have address them as “her”… even if they are the person we’re talking to and they happen to be male!

Here’s how you can say “Hi! How are you?” in a formal way:

Buongiorno! Come sta?

“Sta” is the third person singular of the verb “stare”, which is what we use for “to be” in this case. Now, if the honorable person were to reply “I’m fine, and you?”, and they wanted to use the same courtesy form, they would say something like this:

Io sto bene, e lei?

Which literally means “I’m fine. What about her?” Even if they’re talking to you and you happen to be male.

If English is your native language, this will probably seem absurd. But this courtesy form actually has historical roots: during the Renaissance, nobles were addressed as Sua Signoria or Sua Eccellenza, meaning respectively “His Lordship” and “His Excellency”. However, signoria and eccellenza are female in Italian, so female pronouns were used. Centuries later, we still use the third person singular (female) in lieu of the second person as a form of respect.

But it gets weirder (yes, there is weirder). It’s rarely used nowadays, at least in official Italian, but there’s a courtesy form that consists of adressing the other person with the second person plural (“voi”). That’s right, we’re making two (or three, or legion) of one person.

(we’re not alone in this, though. The French do it as well)

Here’s how you might greet, say, the Pope if you met him down the street:

Buongiorno, Santità! Come state?

State is, of course, the second person plural of “stare”, while Santità is “(Your) Holyness”.

You will almost never see this courtesy form used today. There are notable exceptions in some dialects, especially those from southern Italy (Neapolitan being the most notorious one), but for the most part it’s considered obsolete. It is, however, still considered the “right” form to adress royalty (although we have no royalty) and some important figures, mostly religious ones.

In italian there are also words like “signore” and “signora”, which are sometimes used were you would expect to see “sir” or “madam”, but the changing of person and (sometimes) gender is the thing that shocks foreigners the most. Many people think we’re crazy (and, being Italians, we might well be).

Courtesy forms come up a lot in translations. With three different levels of formality, it’s a pain to decide which one you have to use at a given point in a translation, especially when the English text gives you no clue about it.

What’s the appropriate form to use, for example, when a werewolf speaks to her pack alpha? Second person plural (from now on SPP) would seem right, since pack alphas are a kind of royalty, but it also might sound archaic. On the other hand, third person female (TPF) risks sounding like the character is addressing her accountant, not someone who could very well rip her to pieces. The translator has to look the contest and employ every little bit of his cultural awareness to make sure the translation is flawless.

It gets easier with other genres. Fantasy generally uses SPP, which is perceived as more “ancient”. Stories set in the contemporary present usually go with TPF, because that sounds more realistic. But then again, no two stories are alike, and translating courtesy forms the correct way can be sometimes challenging. But challenges are, after all, among the things that make translating a beautiful work.

 

Did you write a story were etiquette and formality make all the difference? Give a look here to see how I can help you reach new readers, and contact me for information and business proposals.

The Translation Diaries, Episode 1: You Can’t Conceal Your Gender

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

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Your character comes home for the holidays. Pressed by parents and siblings to tell them about her time at college, she finally admits that yes, she has met someone – the special kind of “someone”. She gets pestered even more until she confesses that her significant other works as a cook in a pretty little restaurant close to her faculty. They are kind, funny, generous, proud – everything both your character and her family admire the most. Your character’s parents also like the fact that he works hard to support himself and pay for his studies; they are open-minded about their upper-class girl dating a working-class guy (he works in a fashionable business, at least). It helps that she described her lover as a good Catholic and a patriot.

Five chapters later, your character’s parents make her a surprise visit and tell her they are very eager to meet her boyfriend. She blushes and flushes, tells them that people in the food industry work very antisocial hours, but finally agrees to introduce her lover to them on the cook’s day off. When that day comes, your character’s parents meet a girl with beautiful green eyes and honey hair, who introduces herself as your character’s girlfriend.

Of course they don’t approve. Where would the conflict be if they did?

Now, if you’re writing in English, you can pull this off with relative ease. Keep using gender-neutral words such as “they” and “person”, never once let a gendered pronoun escape your main character’s mouth, and you will be on the right track. It’s not easy to deceive your readers this way without your writing sounding unnatural, but it’s doable.

When I translate your novel into Italian, however, things get a little bit trickier.

Italian is a gendered language, meaning that we have different words for a male cook and a female cook (those would be cuoco and cuoca, respectively). Pronouns, too, are gendered, so I can’t simply use “chef” instead – I would still have to specify if it’s uno chef (male) or una chef (female). This rule would require me to reveal the gender of your character’s lover the first time she’s mentioned, with foreseeable consequences.

Can I still translate your book without ruining your Big Reveal? Of course I can. I will have to toil, sweat and curse (we Italians are pretty good at that), but I will find a way. I might have to retool a couple lines of dialogue, perhaps even alter some paragraphs – the horror! the horror! – but I will present you with something fluent to read and faithful to your intent (i.e. your character doesn’t mention the cook’s gender, but neither does she lie openly).  Don’t bother about my chances to get into Heaven; a good translation of your work is everything that counts.

That’s the beauty of translation: it gives you creative challenges at every chapter, every page – sometimes every line. It’s by no means a mechanical or repetitive task. I love it because it keeps my mind awake and allows me to do a little bit of magic every day. It also lets me read amazing novels as part of my job, which is nice.

Do you have a novel with mysteriously gendered characters, romantic drama and/or a terrific plot? Jump to this page to see how I can help you reach new readers, and contact me for information and business proposals.