Tag Archives: book translations

Useful Notes: How can I find a good translator?

10 Thursday Aug 2017

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Well, hopefully, if you’re looking for an Italian translator, you already found one here 🙂 However, just in case you were looking for a translator in another language (or [sob] another Italian translator), in this post you will find some tips.

Note that, in the past, I already published several posts about how to avoid scammers, how much you should pay for a translation, and so on. This post is about how to find a freelancer that suits your need. To my knowledge, there are three common ways of doing so: asking your author friends, checking out some websites, or contacting an agency. All of them have upsides and downsides.

Word of mouth

This is perhaps the most common way authors find me: when asked for it, a satisfied client recommends a translator – with whom they worked – to their friends. This way of finding a freelancer to work with has several upsides: the only thing you have to do is ask your author friends if they know a good translator, and since they already worked with the person in question, their firsthand experience will be invaluable.

There’s also a downside: sadly, not every author can judge a translator properly. A lot of people have commissioned (and paid for, and published) bad translations without realizing it. Not every reader leaves reviews, and a bad – or just sub-par – translator can keep working unnoticed for quite a long wile. If possible, ask your author friends if they have any confirmation about the translator’s skills (such as positive comments in the reviews, or at least a lack of negative comments about the quality of the translation).

Window shopping

Another way you can find a translator is search for “[language] book translations” or something similar on your favorite search engine and look at the various web pages that will appear. A serious professional will have most or all of the following on their website:

  • a detailed explanation of what they do (ie. “I translate all sorts of novels”, “I specialize in historical romance”, “I have experience with fiction and non-fiction alike”)
  • clear and up-to-date rates (people who encourage you to inquire about costs tend to be quite expensive, perhaps even excessively so)
  • a list of satisfied clients
  • a list of the books they translated
  • any relevant personal information (studies, languages spoken natively, etc.)

Empty websites are suspicious, as are poor grammar and long, self-praising blocks of text that actually give you no information at all.

The upside of window shopping is that, well, it can be fun. It also allows you to see for yourself what you may be buying. The downside is that all the information come through an interested party (the translator), so it may not be 100% accurate.

Translation agencies

There are a lot of translation agencies out there, many of which will be able to translate any book you want (although it seems that a lot of them focus more, or even exclusively, on non-fiction). Serious ones will have a professional website and a person  (usually an account manager) whom you’ll be able to contact if you have any questions. The upside of working with an agency is that many of them are quire serious about their reputations, and will pursue high quality standards. The downside… well, a translation agency is, essentially, a middleman. They will slap their own mark-up on whatever the translator gets, which may increase the cost quite a bit… and if it doesn’t, they are probably paying a low wage to their translator, which usually doesn’t guarantee good quality.

 

Which method do I recommend? In my experience, word of mouth is usually a good start, followed by a quick search to see if the translator has gotten good reviews and/or seems legit. If you don’t know any author who could recommend you a translator, you’re left with the option between window shopping or looking for an agency. The one you choose generally depends on your budget and on the kind of relationship you want with your translator: agencies tend to be more expensive and impersonal, while individual freelancers are usually cheaper, and working with them creates a more personal relationship. The choice is up to you.

My 2016 in numbers

19 Sunday Mar 2017

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(psst: yeah, I know it’s March already, but I’ve been busy)

2016 was an incredible year for me. I translated 29 books, and no, that’s not a typo. That’s one less than 30. That’s the fruit of long hours of work and an infinite amount of passion. That’s what happens when you love your job. 🙂

Seven authors chose to trust me with their work; among them were both old acquaintances – such as Tanya Anne Crosby, Amber Kell, and Suzan Tisdale – and new friends – including Glynnis Campbell, Brenda Hiatt and Cynthia Wright. There was not one person among all of them with whom I’d not be happy to work again in the future. I know I’m lucky among my fellow translators to have found such people.

I don’t really know what to say about these numbers. They’re amazing. I got to work on a quantity of books from a number of incredibly talented and award-winning authors. It’s an honor and a privilege that I’d never thought I’d manage to earn. And yet I did, and for that, I’m grateful.

There’s one sadly low number among all these, and it’s the number of posts I published: only five. There’s a couple reasons for that: first, as you may have noticed, I’ve been extremely busy, and wasn’t able to update the blog section of this website too often. Second, I’ve come to realize that said blog section is only a minor part of my business. I’m not a blogger and I don’t aspire to be one. I will try to publish more often and to bring you more useful information, but I don’t expect my blog page to become some kind of reference point on the Internet. Why should I work in that direction instead of striving to become an even better translator?

Overall, 2016 has been the best year in my translator career so far. I can only hope that 2017 would be equally fruitful. 🙂

Behind the Cost: Why Are Translations So Expensive?

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Translation Diaries

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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.

How I Work

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

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Many writers who are looking for a translator worry (and rightly so!) about how their book will be treated. I can’t speak for anyone else, but here’s the way I work.

I start with a draft (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). I read the book and translate it as I go. I’m not looking for the perfect translation, yet; I just want to get everything on paper. This early translation is still done with lots of attention – words are chosen and sentences are structured following specific criteria. I would never send a manuscript at this stage to the author, but that doesn’t mean it’s not being translated properly.

As I’m working on the first draft, I write down a reference sheet. On that page I put all the recurring terms (including names), their current translation and all the previous versions. A line in the reference sheet might look like this:

Bearer—– Portatore —– Araldo

“Bearer” would be the original word (say, of a mythical figure). “Portatore” would be the first translation I had chosen. “Araldo” would be the translation that I now find more appropriate, perhaps because I found the word used in a similar context and it lit a spark.

The reference sheet allows me to be sure that, say, “Bearer” isn’t translated one way on page 12 and the other way on page 97 (I have seen it in published books). It also makes revisions way easier, as I know exactly what to search and replace.

After I finish the first draft, I let the translation rest for a few days. Then I go through it and revise it. This time, I’m working to improve what’s already there. I make sure that the text is both faithful to the original and good to read. Sometimes, this means changing entire paragraphs that I previously wrote; other times, it’s just minor adjustments. At this stage, i also correct all the typos I can find.

The draft then goes to the proofreader. She is wonderful at her job. When I get the manuscript back, it’s usually twice as good as it was before her revision. I look through all the proofreader’s notes and corrections, making sure that each and every change I make improves the translation in some way. I know that many people simply click on the “Accept All Revisions” buttons at this point, but I find that kind of lazy. I’d rather be sure that everything in the manuscript is there because I decided it belonged there.

Finally, I do one last revision. This time, I do strive for perfection. The book has to be great. It has to read like a book originally written in Italian, not a translation. If the original language can still be identified (perhaps because of sentence structure or idiomatic expressions), I have done a bad job. It’s like having a book printed on paper so thin you can see through the pages: it might be the best book ever writer, but the product as a whole isn’t good.

After the final editing, the translation is sent to you, the author. My job is done.

To sum it up: every translation I make goes through three revisions, one of which is made by a third person. This ensures the greatest quality. It does slow the process down a bit, but I prefer to give the author a good translation than a fast, mediocre one.

 

Are you looking for a translation? You can learn more about what I do here, and contact me if you want to ask me anything. 🙂