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Indie Book Translations

Tag Archives: Italian

Another New Author! (this is getting repetitive, I know)

02 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by Ernesto in News

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A Song for Julia, Charles Sheehan-Miles, Italian, translation

Great news! My translation of A Song for Julia by Charles Sheehan-Miles is now available to the Italian public. Here’s another indie author who found a new market for their work thanks to a translation. 🙂

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I had a great time working with Charles. He writes great novels and he’s an amazing person to deal with. I will definitely work on more of his books.

Excelsior!

A New Author and a New Page

16 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by Ernesto in News

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Ghost Hand, Italian, Ripley Patton, translation

The good news: I’m working with a new indie author! My Italian translation of Ghost Hand by Ripley Patton has recently hit Amazon.it’s ebook store. Working on Ripley’s first novel was great. I’m currently finishing the translation of the second book in the series, Ghost Hold, which I expect to be published in a couple more months.

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The public service announcement: I created a new page for my portfolio. You can find it here. All my published work is summed up on this page, and every picture links to the book’s page on Amazon.it. Anyone who wants to know with whom I worked, and on which books, can look on that page and know everything about my past projects 🙂

We Have an Exclusive!

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Ernesto in News

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Amber Kell, exclusive translation rights, Italian, translations

I’m interrupting the flow of public-service posts with a great news: I recently signed an exclusive translation contract with award-winning romance author Amber Kell. This means she trusts me enough to make me the sole translator of both her Dragon Shifters and Moon Pack series. You won’t see other names in the translator credits of those books. Just miiiiine. *evil laughter*

Going back to serious, it’s a great honor to become an author’s “official” translator (I’m using the word loosely here, as Amber still holds the translation rights for all her other books, as far as I know). I don’t think I have ever been so excited before. From what I know of her, Amber is an amazing person as well as an acclaimed romance writer. I can only hope to do her work justice.

All this doesn’t mean I won’t take requests for other translations. On the contrary: as I explained in my previous post,  translations need to “rest” many times before they’re ready for a new revision. While a book is “resting”, I can definetly work on something else, both to refresh my mind and to increase my productivity. Therefore, I’m still accepting commissions. Make use of the Contacts page, folks; I will be reading your messages 😉

Now, if you excuse me, I’ll go back to jumping around the room.

The Translation Diaries, Episode 2: Courtesy Forms

20 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Ernesto in Translation Diaries, Translations

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courtesy forms, english to italian, Italian, Renaissance, translation

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

Posted by Ernesto in Translation Diaries

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Big Reveal, Italian, lesbian cooks, romance, translation diaries, translations

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.

 

Coming soon…

04 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by Ernesto in News, Translations

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ebooks, indie translations, Italian, suspence

A new fruit of my hard work might be out soon. Stay tuned. 😉

“Vaporteppa”: a Successful Translation Case

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Ernesto in News, Translations

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Amazon.it, bizarro fiction, Carlton Mellick III, ebook market, fantasy, Italian, Michael Swanwick, science fiction, steampunk, translations, vaporteppa

Today I want to talk about a case of Italian translations gone right. Vaporteppa is an Italian editorial project dedicated to the translation of Steampunk, Sci-Fi and Bizarro novels. The success of this project shows the opportunities offered by the Italian ebook market.

There are currently 11 Vaporteppa ebooks in the Ialian Kindle store. Among these, Gli dei di Mosca (The Gods of Moscow) by Michael Swanwick managed to breach the global top 200, and is still, as I write, nr. 21 among Science Fiction ebooks. This is a significant accomplishment for a book by an author who didn’t have any “live” Italian translations (just pirated scans and some stuff you could find only on eBay), and that belongs to a genre (Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi) traditionally not very well known in Italy. The quality of the translation and a smart price (5 euro for a medium-length book) made it possible for the ebook to be chosen for Amazon’s monthly deals, which is a huge sign of success (and also the reason you’re seeing it priced at 1,99 euro).

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Another author for which Vaporteppa’s head editor, Marco Carrara, has reported very satisfying sales is Carlton Mellick III. Before Vaporteppa, Bizarro Fiction had a grand total of one book available in Italian (Help! A Bear is Eating Me!, with the translated title of Missione in Alaska), and Mellick was unknown to the Italian public; yet his translated books proved quite profitable.

All this shows there is room for translated authors in the Italian market, even if they were previously unknown to the Italian public. Check out my “What is it that you do?” page to know how you can have your book translated into Italian for a very reasonable price, and contact me for questions and business proposals. 🙂

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