Lost in Translation
I received some excellent news today. The Japanese edition of Fatal Shadows is going into a second print run. Meanwhile Fair Game was picked up by Harlequin Mondari, the largest romance publisher in Italy as their first foray into male-male fiction. One of my German publishers (I have two) is about to pitch A Dangerous Thing to their acquisitions committee -- which sounds like the German edition of Fatal Shadows must be doing reasonably well. My other Italian publisher (I guess I have two of those as well?) sent the cover art for Out of the Blue. And I'm about to list the Spanish edition of A Dangerous Thing on Amazon.
Se Habla Espanol! Only we don't. And therein lies the rub.
There’s a lot going on with translations right now -- translation and audio are suddenly hotly contested rights in contract negotiations -- more because of where the book market is heading (a global direction) than where it is right at the moment. We can all see the trend. It's a small world after all.
Not all of my forays into translation have been successful. Dutch was a disaster. And I've sold less than ten copies of either of my Finnish translations. And zero of my sole Portuguese translation. Spanish has not been a great success, but then again the free Spanish edition of The French Have a Word for it had hundreds of downloads. So.
As I look at the results...the Finnish translations did not have publisher support behind them and I do think that makes a difference. Then again, the Dutch translations were through a publisher but frankly, they might as well have gone through a pirate site. The Portuguese translation was through a new company called Babelcube. It operates on a business model similar to that of ACX (the Amazon company that produces DIY audio books). You don't pay for the translation up front, you split the profits on a sliding scale with the translator and Babelcube. Bablecube lists the work in a number of venues -- some of which the author could access but some which the author probably couldn't (at least without a fair bit of research and effort).
It's an ingenious idea, but there are inherent difficulties: no quality control, no production oversight, and no real promotional or marketing support.It is enormously exciting to reach new readers -- is there a greater test of the universality of a story than putting it into another language and seeing how it holds up? But there is also the problem of not being able to converse with these readers, not knowing how or where to market to them. I don't speak Japanese, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, German, French (okay, a little tiny bit of French), Portuguese or Dutch. I've received wonderful support from Italian bloggers and from Japanese writers and readers. Spanish readers seem very enthusiastic, so we'll see what happens when this next book
comes out.
One disconcerting thing is every single translation -- whether through a huge publisher or a hired freelancer at some point gets slammed for the quality of the translation. I'm not exaggerating. Can translation be subjective? I don't know.
I know that translators are generally underpaid and underappreciated.
I also know that so far translations have not been enormously lucrative for me. Some of them are more lucrative than I expected, but I am not getting rich off any of them. And in some cases, the translations have not even paid for the cover art and formatting. But then I am not Dan Brown or Nora Roberts and I'm not expecting those kinds of results. I'm basically just laying the groundwork for the future global book market. I noticed years ago I was getting letters from readers all around the world, and that's the beauty of the digital age. Now these readers can enjoy my work in their native language. Or maybe more to the point, recommend the books to their friends and family who do not read English?Anyway, what do you think? If English is not your first language, how important is it to you to read the books in your first language? If English is not your first language, how did you discover my work? Or the male-male genre for that matter?
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Sonia ~Ruber's fiancé in Crystal Court universe~
(last edited Nov 21, 2014 02:08PM)
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Hi, Josh! Congratulations on the good news!Now to answer your questions: English is not my native language; Romanian is. Now, since Romania is not a big country and sadly not very open minded when it comes to LBGT subjects there are no Romanian translations of m/m authors (that I know of). So if I want to read this I need to do it in English. But I don't mind; and that's because I understand English very, very well and because since I've started reading in English I can no longer stand translations. I've tried reading "The hobbit" (it's famous so it was translated) for example in Romanian.. NO! I just can't, it sounds weird. There are very good translators out there, but it will never sound as good as in the original language. So I prefer reading in English.
But I do support translations, because not everyone knows a foreign language. My mother for example couldn't enjoy reading if translations weren't possible. She only knows Romanian. Also, I don't know Japanese for ex, so I would have to read a translation for a Japanese author. So..
I'm not sure if this helped but there you go :)
Congratulations again!
Smooches!
My native language is Chinese, but I grew up in an English-speaking environment so I am able to and prefer to read your books in their original English. Though I do admit to a weakness for the pretty Japanese cover illustrations, so on my last trip to Japan, I scoured bookstores for your entire backlist (they're surprisingly difficult to find). I'll probably do that again for the third Adrien English and hopefully sometime eventually, Fair Play! While I'm not fluent in Japanese, I can understand a fair bit, so I mostly use them as Japanese language practice (and refer to the English version when I'm stuck on something). I'm glad to know your books are doing well in most oversea markets and hope that there are more yummy Japanese covers and inserts waiting in the future!
I'm Dutch, and I didn't even know you published books for the Netherlands. I think translating to Dutch won't give you any profit. All of us speak and read English, so it's no problem for us to buy and read the English books. So if I were you, I wouldn't bother with translating to Dutch. It's wonderful other countries do sell well, though!
Well, I tried to order this on the Jpan Amazon website. If you order it in Japanese you have to checkout in Japanese. No hope!
I'm Italian, and I totally agree with Torkan: A wonderful book is easily destroyed in a poorly made translation. But I want my country open minded about LBGT subjects and having your books translated into Italian is certainly a way to achieve it. PS Thanks for "The boy with the painful tattoo," you made my day :)
As a Finn I have to say I prefer your books in English!
Hi! I’m from Russia and I’m a big fan of romance, suspense and of course LBGT literature. I read it exclusively in English, because I can’t stand the translations. I have master’s degree in linguistics but I don’t use it anymore because nowadays publishers are not interested in quality of translation. As sad as it sounds - they want it cheap and quick or don’t want it at all.
I studied languages (not English ;-) ) and from my studies I know how much work you have to do to achieve a really good translation. A good translation has nothing to do with subject-predicate-object-rules but with the transfer of the mood, the atmosphere, the style of the story ….. It is really hard work. A wonderful book is easily destroyed in a poorly made translation.
Sometimes I reread one of my favorites in the German translation if available - particularly because I want to know if I feel the spirit of the book as I remember it– but I have to admit until now I have not yet found a German version of approximately equal value.