Olga Khenkin asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

I've recently read the Penric series and liked them a lot. Recommended them to my mom, who's also a fan, but reads only in Russian. That's how we discovered that there's no Russian translation for these books. Is the translation (and subsequent Russian edition) happening, or going to happen in the nearest future? And, if there are no plans for Russian yet, may I try to translate the first novella myself?

Lois McMaster Bujold I doubt there will be any foreign translations of the Penric tales until there are enough to collect in a commercially saleable novel-sized volume, or a couple of them. Which is going to be a while. It's not viable for the publisher otherwise.

No, you may not do it yourself, because it would screw up the later possibility of an actual sale. (Except, I suppose, privately, for your own consumption. Another of those don't-ask-don't-tell things.)

If there are professional translators for self-published e-books, done presumably as work-for-hire, it's not a part of the e-business I'm plugged into yet. It would be extremely demanding for the original author to try to work across many language platforms, with people one does not know; that's part of the service an actual foreign publisher provides. (At no cost to the author.) Better to spend one's time and brain-budget writing a new work.

Ta, L.

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