OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
It's fantastic to hold your book in your hands … and it's faintly fantastical to hold a book with your name on it when the interior is in a different language!
In a continuation of the translation adventure, Pentecost, Ein ARKANE Thriller is now available in print as well as ebook formats and on special this week. Plus, my reclusive, literary translator finally comes on the blog to reveal some of her secrets …
Read German? Or please pass on to friends!
Pentecost is on sale at 99c 19 – 22 August for the ebook here on Amazon and on iBooks
You can also join the Goodreads giveaway for a print edition, and I can always send it to a friend 🙂
You can also see Pentecost on LovelyBooks.de here.
Interview with Tina Tenneberg, experienced literary translator
You can also read the interview in German on Tina's site here.
Tina, what's your background in translation and language work?
When I first started working, I was as a civil servant in my native country Germany, but this made me so unhappy that I decided to quit after a while. I studied linguistics and literature and I have now lived in London, England, for 13 years.
Apart from literature I have translated film subtitles, web sites and various material. Other work has included magazine writing and sub-editing, audio work and teaching German.
Can you explain how a translator actually translates the work?
How do they keep the ‘voice' of the author as well as adapting to a new audience?
In an ideal scenario the translator should be a native speaker who is translating into their own language and can relate to the voice of the author, especially when it comes to fiction. The original should be converted into a book that reads like a work in its own right and the readers are not supposed to notice straight away that they are reading a translation.
There are hardly any publishing houses that let someone translate into a non-native language and it makes sense – not many translators can juggle the words in a foreign language in the same way as in their own, especially as you are dealing with another person‘s voice. Even though I have lived in the UK for a long time, I would never translate a novel into English.
When you are reading a translation, you will inevitably not just notice the author’s voice, but also the voice of the translator, and if you ask two people to translate the same text, there will always be two different results. You cannot just translate word by word and translators often have to come up with their own creative solutions.
An example from Pentecost: it is not as straightforward as you might think to translate the word “power” into German – there can be several different solutions or none will really fit in certain contexts. That’s why I chose to translate “power” as “mysteriöse Kräfte” in the Pentecost marketing text, which would be “mysterious powers” if you translate it back into English.
Why did you want to do a royalty split deal with an indie author? What are your tips for translators who want to do this kind of thing?
I used to translate fiction for German publishing houses, but I don’t do it anymore because it doesn’t pay my bills in an expensive city like London. In general, publishing houses pay very little for literary translations if you translate not into English but into another language. There is of course no guarantee how a royalty split will work out in the end, but I was interested in self publishing anyway and knew I could learn a lot from Joanna, who has so much experience. I met her at one of her own self publishing workshops and at first I did not even plan to do another book translation, but I decided to give it a go again, when Joanna told me she was looking for a German translator.
My advice for translators who are interested in the split-royalty model is to choose books that are successful in the original and think about whether they would also appeal to another audience.
It is also best if you like the content enough to do it even if the translation won’t be successful – there is no guarantee. And it will help if you have some knowledge of the self publishing market in the target language market or be interested in learning about it.
You should be willing to do some marketing as well, which can be in various forms, for example blogging, social media, contacting book bloggers and anything else that helps selling the book. I believe the split-royalty model could be quite interesting for translators who are authors at the same time. It is said the more books you have out there the easier they will be found by readers – why not go for a hybrid model with your own as well as translated books? I am planning to do this myself.
How should indie authors find a good translator for their book? How do they evaluate it when they don't speak the language?
I would only consider translations if your book does already have many readers in your own language. Then you could look out for translators who have some experience with book translations, even better if it is in a similar area to the one of your book, but in my opinion the same area is not strictly necessary if the translators have a passion for what they are doing.
One place to find translators would be proz.com and translatorscafe.com. And then there is the platform Babelcube.com that works with the split-royalty model, which some authors are now trying. None of the experienced German literary translators I talked to are that interested in Babelcube, mainly because the more successful the book gets, the less the translator‘s share as it decreases with sales.
I suspect the majority of authors are not aware of the fact that the most important thing is not how well the translator speaks English, but above all they need to be really good at their own language and interpret the work well, although it is usually easier to translate non-fiction, unless it is a very specialized book, in which case the translator should have knowledge in this particular field.
People can lose part of their language skills when living abroad and therefore it helps if translators make an effort to keep up to date with their language in that situation. It‘s easy for me, as there are many Germans in London to socialize with (you can actually find the whole world here, which is one of the reasons why I like this place so much).
How do translators work with authors during the translation process? (e.g. the questions that come up)
Translators who work for publishing houses often do not even have access to their authors, which means they are not able to work with them at all! I heard about an extreme case recently: when a literary translator friend of mine had no success in contacting an author via the publishing house, she left him a message on his website, but he still didn't answer. This author possibly had no idea how much can go wrong if he doesn't answer questions.
Here is an example of a simple question I asked Joanna: in the book “Pentecost” the heroine has an assistant at Oxford University and unlike in English you have to make a decision in German whether it is a man or a woman (“Assistent” or “Assistentin”). If it is a series, as in this case, and the assistant is going to appear again in a future book, it doesn't look good if the translator gets the gender wrong.
Unlike in traditional publishing, I am sure problems with questions will rather not happen in self publishing – translators and authors are probably in touch with each other anyway.
What are some of the issues we have come up against?
One of the issues we faced was the German hyphenation for the print book, which is different from English. You cannot just ignore this, as there are some incredibly long words in German. If you are planning a print edition, make sure you are using a formatting software that allows you to switch to German. Doing the hyphenation manually would be a real pain. And leave the hyphenation till the very end – any proofreading stages should be done before this – I made a mistake here myself.
If both the translator and the author are using Scrivener, don‘t send Scrivener files back and forth. We had a real formatting mess with two different language settings and it probably didn‘t help that I am using a PC and Joanna a Mac. Therefore I would only exchange Word files and just one person, either the translator or the author, should convert everything from Scrivener to ebook formats in the end.
Then there was the question which title to choose. Nowadays you will find a lot of book titles on the German market that contain both the original and the translation, although in this case the cover would have needed a complete reformatting with the longer title. The direct translation “Pfingsten” would have sounded a bit awkward in German, although at the end of the day this is all a matter of taste. You can of course argue against keeping just the English, but it‘s a mysterious thriller after all and the additional “an ARKANE Thriller” was translated into “ein ARKANE Thriller.” Some readers have even been excited to figure out that “Pentecost”means “Pfingsten” in German.
The longer title “Pentecost – ein Arkane Thriller” also made it safer in terms of copyright, as titles are copyrighted in Germany once they are published.
We have marketing help as part of our agreement – is that important for a royalty split deal?
I do not think it is essential, but if the author doesn’t speak the language I would advise to have at least someone who can read your reviews and tell you what is going on in self publishing in the market of the translation – things are changing so incredibly fast!
There might also be differences in the other culture that are hard to grasp for someone who does not know the mentality. Here is an example: I was convinced that the latest cover of Pentecost in English (woman with a gun) that worked so well in the US would not be well received in Germany. My opinion was confirmed when early German readers had a chance to vote and choose between two covers before publication – hardly anyone liked the one with the armed woman. It was nice to be consulted on this, as normally the translator has no say at all when it comes to covers.
If you are looking for help with marketing, there are other options than translators and the platform Authorbuddies.com aims to bring authors from different countries together to help each other. It was set up by German self publishing expert Matthias Matting and I am sure you will find German authors there (and maybe authors of other nationalities as well) who can help you out with specific marketing questions.
Example of marketing – I made the trailer below in English and Tina translated the text.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE9semWLZBI
What are you enjoying about the process? And what is difficult?
Learning a lot about self publishing and ebooks is the thing that I am enjoying most and it is also fun to work with Joanna.
I found it a bit difficult to juggle my short term paid work with the long term self publishing projects, as I need to make a living, and unfortunately I was not able to finish the translation as fast as I would have liked to. But we still managed it all within a year.
Another thing that I found tricky was to set up blogs and social media – which language should I choose for which angle? Even though many people in Germany can speak English nowadays – at least up to a certain level – being able to order a pizza and a beer doesn't mean readers are able or willing to read a book or blog in English. I think it may help to have at least one platform in the book's language.
I have enjoyed the self publishing process and look forward to more exciting learning experiences 🙂
Where can people find you online?
I have two blogs now, one in English: www.internationalselfpublishing.com
and another one in German: www.londonundmehr.com
Read German? Or please pass on to friends!
Pentecost is on sale at 99c 19 – 22 August for the ebook here on Amazon and on iBooks
You can also join the Goodreads giveaway for a print edition, and I can always send it to a friend 🙂
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Pentecost. Ein Arkane Thriller
by J.F. Penn
Giveaway ends August 25, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
If you have any questions about self-publishing in translation, or anything about the German market, please leave a comment below. Thanks!
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