Cost To Translate Novels?

[Mark Young]

I recently posted this question on Kindle Boards and recieved some good informatioin, although pricing seemed to vary. I thought I'd toss this out here again to see if some of you have had these experiences? Thanks in advance.

Novelist Joe Konrath, on his popular blog,A Newbie's Guide To Publishing, wrote an article about going global with your self-published novels. In the past, this market has seemed limited to agents and traditional publishers in foreign markets. However the indie publishing market is changing. Amazon, for example, has pushed into the German and India markets recently, among other countries, offering indie authors an opportunity to sell in those environments. Have any of you--as self-published authors--used translation services to be able to publish your novel overseas. If so, can you share what those costs amounted to, how you went about locating those services, and some of your experiences?

[Brian Hoffman]

I read the same article then did some research.  I Googled translation companies and talked to their customer service.  In both cases, translation of a 90,000 word novel would be a pinch over $20,000.  That was for German.  It just isn't practical for most ebook authors.  I also found that programs like Google Translate can make logical mistakes that change the meaning of a sentence.

 

But the good news is the number of people in both the German and India markets that speak English.  

[Mark Young]

Thanks, Brian. One person said I chatted with online mentioned a price similar to what you found out. Another person said the cost is much lower, where translation is .06 cents per word. Very confusing. I may stick to English translations for the near future.

[Jacques Filippi]

It depends also wether the translator is freelancing or works exclusively with one publisher. If you consider that translating a novel can take up to 6 months, the translator needs to make money somewhere if he/she can only translate two or three novels per year. That is why literary translation is not very popular among translators. You earn a lot more money translating other material. And no translation program is good enough; a program doesn't think and will always translate literally, which doesn't make sense much of the time. It can be a great tool to help a translator, but not more than that; especially for literary translation.