For a very long time I couldn't imagine translating novels, either. Not because I thought it was too hard, but because I thought I would go nuts if I had to force beautiful English phrases into the harsh German structure. When an author friend asked me to translate his book, I grudgingly gave it a try. Then I realized: Hey, this isn't as bad as I thought. It's fun, actually. I can do this.

That's a challenge, I'm sure. Fun fact: The first book I read in English should have been a pupil's edition of a novel by Agatha Christie. Problem was I didn't listen properly in class and got the real thing. I liked it a lot better than what my classmates had, although I had to look up more words. Been reading English books ever since.

That's one of my favorite pasttimes. So funny! I once received a business letter that had been translated with a machine. The person hadn't thought that VAT is an abbreviation, thus the machine translated it as vat and I almost died laughing.

After studying a foreign language for eight years, I would never use an automated system for translations.

I love your first line in this post! IT can be done. But with consequences, right?

As a Spanish teacher, I have been rewriting my YA novels from English to Spanish. My specific purpose is to use them in a classroom, so there are even more considerations as far as the number of unique words used and complexity of sentence structure.

The books I'm writing should have reading levels very carefully in the for-front, something that an online translation is just not going to do.

And even though I have the background to accomplish this task, I plan to have the books edited by a publisher in Mexico City who has a focus on educational materials.

The finesse of a human translation just can't be replicated. At least not right now. 🙂

Thank you for your insightful post,
Kris

Wow, three languages is even more challenging! How do you avoid creating Dangermlish?

I tried playing with Google translate for a bit. The problem for me came with idioms. Well, that wasn't the only problem but was the one most glaring.

Working with someone who knows the language well makes all the difference.

Great post! You bring up many good points.

When I started out as a translator, I took the risk of a royalty-based payment. I'm very hesitant about that now. But from an author's point of view, it's a great chance to enter new markets.