Writers in the Storm

by Linda Ruggeri

A few months ago, my editor and translator colleague Luis Pelayo asked me, “Why aren’t more US authors publishing in Spanish?” He shared a 2019 report titled El Español: Una Lengua Viva from the respected Instituto Cervantes, a non-profit organization devoted to the study and teaching of Spanish language and culture. The study states that Spanish is a first language for 483 million people around the world and that in the US, Spanish is the second most learned language at every academic level. What’s more, because of demographical reasons, the percentage of Spanish speaking persons continues to increase.

That’s a lot of potential readers who need some good books in Spanish.

My Experience

I grew up in Córdoba, Argentina, in a bilingual household, with a father who was an avid reader. By fourteen, I had read Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Victor Hugo, all in Spanish. Getting books in English was near impossible, and the ones that made it into local bookstores were textbooks for learning English as a second language. I would have loved to have an e-reader to download Spanish versions of Nancy Drew, Judy Blume, or even Sweet Valley High. Or anything else targeted at teens.

Instead, my only options were the classics: Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Rosamunde Pilcher, and Jules Verne. Like most of my friends, I read all of them, voraciously, in Spanish. Those books let me travel to foreign made-up lands and cultures. Now more than ever, people need to travel and space out.

6 Tips to Translate Your Book Effectively

Think about all the readers around the world who are waiting to find a book like yours to take them away. Right now, you have a captive audience. If your book is doing well in your native language market, it will probably do well with a similar audience elsewhere. For this blog post, I’m focusing solely on literary translations. Here are my six tips on how to do it effectively and efficiently.

1. Hire a human being to translate your work.

Don’t attempt to translate the book yourself. If you’re not a native speaker of the language you’re trying to publish in, don’t even attempt it. Google Translate or Deepl is not for that. Nor is any other translation software. You need a human being to interpret your work and ideas and put them on the page in the way it would be said in their language.

A literary translator understands tone, voice, style, and can interpret meaning. What’s more, they know of the target language (TL) culture—therefore making sure you don’t offend anyone either. Remember, your time is probably better spent being creative and writing your next piece.

2. Calculate a budget and set aside funds.

A professional translator is going to cost money, whether you go through an agency or hire a freelancer. The agency advantage is that they can translate your work into many languages at the same time. However, freelance translators are often more accommodating, have flexible schedules, and are available for direct consultations.

Literary translators are professionals who study, are continually educating themselves, take tests, get certifications, are qualified, and excel at translating literary works. Search a reputable online directory of translators like Proz.com or The American Translators Association, or ask fellow writers or editors for recommendations.

Most translators can translate between 300-400 words per hour, with rates starting at $50 per hour. Some translators may bill by project depending on the topic or difficulty of the text. Calculate how many hours it should take to translate your work and budget accordingly (if it’s a book, count the cover, front matter, and back matter too.) Don’t skimp on translation. A bad translation may earn you negative reviews, decrease your sales, and damage your reputation.

3. Vet your translator, then book them.

Hire a professional translator whose native language is the TL you want your work translated into. They should have good reviews and samples of work you can check out. You could even ask them to translate half a page of your work, and then have their work reviewed by someone who speaks the TL.

Once you’ve chosen a translator you like, book a spot in their calendar. Good and reliable translators are booked in advance (they might not live in your country or time zone.)

A client of mine recently asked her American-raised German colleague to translate her memoir. My client thought it would be fun to involve her friend. Her friend thought she was doing my client a favor. When I hired a native German speaker to proofread the book, the feedback I received was, “It reads like a book that’s been translated into German. Not written in German.”

Don’t distract your reader from your text because of incorrect word choice, awkward vocabulary, or inaccurate TL sentence structure. You want the reader to enjoy the story without being taken out of it because something doesn’t sound right. Your translated book should read like it was written in the TL. If you want to involve your friends, use them as beta readers instead.

4. Have a Contract, be flexible, and available when needed.

A professional translator should offer you a contract that states word count, “start-by” and “deliver by” dates, how many rounds of revisions they’re willing to do, and the approximate cost for the whole project or each work hour. You’ll need to be available if the translator has questions about interpreting parts of your work. Don’t be surprised if they make a re-write suggestion because “in their culture, they don’t say things that way.” Ask if they’ll proofread your work after it’s laid out, what that will cost, and if they’ll correct any errors found later at no cost (some will do this for a year).

Be kind to your translator. It’s important to establish a good and professional relationship with them for future work you may have. Who knows, they might even refer work to you too.

5. Organize your work and send.

A week before you send in your work, check in with your translator and confirm that they’re ready. Make sure to prepare all your files and keep them in the same “Translation” folder. PDFs work better because errors can’t be introduced.

If you’re having a book translated, include the following:

• The book cover
• the interior files (TOC, chapters, artwork, graphics, front and back matter)
• your book blurb
• Your author bio.

Those last two may come in handy when uploading your book to an online seller or any marketing you choose to do later.

6. Review the work, make final changes, and have it proofread.

It’s wise to have the translators work reviewed by someone who speaks and reads in the TL. If you need to fix anything, compile a detailed list, and notify your translator so they can make those changes all at once. Once your work has been laid out (remember to include the translator’s name on your project), have it proofread in the TL (preferably, also by the translator).

Having your work translated can initially seem overwhelming. But remember, once you’ve done it the first time, and established a good relationship with your translator, you have all the tools you need to do it again successfully.

Have you ever considered translating your book? What questions do you have for Linda? Please share them down in the comments!

About Linda

Linda Ruggeri is a full-service editor and project manager based out of Los Angeles, fluent in English, Spanish, and Italian. She co-authored the historical memoir Stepping Into Rural Wisconsin: Grandpa Charly’s Life Vignettes from Prussia to the Midwest and can be found online at The Insightful Editor and on Instagram where she reviews books and posts tips for writers.

Linda also volunteers as the Welcome Program director for the Editorial Freelancers Association, and is co-coordinator of their Los Angeles chapter.

Top Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

A few times a year we throw open the virtual doors of WITS and offer up the comments section for your shameless self-promotion. This delightful takeover usually doubles the size of our to-be-read piles with all the great books we find in the comments section. With this pandemic, more reading material is a great summer bonus.

Many years ago, we borrowed the name of this event from the glorious Chuck Wendig. Here's how it works:

• Pimp out somebody else’s work – this can be a favorite author, blogger, post or book you’ve read, a wonderful teacher or just someone who had profound influence on you as a writer or a person. Please limit your comments to one work.
  AND
• Promote one of your projects that you’re excited about – a hobby, a blog, a book, or a new direction your writing is taking you. You decide. Just tell us about it in the comments! (Please restrain your enthusiasm to just one of your WIPs.) The rest of us will jump in and “ooooh and ahh” at you, and likely promote your project even further because we’re just so darn excited today.

We'll start you off with some P&P from the WITS Team

From Ellen

Pimp: Eldred “Bob” Bird’s Karma series, introduces us to writer James McCarthy who evolves from a sheltered man into a sharp investigative journalist willing to put himself in harm’s way. The stories are page-turners with well-developed characters in settings that make you feel like you're right in the middle of the action. These books are a lot of fun to read.

This wonderful series is suspenseful with a sprinkling of humor. The series in order is: Killing Karma, Catching Karma and the soon-to-be released Cold Karma.

Promote: I'm working on my website and would love to get eyes on it: http://ellenbuikema.com/. Stop by and subscribe! I share on topics ranging from writing to recipes to help with children at home. One of the pages on my site is named Ask Frankie. Frankie the Fish is full of snark. People ask Frankie questions and he responds in character. This is great fun for kids.

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From Jenny

My P&P's are actually tied together and I'm pretty excited about both sides of this coin.

Pimp: I've been taking some training through Mirasee, to teach me how to launch a successful online class series, and I can't say enough good things about them. Their knowledge, their hand-holding, their resources (I could build a shrine to their resources) are just top-notch. Founder, Danny Iny, also wrote a rockin' book called Teach Your Gift. (Available on Kindle Unlimited!)

Promote: I spend my days making people, companies and products look good. When this pandemic hit and so many of my pals got laid off, my side hustle became helping them power up their LinkedIn profiles. I've always done these for companies, but I had a blast helping people become more searchable, expand their networks, and get jobs.

Enter Mirasee. They're teaching me everything I need to know to create a "LinkedIn for Success" series of classes, starting with a pilot class. I'm in the research phase, so I'd love a 15 minute no-sales chat with any of you who have pain points with LinkedIn. Let me know down in the comments!

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From Kris (KMaze)

Pimp: If you are looking for a young readers series of books, I recommend checking out Charlie Chameleon and his adventures. Our WITS team member, Ellen Buikema, writes this series which helps children ages 3-9 develop empathy and cultivate insight into their lives. The multicultural stories cover situations children typically encounter like getting lost, moving, starting a new school, making friends, family vacations, working in a team, and dealing with bullies using positive methods. Each chapter ends with one or more activities for children and parents or teachers to do together, related to the actions in the stories.

The first three chapter books in The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon Series are New Beginnings, School Days, and Summertime.

Promote: If you enjoy a fast paced book with a girl protagonist who uses wit and moxy to survive an incoming asteroid, try my recent debut novel: IMPACT, A Young Adult Sci-fi Novel.  Nala Nightingale uses hidden talents beyond her broadcasting training to overcome her wily captor Edison and his mysterious underground world.

This book is written for teens or adult readers who would enjoy an optimistic book with lots of twists and turns. 

Happy Reading and Stay healthy, y'all...
Jenny and the WITS Crew

By Ellen Buikema

Animal characters are created in all genres, either in cartoon-like or realistic forms. They may be walking, talking substitutes for human characters, or reality-based beings that may or may not be augmented with special abilities. No matter how you incorporate an animal into your story, they should be a memorable character.

Choose Your Animal

Some animals will better fit a particular function in a story. In a reality-based fight scene, a snake probably wouldn’t do as well as a dog or a cat.

Say you are writing fantasy and want a reality-based animal to act as a spy. A bird might work well in this instance, perhaps a raven, as was done in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Ravens are intelligent, playful, and have a sense of humor, having been known to perch on snowy rooftops waiting for people to pass by, and then pushing snow on top of them.

When writing historical fiction, consider researching which animals were popular pets of the era so the animals will be a good fit for the story. Jean Auel conducted an immense amount of research for her brilliant prehistoric fictional Earth’s Children series. She incorporated the domestication of wolves in her work.  The main protagonist, Ayla, studies animals in order to hunt for food and learn their habits. Those wolf studies enable her to understand pack behavior and the similarities to the human pack or extended family unit—leading to the domestication of a wolf pup.

One of my favorite animal characters is the dog in Dean R. Koontz’s suspense novel, Watchers. Einstein is a golden retriever, altered at the genetic level by scientists working with the military. This dog has a high intelligence level, psychic ability, and sense of humor along with the characteristics typical of a golden retriever. Einstein functions as a secondary protagonist, a protector, and in a way serves as a comment on human behavior.

Animal stories for children

Children may be more likely to recognize their own traits, the good and the not so good, seen humorously in an animal than written as a child. Frankie Fish, from my Adventures of Charlie Chameleon series is naughty but well meaning. Many children relate to Frankie.

Stories for children often have pets as characters that help their humans learn important life lessons. Sometimes they are a bit like guardian angels with paws. Often the child is the hero but the pet is a crucial character in the story. Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie uses a pup that enables the main protagonist, young India Opal Buloni, to learn how to trust.

One of the oldest forms of children’s literature is the Fable. In these stories, the animal is affiliated with a particular human trait and there is a lesson to be learned. One of my favorites is Aesop’s The Ant and the Dove. The lesson learned is that a kindness is never wasted.

Creating your animal character

Audience

• Is the story for adults or children? Animal characters for teen and adult stories will need more subtlety than animals in stories for children.

Prominence and type

• What is the animal character’s role? The animal characters may be secondary sidekicks (comic relief), protagonists, or antagonists.

Perspective

• Who is the story’s voice? The story may be written from the perspective of the human or the animal.
• Consider physical size. If the character is tiny it will see the world in a much different way than a large one. For example Mouse vs. giraffe; Toddler vs. teen; Toddler vs. Great Dane.

Personality

• The best animal characters feel authentic to the animal type and relatable to the reader. This is true for either cartoon or realistic characters. A cat character may be playful but a little too much affection, like one pet too many, will still get you smacked in most realities. 
• Whichever animal you choose, writing a list of personality traits and quirks will help as you introduce the character to your readers and develop the story.

Special characteristics

• What makes your character different? The animal character may have a similar emotional or physical trait as the protagonist.
• For SciFi and fantasy stories the animal character might read minds or defy the laws of physics.
• Writing a list of special abilities and traits in advance will be useful, especially if there are several characters of varying abilities.

Name

• Your creatures have certain looks and personalities. Names may follow suit. Bandit for one with a mask coloring in the fur, Jester for another with a multi-colored face, Spot, Blackie, Chairman Meow, Dude, the possibilities are many.
• For humor, try a huge dog named Tiny, a tuxedo cat named Scruffy.
• Alliteration works well for animal characters in children’s stories. Black Beauty, Frankie Fish, Tamika Turtle, Mickey Mouse, Peppa Pig.

Backstory

• The background information of the character does not need to be in the story itself, but is handy to know in order to understand what motivates the character. Fictional characters need to feel real. Knowing the backstory helps define that reality.

Goal

• Goals, the driving forces, mold the character’s personality. It may give love to a child, or encouragement to an adult. Whatever the case, subtlety weaving goals into the story adds richness and depth.

Obviously, like a human character, there are many details to consider when writing an animal character. Doing it well will make your story memorable.

Do you have animal characters in your stories? Of all the stories you’ve read, do any of the animal characters still bring a smile to your face or terror to your heart? We want to hear all about it down in the comments section!

About Ellen