Quote:
Originally Posted by DaleDe
There is a new wiki page started by a reader called Multilingual eBook Conversion that opens an interesting idea that deserves some discussion. I am thinking about make a few pages to augment this page. Does anyone else think this is intriguing? What do you guys think? Is automation good enough to play a role?
Dale |
@Dale:
I think that there's some confusion here. Of the listed businesses--as this seems to be primarily a
promotional page, aimed at drumming up business--only
ONE actually has translation services. The rest are just ebook production companies, like mine. Most producers have the capacity, or are willing to undertake, conversion IN other languages, which is not the same as conversion TO other languages. My itty-bitty company, for example, does books in Italian, French, German, Romanian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese--to name a few. That should not be conflated with translation services.
I think that the page could be interesting--but it should be clarified that translation is a very specific area of expertise, and
it's most certainly not a budget operation. The last time I looked, the one biz on that list that actually does offer translation--which, BTW, does NOT include preparing the book for print or digital publishing--ran $0.17USD/word, to the simpler romance languages like Spanish, and went UP from there. Thus, if the typical 100K word Fantasy novel needed translation to Spanish, let's say,
it's a $17,000.00USD (Seventeen THOUSAND dollars US) investment. That's an awful lot of moolah.
You have to be reasonably sure that you're going to sell a hell of a lot of books, to cover that cost.
Offered FWIW.
Hitch