View Single Post
Old 04-30-2018, 05:45 PM   #7
DaleDe
Grand Sorcerer
DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DaleDe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
DaleDe's Avatar
 
Posts: 11,470
Karma: 13095790
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Grass Valley, CA
Device: EB 1150, EZ Reader, Literati, iPad 2 & Air 2, iPhone 7
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch View Post
@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
What I think is going on is that they are using translation software and then providing a language expert?? to proof read the document and make obvious corrections. This is not true translation but it is conversion. Using a program to convert a language to another language has been ruled as not a true translation since there was no creativity involved and thus is not copyrightable separately. I need to do more research into this.

This is, of course, different from binging able to make a book already translated in a foreign language.

Dale
DaleDe is offline   Reply With Quote