Foreign promotions

[JLorenz]

How do people go about promoting books in other countries? With amazon adding Spain and Italy to their list of distributing ebooks it has me thinking about ways to get into the other markets.

[morriss003]

Excellent idea for a thread. I'm waiting to see some answers. I think that as translation software gets better, more books will become available from major outlets. I wonder if Amazon is working on this.

[Andanzas]

The best way to promote your work in a foreign country is being successful in your own. Seriously, nobody will want to read your books in Spain or Italy if nobody reads you in your country.

Everybody is paying attention to the ebook market in English (it's the strongest by far). John Locke, the guy who sold a million ebooks on Amazon, is being published in Spain by a major publishing house. So, for now, focus on your own market.

[Anke Wehner]

For the love of KITTENS, don't ever think of publishing a machine translation. You get ungrammatical near-gibberish, if you are lucky.

I think readers who are interested in reading English novels will look around English languages sites, too - goodreads, librarything, review blogs of whatever genres they like. Amazon.de will also recommend English language books to me because I bought others before.

[JLorenz]

Thanks for the comments!

I guess it's hard enough to penetrate the US market that any effort should go towards that.

[morriss003]

Originally Posted by Anke Wehner

For the love of KITTENS, don't ever think of publishing a machine translation. You get ungrammatical near-gibberish, if you are lucky.

I think readers who are interested in reading English novels will look around English languages sites, too - goodreads, librarything, review blogs of whatever genres they like. Amazon.de will also recommend English language books to me because I bought others before.

You are absolutely correct about this. For Now. But in the future? I believe that it is only a matter of time before translations, done by machines that are now the top-grade super computers, will be close enough for an editor to peruse without significant discomfort.

[VydorScope]

I have not tried this... but say I knew a language, and I used a machine to do the first pass at translation, then went back and cleaned it up. Would it save me a lot of time that way?

[ekster]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

I have not tried this... but say I knew a language, and I used a machine to do the first pass at translation, then went back and cleaned it up. Would it save me a lot of time that way?

From my experience of constantly using 3 languages, I'd say no. Even if the translation software did a decent job with words, there is no way it'll translate the meaning properly, at least not any time soon.

Phrase structure, expressions and use of words is very different from one language to another.

So while you'd want to write 'She couldn't keep it secret any longer and shouted it in excitement, "He failed the test!"'

If you translated it from French, it'll be 'She not could plus keep the secret and she proclaimed excitedly, "He drowned the test!"'

From Russian? 'She couldn't longer hold that secret and crazy screamed "He no luck go test!"'

Even better, from Greek? 'She no hold secret, scream excited "He no pass test!"'

Fixing that would just be an even bigger headache.

[VydorScope]

To play along... In ASL it be more like

Her keep secret pass test no.

[VydorScope]

I was just thinking it might help in the same way OCR does. OCR gets you like 80-90% of they way there, then you just have to edit.

[ekster]

For kicks, I actually did put that English phrase in a translator to see the results.

Here's what I getin French: ‹ Elle ne pourrait pas le garder le secret plus long et l'a crié dans l'agitation, « Il a échoué le test » › !

Meaning 'She could not it keep the secret further long and shouted it in agitation, "he failed the test"' (and then there's the obviously messed up punctuation)

In Russian:'Она не могла держать это тайной дольше и кричала это в волнении, "Он подвел тест!"'

Meaning 'She couldn't hold that secretly longer and screamed that in worry, "He has brough test!"

In Greek: «Δεν μπορούσε να συν κρατήσει το μυστικό και αυτή διακήρυξε με ενθουσιασμό,« Ο πνιγμένος από τη δοκιμή! ""

My greek is very rusty, but the best I can make out of that translation is
'There could be linked to keep the secret and she declared enthusiastically, "The smothered the test!"'

Edit: The way the meaning sounds all broken and horrible in English is actually how broken and horrible it sounds in that particular language. It would be much easier just writing the phrase from scratch.

[VydorScope]

In Greek: «Δεν μπορούσε να συν κρατήσει το μυστικό και αυτή διακήρυξε με ενθουσιασμό,« Ο πνιγμένος από τη δοκιμή! ""

My greek is very rusty, but the best I can make out of that translation is
'There could be linked to keep the secret and she declared enthusiastically, "The smothered the test!"

For fun I put the Greek in to a translator and got....

He could not keep the secret plus and she declared enthusiastically, "The drowned the test!

[ekster]

Hah, I wasn't that far off. Greek is one of the most painful languages I've studied to date.

And I find it hilarious how 'excitement' becomes something completely negative in both French and Russian for no reason. And failing the test becoming bringing (and that particular word is usually used for bringing things on wheels, like a cart or a car...) the test in Russian makes even less sense to me, I have no clue how that even happened.

[VydorScope]

I used to be able to read/write Greek.. but only Koine Greek... very very rusty now. If I had my lexicon/etc with me I could push through it... enjoyed the lang though, much more expressive in many ways then English.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

I used to be able to read/write Greek.. but only Koine Greek... very very rusty now. If I had my lexicon/etc with me I could push through it... enjoyed the lang though, much more expressive in many ways then English.

Koine Greek is easy - that was the whole point of it. It was a much-simplified form of Attic Greek that was used as the common language of commerce throughout the Eastern Mediterranian. That's why the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, so that everyone could understand it.