I just had a look at Amazon.de, and it seems like the third episode (Legends of Corinair) will be the last one to be translated, or so many comments suggest.
Is this true or a mere rumor?
Do you need a translator? 😀
The publisher that bought the German language rights for the first 3 episodes has not yet made an offer. To be honest, if they do, it will have to be a good one, because they were a PITA to deal with.
I expect that I will end up getting them translated myself. I suspect I should do that for a few other languages as well.
I have always wondered, however, how do you check that the translator did a good job of translating? Hire another translator? How do you check them?
Trial 20 people fresh out of a language course to translate a chapter of book 4 each (2 people to a chapter) and then ask one of your native German readers to read them and have that person judge them. (Preferably someone who has already read the English version and has an idea what the story is about) its just a translation.
How long does it take to translate a chapter of a book? Hire them for two weeks and see how you get on. If you find someone good hire them for the rest of the series; if not publish a poorly translated copy of Book 4 at a discount (with a job opening advert in it)
What do you have to loose?
I mostly agree with four-islands, but with a few differences.
Having studied English as a foreign language, I know that it's much easier to translate from your 2nd/foreign language into your native language than the other way round. There's just so much stuff a native speaker knows without even thinking about that a non-native speaker would have to look up - if they know that there is something to look up in the first place... If you speak an foreign language, you'll probably know what I'm talking about.
So, first of all, try a bunch of native speakers, ideally people who study English at college / university level or have a degree therein - or are native speakers of both English and German. This will increase your chances of finding people with an adequate grasp of the English language. Having spent some time in an English-speaking country would be a plus, of course. Someone who actually likes space operas in general and your books in particular would be perfect, but may be hard to find.
And before you think I'm trying to do some self-advertising - I don't have a degree in English, I merely added that subject as a kind of hobby. So I pretty much disqualified myself. 😉
I studied German between age 13-17 and barely remember a word of it... so I'm out. Languages just aren't my strong suit... but people who can speak multiple languages are amazing!!!
Four years isn't that long for studying a language - especially not if you're only learning it at school, with only a couple of hours of instruction per (school) week. I studied Latin at school for 4.5 years, and barely remember 10-20% of what I learned back then. Most of what I do remember is words that somehow made it into the English language (like, uh, lingua (tongue), which turned into "language" in English, but can also be found in expressions like "bilingual" or "linguistics"), as well as some proverbs. Most of Latin's extensive grammar escapes me by now.)
@Ryk: If you want someone to proof read your German translations, I'll gladly volunteer. I might have to ask my father to hand back the two original German translations so I can have a look at some expressions and names that have already been translated (like Vlad's name), but that's about it.
@olympe: You are very right - a good translation could only done by a native German, how likes space operas, even the Frontiers Saga 😉
Only a native German has a chance to translate and rework it, even slang words and idioms.
Helpful also some military knowledge (Navy and/or Air force) and some Russian - but manny German understand some Russian.
I'm German and I can say that Ryk write a very good style, clear, direct and he avoids run-on sentences. I have no problems to understand his books.
In my job I have often to deal with translation of technical issues into German. That's why I know that the word-by-word translation is the least part - mostly done by computer. But the rework and the correction of special expressions, grammar, sentence structure is the main work.
@four-islands: "How long does it take to translate a chapter of a book?" ... I would estimate about 10 hours (e.g. Episode 4, chapter 1 results in 20 pages written in Word - I already tested it).
Frankly, I'd avoid computer-generated translations like the plague. One word doesn't naturally translate into just one word in another language, and let's not even start to talk about idioms or phrasal verbs or... you get the idea. Checking and re-checking the computer-generated mess is more hassle than it is worth in my (not so) humble opinion.
Do not take Google translator as prior art, there are much better softwares available.
And if you compare one of the first 3 translated episodes you will see that it is a word by word translation with some corrections in sentence structure only.
