How long to translate a novel

Blog How long does it take to translate a text? Calculate it here! The same happens with translation. It depends. How long does translation take? What factors into the schedule of a translation? Word amount Text specialization Original file format Translator availability Here are some simple examples: 1.

Word amount: How long does it take to translate a 5,word text? Between 2 and 3 days. Roughly, translators tackle between 2, and 2, words per day.

This is very broad: every translator is different, some translate 4, or 5, per day. But I wanted you to get a general idea. Obviously, this takes time and effort. Text specialization: How long does it take to translate a technical manual? How about a novel? From there on, complexity of the terminology or the general content plays a big part. In my 12 years as an editor for the Swedish Book Review , I at least had a reasonable chunk of regular income I could rely on, even if the job monopolized masses of my time.

In recent years, in part with the rise of literary agents in the Nordic countries, a good deal more work and aggravation has been added to the approval and copy editing stage, with authors becoming much more inclined to claim a good knowledge of English and to want a finger in the pie. Sandra, a translator from French, says:. Is it subtle, does it have plays on words, slang, long descriptive passages, etc.? As a general rule, I aim to translate 20 pages a week, which means four pages a day with weekends off.

This may not sound like a lot, but I also still teach part-time and have a life! So, a page book should take me about three months, but then I add at least four weeks for re-editing. But then other things come up so I always try to negotiate extra time. My page a week formula also gives me leeway if I need to work over the weekend. But you really have to know and trust them. There was one American publisher who seemed to consider it entirely normal to be spending almost a year over the negotiation of the various contracts involved, and then he wanted the translation done in less time than they had spent over the negotiations.

I agreed, only realizing the next day that half of this was in verse, which, for reasons to do with the plot, absolutely had to be translated into strict metre and rhyme. The verse was mostly at the end of the piece, but I decided to translate it first. To my astonishment, I translated the 70 to 80 lines of verse in only a few hours, and barely needed to revise at all. I was then equally astonished to find myself struggling with enormous difficulty through what I had imagined to be relatively straightforward prose.

With the verse, everything had been clear-cut. If it did turn, that was that—there was no need to fiddle around further. With the prose, the number of possible translations of even the shortest sentence seemed almost infinite, and I found it very hard indeed to decide which I preferred. There were countless subtle ironies and shifts of tone, and I had the constant feeling that my English version was, in comparison, flat-footed or heavy-handed. No to botched work!

Sarah, a translator from French, finds that when she hankers after a change of tempo, co-translating can greatly energize the translation process and accelerate the pace, but the proof stage still proves unavoidably time-consuming. Each time it feels like pulling teeth in ever-slower motion; and each time, the stabs of raw, un-anaesthetized pain are keener. Am I succumbing to all my worst obsessive compulsive tendencies and derangements, as I fail to see the wood for the trees?

I mean, would any sane reader really notice the improvement afforded by that tweak? Or am I a craftsperson diligently holding the hand of my translation as I walk it to the finishing line? And would anything less be a dereliction of duty? You say so much with so few words, and then you rinse and repeat , times. Off topic here. When are you doing the World Builder auctions? I have some things I would like to donate.

I love things lost in translation. And Pat, by the way. I think that scene has a lot to offer us. Awesome insight, Pat. Is there an update!? A new post! I think that it would be especially invaluable.

Great post. This post also makes me wonder if you have been following along with the Name of the Wind re-read over at tor. My email is [email protected]. Mr Patrick you are doing a fantastic job with these books, if you want the translation of those 40 first chapters I can post them in a PDF , its all I have found. Oh, man. Thanks a million for talking about translators, we tend to get overlooked so often…hope I get to translate authors like you some day :.

Thanks for taking time for us, your Mexican fans! I really hope you can come over here on your tour, it would be so cool to meet you. To Daniella, the book comes out on November! El libro sale en Nobiembre! For my undergrad thesis a few years ago I did a translation of a 16th century Spanish manuscript that was written by underground Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition. Not to mention the archaic language. Needless to say, it was freaking hard to translate! No wonder why it takes 4 damn years to write the whole thing referring to the translations!

A newbie to the Kingkiller chronicle. Before anything else, I have to agree with the first poster, posts like this are what makes this blog so fun and interesting. Thank you, Pat, for this blog and the geeky talk almost as much as for the book… almost ;.

But, even if the translation is good enough, I really encourage you to try to read the books in english. You are missing a lot of word play and sweet secret details or well veiled winks at character relationships or future events that, sometimes, get lost in the translations. While reading the original version i was constantly thinking: what could this word possibly paralell in Swedish?

Like shamblemen! Or getting behind in a group that walks together. All words in swedish with that amount of energy related to them are implying stress or unwanted noise. That made me just a little sad and shattered my image of Bast and Kvote being.. Not put down by the work but glad of being needed, doing a good job and being efficient. Reveals a pretty interesting contrast in our cultures, huh? I so want to visit Sweden and Finland someday…. I see what you mean about the dificulty of translation.

You can turn a sentence just to the opposite. And as I understood it the original said quite the opposite. Is it right? As you illustrate ambiguity in the language, it comes to mind cultural diversity in non-verbal expression. That can really cause a problem. Many years ago, when I was younger and even more stupid, I was doing a sales pitch in Sri Lanka. I was having a really hard time dealing with the fact that everyone in the room was shaking their heads.

My awe is redoubled yet again. And then retripled is that a word? You have done all the translators of the world such an amazing good turn with this post… Thank you so much! Pat, I really appreciate this post.

Is it the goal of the translator to make the story sound like it occurred in, say, Japan, or, Spain, with the world of Kvothe experienced by Japanese or Spanish speakers? The discussions about names and nuances suggest it. Bye, Gab. This started out as a post on translation, but ended up as subtlety in writing. Has the rights been sold already? Your email is never published nor shared.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Bookmark this Blog. Season Five of the Guild ». Greatings Mr. Sound fair? Pat, I am one of your many fans in Spain and I am perishing out of waiting for your book. Would you please answer me back? Maria, Maria and Daniella and dozens of others have e-mailed me, asking this question. So here we go. Translating things is really hard.

How long is , words? Really, really, long. So I have tried that and I kind of like it, even though I have been very firm in print about the virtues of reading the book first. And if the author is no longer with us, then I will wing it, as we say, and just do the best I can. I always find pages and pages that I would do entirely differently. Very complex structure. I think I enjoy Don Quixote more than any other book.

I just fell in love with that novel over and over again. At the beginning of the 00s, I was terrified and excited at the prospect of translating it. You have to be able to hear the language of the original.

You have to be able to hear the tonalities, what the language indicates about the intelligence or class of the speaker. You have to be able to hear that, in my case in Spanish.

And then you have to be able to speak it in English. The real question is, do I know enough English? George Szirtes is a poet and translator. Born in Budapest in , he came to England as a refugee aged eight and learned Hungarian again as an adult. Of the four of us who walked across the border into Austria in only my father spoke English. What he spoke, he remembered from his school days. On arrival in England my parents insisted we speak English from the start. We went to language classes for refugees and while my parents spoke Hungarian to each other they spoke English to us, though my mother was only just learning the language herself.

This was hard for my younger brother but, at eight years old, I must have managed all right; within a few months, I was near the top of the class at an English school in London. And so it went on for several years of school, without Hungarian books, without Hungarian friends, my Hungarian forgotten.

When I started writing poetry at the age of 18 it was natural to write in English. I went to art school for five years, writing all the time, lucky in my mentors, and had published three books by the time of my first adult return to Hungary in at the age of It was then that I was asked to translate poetry from Hungarian to English.

I needed help at first but within a couple of years I was working on my own. The poetry I translated taught me a lot and fed into my own poetry. I learned other voices and ways with verse. Then came fiction. My way with fiction generally is to read the first chapter or so then to get down to it. It is far from scholarly. I listen intently for the timbre of the voice and seek a comparable voice in English that might bring to English the experience a native reader might have in Hungarian.

Narrative proceeds from there. Literary precision includes the idea of effect, pace, register, intensity and much else. Effect is partly a subjective judgment but so is writing. Nothing in English will capture the tone of Budapest slang. Most of my translatees have been dead a long time. He and I rarely speak while the translation is in process.

Translators are an intense, highly focused bunch.