Translating a book

[bobbyd]

So I was thinking that a good side project over the next year or so, that would also help expand my vocabulary, would be to translate an English book to Chinese? Assuming their isn't already a Chinese translated version of the book, is it possible to make money from something like that? I haven't looked into it that much, but I assume the first course of action would be to email the publisher of the book to get the ok, then go from there. Does anyone know anyone who has successfully done something like this independently?

Thanks

[Daan]

If you're a native speaker of English, and even if you aren't, it's generally a much better idea to translate from the Chinese into English. Translators tend to translate into their mother tongue, plus there are already plenty of native speakers of Chinese who can translate stuff into Chinese

[hbuchtel]

In response to your question about whether it would be possible to make money doing this, keep in mind that the payment standards for this have already been set by the thousands of Chinese who are doing the same thing - so if you are living in China (and have a typical Chinese lifestyle) and have experience translating, then yes, you will be able to make money doing this.

If you have higher living expenses than the average Chinese and you don't have much experience translating (meaning you don't work very efficiently), I would say it would not be worth doing it financially.

Keep in mind that the amount of money you get will be directly related to how well the book sells, so choose something that is not too specialized.

That being said, it is standard (as Daan said above) for translators to translate into their native language. This might be a better choice for you. I've found translating to be a very good way to expand my language abilities (both in English and Chinese ) and professional knowledge.

[daofeishi]

I'm writing this after having made some guesses about your Chinese background from your previous posts, so if none of my conditionals apply to you, feel free to disregard what I'm going to tell you.

Unless you are practically bilingual and have already mastered composition within at least one written genre, no. No. That will not be a good idea. The golden rule of perfecting any skill is never to bite off more than you can chew. Successfully translating a whole book is a huge project, and is about more than just translation at a sentence level; it is also about paying attention to style, plot development and cohesion. Unless you know how to translate well at the sentence level, meaning that you are able to take an English sentence and produce something that is functionally, idiomatically and emotionally equivalent in Chinese without any preparation, you will not be able to get through a whole book, and your translation will in the end, to put it diplomatically, leave a lot to be desired.

Start smaller. Pick a short story or an essay and translate that. Maybe a short story by Asimov? An article from the New Yorker? Translate the whole thing, get response from natives, lather, rinse, repeat. When that has started to become easy, i.e. when translation has become something you can do both spontaneously and accurately, then and only then would it be a good idea to translate a whole book from English into Chinese.

If you happen to have the necessary background, by all means delve right into it, but keep in mind that it is a project that will be a huge challenge even to someone with prior experience. I know that I would struggle enormously with translating even a moderately sized novel between the two languages I have a native-like grasp of, and those languages are culturally much more similar than Chinese and English.

[bobbyd]

Thanks everyone. I like the idea about starting with a New Yorker article or something of that size. You're also right about it being better to translate to English, since that is my native language. However, I tend to read something I really like in English and often find out that their is no Chinese version. Perhaps that's what sparked the idea...

[Lu]

The opposite is true as well, there is a lot of stuff in Chinese that has never been translated to English yet (and more is being produced every day), so if that is your motivation, you still have your work cut out for you :-)

It's unlikely a non-native speaker of Chinese will be able to make a decent living translating to the Chinese, but that doesn't mean you can't translate stuff to the Chinese. Translating short stories, articles, weibos, whatever and have native speakers comment on what you're doing right and wrong can be a good way to improve your Chinese writing.

[roddy]

Hang out on Yeeyan.org. Eg, they have a New Yorker article on their home page right now.

[thechamp]

lol. Incredible if you can translate a novel or something from English to Chinese - but you're not going to make any money. Even in western countries, advances for books are very small. A first time novel will get 5k or so. For a translator I think it's more about the challenge and the kudos. Look at Jay Rubin and Alfred Birnbaum who translate Murakami (a very very successful writer by booksales) and they still have day jobs as academics

[liuzhou]

Few people make any money by translating literature and it certainly isn't a way to learn a language. To translate you need to be already highly competent and as others have pointed out, most translators do so into their native language.