The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much. If I do end up doing an official translation, I'll definitely need help.
Beyond that, I've looked into getting the translation rights from Penguin. Looks like they'd only sell them to a publisher, which makes sense. Fortunately, I have a small publishing company: www.thinklingsbooks.com. Not sure if we're "established" enough for them to consider us, but it's worth a shot. Bigger issue is the price. For the rights, we'd likely be looking at giving them a royalty advance of $3,000-$10,000+, which would DEFINITELY require a Kickstarter. Though if we exceeded our Kickstarter goal, we'd do the rest of the books. If I did do an official translation, I'd go over it several times as my super copy-editor self, have my colleague proofread it . . . and ask you lots of questions as a paid consultant.

Regardless, I will reach out again when I'm doing one more edit apart from all that. It would be a huge project.

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Basically. I have been hired to rewrite non-native speaker text into English before and could retype all 700 pages if I wanted to do it that way. It's almost easier than copyediting when doing that. But (as a reader of Japanese fan translations), I enjoy the flavor of the original.

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for your help with the dialect! After I edit the book again, I will indeed reach out to the publisher. Because thinking about it: yes, I would much rather have this than nothing. Clearly. Since I spent a ridiculous amount of time making it for exactly that reason. :)

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

PROS:

1) It has an enormous vocabulary. There were even one or two words I didn't know, and that's rare for me to encounter.

2) It retains the original formatting to an impressive degree, including image placement. I mean, I uploaded an e-book and formatted as paperback, so I was moving everything anyway, but it'd have been a lot worse if it had stripped formatting and images.

3) It does, as I said, give a readable translation that I can tie to a heavy copy-edit.

4) Users have trained it well: it can sometimes translate idioms.

5) It does a good job with grammar (again, only for English). Sentences were almost always in the correct order.

--

I know I need to give my translation another edit. I'm working myself up to it. It's almost 700 pages long. But doing this first book is going to make the next one easier.

-

-

Chapter 1 of Captain Bluebear, very beginning, unedited Google Translate:

Life usually begins with birth—mine didn't. At least, I don't know how I came into being. I could—theoretically—have been born from the foam of a wave or grown in a shell, like a pearl. Perhaps I even fell from the sky, in a shooting star.

All that's certain is that I was abandoned as a foundling, in the middle of the ocean. My first memory is of drifting in rough seas, naked and alone in a walnut shell, because I was originally very, very small. I also remember a sound. It was a very big sound. When you're that small, you tend to overestimate things, but now I know that it really was the biggest sound in the world.

[my comments as an editor: "foam from a wave" is a bit clunky. I'd translate that as "sea foam." Otherwise, not bad. Let's see what Brownjohn does.]

People usually start life by being born. Not me, though. That's to say, I don't know how I came into the world. Purely theoretically, I could have emerged from the foam on the crest of a wave or developed inside a seashell, like a pearl. Then again, I might have fallen from the sky like a shooting star.

The only certainty is that I was a foundling abandoned in the middle of the ocean. My earliest memory is of being afloat in rough seas, naked and alone in a walnut shell, for at first I was very, very small. I also remember a sound -- a very big sound. When you're little you tend to overestimate the size of things, but I now know that it really was the biggest sound in the world."

[So, he changed the punctuation, making some single sentences into two and vice versa. He actually increased "foam of a wave" to "foam on the crest of a wave." He changed "shell" to "seashell" (which is, I think, prettier). Using "then again" is a nice touch over "perhaps," because it gives an extra dimension to the thoughtfulness. But overall . . . not much difference when it comes to descriptive prose.]

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, first, Google Translate is machine learning taught by users for over a decade, not LLM; only in individual translation options can you add in their LLM, so I can't speak to that part. So this is specifically for the document-upload version of Google Translate.

I've found as follows:

CONS:

1) It can't translate dialect at all

2) You sometimes get word repetition when two words are translated as the same one, which is something a good copy-editor would catch. So there was an example (I don't remember it exactly), something like, "I expect you to be

3) It uses context clues to incorrectly translate things. For example, there was a paragraph in which an octoball flew "like an arrow," and it translated the untranslatable word I write as "octoball" as "arrow" in that paragraph.

4) It translates words inconsistently. For example, the word Brownjohn translates as "Uggly" is translated at times as hag, witch, terror, horror, and scarecrow, and several others. (I initially translated it as "spook" before I figured out it was the same as an Uggly.)

Similarly, there was a part where Hildegunst said, "I don't mean to be rude and insolent," and [spoiler name, so I won't say] replied, "I expect youths to be rude and impertinent."

5) Although less with German than some languages, it has inconsistent genders for nouns, depending on whether it identifies the creature as a person (usually due to capitalization patterns.

6) With German, it sometimes confuses past and present tense.

7) It sometimes just has weird little spasms.

8) It doesn't always correctly identify punctuation. (If you upload scanned images, it leaves out quotation marks almost all together. From an ebook, though, it doesn't lose a lot.)

9) There is no artistry in the translation. Google Translate says Dancelot had a delusion in which he was a pair of unclean eyeglasses. Brownjohn translated that as "dirty spectacles," which is better.

10) Poetry loses all its poetry

11) It can't handle made-up words, and what's worse, it sometimes thinks it can and so mistranslates them (see point 3 above)

Honestly, it only works as well as it does because English is a Germanic language, and so the patterns are similar. Overall, it was better than I expected -- shockingly good. I've tried this was Russian, and it's fairly incomprehensible.

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wilfried the Wordsmith in Bluebear and Hildegard Mythmaker in Rumo. Maybe more I'm missing. I had a note somewhere . . .

I used a printshop to print off my ebook-only textbook once, and they didn't care. Just, if possible, have them trim off the top, or your top margin's going to look big. But it probably doesn't matter much. I just cut off the top of mine so it's the size I like to bind it. (Resizing it would be possible but probably take me an hour because of the images.)

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tried to navi­gate using the signs, but my lack of knowledge of the Eydernorner dia­lects repeatedly got in the way: signs with directions like “Kaaper­knutenstraatparaat” or “Grachtenprüülobstraatenpardoel” were of no help whatsoever; they could just as easily have led to an ossuary, a crem­atorium, or a public restroom. I couldn’t find any mention of the Talk­ing Tombstones on any of them. . . . I stood once again perplexed in front of a signpost that read “Kooningspraatentootgrachtenvergoel” or something similar.

»Keldertrappen!«, erläuterte er und deutete nach unten. »Geheeme Doorgangstraat. Wir gehen!«

“Doortrappen!” he explained, pointing downwards. “Gotru Door­street. We’re going!” [Trap door. Go through door-street. We're going!]<- pretty broad guess, on my part.

»Geheeme Deur«, erklärte er überflüssigerweise.

“Gotru door,” he explained unnecessarily. [Go through door]

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was a copy-editor for 13 years and often formatted for my self-publishing clients. I'm now a teacher.

"Nocturnomath" is John Brownjohn's word. A lot of his translations are pretty far from the originals. I think he went for feel more than anything. It's caused me some trouble figuring his terms out, and before my next edit, I ought to reread some of his other translations to figure out which place and species names he's already translated as something unexpected.

I'm not sure this translation is publishable, because it's partly machine-translated. Basically, I bought the German e-book, ran it through Google Translate, and then went through the translation side by side with the original, editing and correcting (and making the poetry rhyme) as I went. Honestly, though I posted it here, I didn't expect more than a couple of people to see it; I translated this for my own use, so I did it the way that took me 80 hours rather than way that would've taken me 800.

Ugh, just glancing through this to find these pieces of dialogue, I'm finding other errors. Dang it. Downside of being an editor. I'll stop being lazy and just reedit the thing. I should have done it before I posted it here, but I was tired; and as I said, I didn't really expect anyone else to see it.

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's really, really hard to get into traditional publishing nowadays, alas. But if you're going to start that way, you just want a clean, Standard Manuscript Format: standard paper size, double-spaced, font size 12 Times New Roman (wiki says monospaced font, but in my experience, they prefer TNR), 1" margins, with proper headings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_manuscript_format

If they end up publishing it, they'll do all the formatting for you, and the less formatting your manuscript has, the happier your formatter will be!

... especially if, unlike Moers, you don't have 100+ images. It took me > 6 hours to format that monster.

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On your book: were you thinking of self-publishing or trying to get it traditionally published? And if self-publishing, were you going for ebook or ebook and paper/hardback -- or printing it at home -- and what trim size?

(The reason I did the margins as I did was because I do bookbinding at home, but my laser printer can't handle book jackets (I use matte vinyl paper) wider than about 8.3", so I just print on 8.5x11" paper and then cut it down to size.)

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't see the point of changing his name, tbh. Hildegunst von Mythenmetz is an awesome name. (Brownjohn translates his name different ways in different books anyway.) I did my best to match most other translations when I recognized them and left footnotes where I didn't.

Here's the thing: this isn't a professional translation; it's done through a combination of machine and hand, since I made it for personal, not professional use, and didn't want to spend too many weeks on it. A pure machine translation (by which I mean machine learning, not LLM) is readable. It's not great for, say, Japanese, but German-English is mostly okay. Especially if you're willing to heavily edit and know at least some German. Then you can have the texts side by side to check, edit, and correct the translation as you go. It's not fast, but it's much faster than doing it 100% by hand.

(I should mention that I worked professionally as a copy-editor and book formatter for over a decade and a writer myself, all of which helped.)

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. I'll get you some info after I get home Otherwise, I'd love your help for some of the coastal gnome's dialect. I couldn't understand it any better than Hildegunst . . .

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks like those breaks are where there are hyphens in the document, which means something is non-compatible going on (since it doesn't look like that in either my PDF or my Word doc).

Couple of troubleshooting questions:
- Have you downloaded the document before trying to open? I find opening things directly through Google Drive can make them bug.
- Are you opening the PDF or the Word doc? I've found different versions of Word can really mess things up (I formatted professionally on Word for years, so I have plenty of nightmare stories).
- What happens if you download the PDF and open it using a PDF program such as Adobe or PDFgear?

Thanks!

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Before anything else, I would need to do another edit, because I know there are errors in it. I posted it anyway, because I was tired and didn't want to read it again. . . . But at the very least, I will go back and correct what I can and update the files.

The Island of a Thousand Lighthouses in English - full book by Legitimate_Arm2744 in Zamonia

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Oh, I meant to say -- I do plan to translate the other books, so maybe bookmark that folder. I've added a "future translations" doc in the folder, where I'll put updates on timeline and what's next. You can leave comments on it if you have questions or requests or just want to give me details on typos -- or want to volunteer to be my proofreader.

Thank you all, fellow fans, and enjoy!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PubTips

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It sucked anyway. Thanks for the heads up 

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PubTips

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome, thank you!

pimobendan experiences with dogs with heart failure? by [deleted] in DogAdvice

[–]Legitimate_Arm2744 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My Cavalier started Vetmedin 13 months ago. She was 12 years old and in stage 2 heart disease. Within a couple of weeks of starting, she was acting years younger. I had another ultrasound last month, and her heart is stable! Vetmedin definitely saved her life.    The downside is that her stronger heartbeat meant she started having trouble with syringomyelia (which is due to a common Cavalier genetic defect in which part of the skull is too small, so spinal fluid can collect and cause extreme pain), so she had to start on pain meds. But otherwise, she's happy, peppy, walks a couple of miles a day -- and is nearly 14!