Translating for publisher's houses (specialized literature) Thread poster: S_G_C
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S_G_C
Romania
Local time: 14:16
English to Romanian
I've turned down two offers from such publisher's houses on account of the lousy rate and outrageous terms and conditions.
Namely:
- 15 RON or less for 2,000 characters/signs with spaces (that's the standard unit of measurement here)
- no upfront payment (like X% of the total worth)
- payment made after X months since the delivery of the translation (X meaning 1, 2, 3...)
I would be interested in knowing whether the situation is the same in other count... See more I've turned down two offers from such publisher's houses on account of the lousy rate and outrageous terms and conditions.
Namely:
- 15 RON or less for 2,000 characters/signs with spaces (that's the standard unit of measurement here)
- no upfront payment (like X% of the total worth)
- payment made after X months since the delivery of the translation (X meaning 1, 2, 3...)
I would be interested in knowing whether the situation is the same in other countries. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I think there are cowboys everywhere | Oct 10, 2023 |
S_G_C wrote:
I would be interested in knowing whether the situation is the same in other countries.
Just in the last few days, someone posted a message on a literary translation group here in Italy about a publisher offering €3 per "cartella", which I presume is 1800 characters, being the publishing industry. So I don't think the situation you describe is limited to Romania.
| | | | Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 13:16
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Often based on royalties | Oct 10, 2023 |
The payment is often based on royalties, for non-fiction the translators are usually subject-matter experts who do it for exposure, because they like it, because it's educational etc. For fiction, usually purely based on royalties which may be accepted by students, some book lovers, or on some extremely small minimum + royalties.
The reason they can have even poor translation done cheaply, is because the book will go through numerous revisions and adaptations in-house anyway.
... See more The payment is often based on royalties, for non-fiction the translators are usually subject-matter experts who do it for exposure, because they like it, because it's educational etc. For fiction, usually purely based on royalties which may be accepted by students, some book lovers, or on some extremely small minimum + royalties.
The reason they can have even poor translation done cheaply, is because the book will go through numerous revisions and adaptations in-house anyway.
Personally, I would never do it, not worth it. I did some copywriting for some publishers, but they are not the nicest people, I prefer direct clients for writing projects (better pay, smoother process, shorter timelines). ▲ Collapse
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:16
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| The difficulties of the publishing world | Oct 11, 2023 |
Setting aside the millions earned by very bad, but commercially successful "diva" authors like Dan Brown (and others I could mention), book publishing is a very risky business and even in English, where a vast international market is available, there are fewer and fewer readers of books, particularly of books by new authors.
This seems to be especially the case with books that are of interest mainly to specialists; in my particular specialism (architecture) a London publisher of go... See more Setting aside the millions earned by very bad, but commercially successful "diva" authors like Dan Brown (and others I could mention), book publishing is a very risky business and even in English, where a vast international market is available, there are fewer and fewer readers of books, particularly of books by new authors.
This seems to be especially the case with books that are of interest mainly to specialists; in my particular specialism (architecture) a London publisher of good-quality, serious architecture books has told me that if he manages to sell 1,000 copies of an architecture title across the whole English-speaking world, that would be considered a good result.
Although I don't necessarily believe him, I do know that book translation is not well paid. The publisher is taking the risk that the translation might not sell. I imagine a book translated into Romanian (for example), from another language, would not sell many copies because the only market is Romania.
In most cases the only people who have the time and resources to translate books are tenured academics who are drawing a salary every month.
For some types of book, special funding in the form of grants etc. may be available for a translation. But this is a highly specialised world and if you don't know how to move in it, you'll get nowhere.
Freelance translators who aspire to publish books should bear this in mind. Your best hope is that the Author of the book you want to translate may know you and may recommend you to the publisher - which was the case for the books I have translated. But there haven't been many.
As it happens, I've just finished one: the work of an Italian academic who was able to obtain funding for the translation because she holds a key professorship at her university and her publications bring prestige to it. The university paid me, and I was able to apply my standard rate (which was just as well, because her writing is very complex and allusive, and required a lot of hard work).
[Edited at 2023-10-11 14:25 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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I’ve just found a very interesting report published by the Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires a few years back (2008) on “Comparative income of literary translators in Europe”. Unfortunately, it contains no data on Romania but it allows to compare the rates applied to literary translation in various European countr... See more I’ve just found a very interesting report published by the Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires a few years back (2008) on “Comparative income of literary translators in Europe”. Unfortunately, it contains no data on Romania but it allows to compare the rates applied to literary translation in various European countries.
https://www.ceatl.eu/docs/surveyuk.pdf
P.S. Sorry Katarzyna, yours is much more recent...
[Edited at 2023-10-16 08:35 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | "It allows to compare": is it official now? | Oct 16, 2023 |
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida wrote:
Unfortunately, it contains no data on Romania but it allows to compare the rates applied to literary translation in various European countries
I mean, once I read that "it allows to" is an example of Euro-English that should be avoided, but language changes, doesn't it, so maybe this grammar nuance will become official before long under Euro-pressure
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Thank you, Denis, for correcting me! I always try my best, but I’m not fluent in English (I don’t translate into English) and for 20 years I heard Euro-English every single day, so…
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