• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Looking for proof-readers for a translation

R

Richard Falken

Member
Hello, people.

I am currently bent in the translation of one of my books from Spanish to English. The lack of funds is forcing me to do the task myself, as professional translators are tremendously expensive -and, to be honest, many translation agencies hire extremely low quality translators for the money they get.

Currently, the 50% of the first phase of the translation has been completed.

I am looking for volunteers to proof-read the result and provide the much needed feedback. I have set a web platform (more or less) where I upload one or two chapters per week for the volunteers to read and comment about. My goal is to create a A+ grade work, just as the original is in Spanish.

From the webpage:

The Flaming Wrath of Arelor (La Espada Vengadora)

HOW LONG ARE YOU WILLING TO WAIT ...
HOW MUCH ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE ...
WOULD YOU GIVE ALL YOUR LIFE UP...
... FOR REVENGE?

The Glorious Empire. A nation isolated from the rest of the world and ruled by the iron fist of the relentless Clergy of Arelor, Lord of Rage and Revenge. Crime is not tolerated. Heresy and disobedience are punished with death. But the Glorious Empire is about to face the most powerful threat it has ever known: a cold and merciless man, a fanatic whose sanity is long gone, a warrior bent on revenge who has started a personal crusade to methodically eliminate all the leaders of the Clergy of Arelor and anyone who supports them.

Wherever he goes, he does not leave tracks. The Glorious Empire is not willing to make public the existence of the assassin, but his supernatural skills are very real and threaten to bring the government of the nation down and plunge it into anarchy.

Will captain Bérinen and his group of investigators stop the maniac before no one is left to rule their homeland, or will the murderer complete his personal crusade?
Click to expand...

If anybody wants to have a good reading for free and his name in the credits, don't hesitate to tell me!

--
I make use of GPG for secure communications.
Code: 
gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 0x648179F2
will retrieve my public keys in Linux or Mac systems with GNU Privacy Guard installed.
 
There are many transcription services company in the world. You just go to any search engine and check free service provider or less price.....
 
Even the cheaper ones are still expensive. In the book business, I consider each book a black hole for the money -what you drop in, never comes back. I am simply not investing three thousand dollar in a translation for which there is no foreigner publisher deal yet. I would need to sell thousands of books for a good price to cover the expenses, and, even when I think the book rocks, it is simply not going to happen.

Free service providers, those I have never found. Maybe I should check again, but seriously, this is such a great amount of work, I don't understand why would anybody do it for free in my case.

Just for the sake of curiosity: Do you consider the piece of text from the backcover of sufficient quality? Do you think it is any good?
 
Richard Falken said:
Just for the sake of curiosity: Do you consider the piece of text from the backcover of sufficient quality? Do you think it is any good?
Click to expand...


The Flaming Wrath of Arelor (La Espada Vengadora) Unless you are writing the kind of book that has semi-naked ladies in leather on the front cover that look like this:

aencrypted_tbn0_gstatic_com_images_b7471ffd6298ba550a816435ae24c106._.jpg​

I would try and think of a better title. One that evokes less of a swashbuckling pulp fiction type novel.

HOW LONG ARE YOU WILLING TO WAIT ...
HOW MUCH ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE ...
WOULD YOU GIVE ALL YOUR LIFE UP UP YOUR LIFE...
... FOR REVENGE?

The Glorious Empire - A nation isolated from the rest of the world and ruled by the iron fist of the relentless Clergy of Arelor, Lord of Rage and Revenge.(Confusing. First sounds like a group of people 'The Clergy of Arelor' but the 'Lord of Rage and Revenge' is one person) Crime is not tolerated. Heresy and disobedience are punished with punishable by death.
But The Glorious Empire is about to face the most powerful threat it has ever known: a cold and merciless man, a fanatic whose sanity is long gone, a warrior bent on revenge who has started a personal crusade to methodically eliminate all the leaders of the Clergy of Arelor and anyone (everyone?)who supports them.

Wherever he goes, he does not leave tracks. (adds nothing) The Glorious Empire is not willing to make public the existence of the assassin, but his supernatural skills are very real and threaten to bring down (the verb is 'bring down') the government of the nation down (of the nation is redundant) and plunge it the country into anarchy. (The government is gone so 'it' can't be plunged into anarchy so you have to state what is being plunged)

Will Captain Bérinen and his group of investigators stop the maniac before no-one is left to rule their homeland, or will the murderer complete his personal crusade?
 
Last edited:
It is Epic Fantasy. I just cannot use a title like "My Beautiful Little Pony", no matter how much I like horses. The original, which translates as "The Avenging Sword"... that one was pulp. People thinks the book is a McGuffin novel just for the title. I suppose marketing teachers will use it as an example of what not to do.

I will write your corrections in my "todo" list.

I understand that fragment of text does not awake your interest in the book. I suppose I will have to fire my marketing manager -which happens to be me :)
 
If you are really stuck on that title - which you are quite entitled to be because it's YOUR book LOL - then I would suggest dropping the 'flaming'

I might read it, but edit it, no - sorry I have too much on my plate at the moment. Good luck with it though.

Yup you can split phrasal verbs but it's better if you don't.
 
I am not stuck in the title. I simply consider it a secondary matter. I can change it before actual publishing with zero effort. If anybody comes with a better one, I will get it with no problem. However, people in the target audience I have asked (and is not related to me) shows favorable to this title more often than not. Critics are welcome anyway.
 
Phase Zero of the translation has been completed. It should take the novel less than a week for being fully available for correction, edition or whatever you want to call it.
 
It has been a long time.

A good percentage of the book is done. Everybody who is willing to read for free is encouraged to drop a message here claiming so.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top