Anyone familiar with how things work in the field of literary translation? If practices differ depending on the country of the original work, I am specifically curious about translating Japanese works for the U.S. Of course any info/insight will be helpful, regardless of country.
I worked for many years doing technical translations, but it simply got boring. I realize the nature of technical translation is different from literary translation.
I’m curious about how someone gets started in doing translations of literature as well as nonfiction/non-technical works, and questions of how things like rights work. For example do authors/publishers farm out work to a stable of translators? Do translators ever approach authors/publishing houses saying, " I like this author and think there could be a market for it in my country, let me translate this?" Do translators translate “on spec,” or only start translating after securing the right to translate a work? I am sure there are differences in how something in the public domain/a classical work aimed at a more academic audience is handled versus a work still under copyright versus a current work.
Are there people who support themselves doing such work, or is it pretty much done for the love of it? I imagine translations of anything outside of a best seller do not provide a whole lot of imcome. Are such translations purely royalty based, or…? I suspect it is NOT on a per word basis like technical translation…
No doubt even my questions betray my ignorance. Is there anyone (either on the translating side or the editing/publishing side) with actual experience/knowledge willing to share some wisdom?
Thanks in advance.
(Sorry if this is in the wrong forum.)
You’re probably best contacting the author and an agent who’d be interested in marketing the translated work However that’s a very long shot. Unless the author is a major success in her own language, no publisher (and hence no agent) will be interested.
As for pay, an editor I know once told me it cost $10,000 to translate a book. That would be a very good advance for the author alone, and the author is always paid more. The expense makes translatied works very risky to take on.
Few publishers do translations and those that do already have translators they work with and don’t often add new ones.
Moved to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
How does one prove their competence in translation? Is it pretty much an informal, de facto process where you gain prestige by having successful translations under your belt and where you have to hope for a lucky break to enter the field or else do “volunteer” translations for years to gain a practical portfolio, or are there certificates, certifications, etc. that allow one to train and/or prove an existing ability to begin translating professionally?
E.g. if a native English speaker wanted to become a Japanese->English translator, how would they normally go about doing this? Get a degree in Japanese from an English-speaking university? Get a degree from a Japanese university? Bone up on the language, watch lots of anime, get lost in Tokyo a few dozen times, spend a few months at some remote Buddhist monastery in Hokkaido, and then go for comprehensive language exams at the Institute of Translator Certification and hope for at least an 80%?
You should check out the American Translators Association’s resources. (I’m not a professional translator, but I have been a professional interpreter, was briefly a translation project manager, and I have a language degree and deal with translators all the time.) My understanding is that unless you are some kind of genius, it’s very difficult to make a living as a literary translator. It was my dream when I started college, too. The bulk of paid translation work is technical in some way.
My wife was a certified (by the Quebec order of translators and interpreters) translator but she would never undertake literary translation. She felt it was at least one order of difficulty harder. In addition to understanding the source language you must be a good writer in the target language (which will almost always be your native language, or at least one in which you have native fluency), but for literary translation, you must basically be able to write in a literary style.
Thanks to all who replied. If anyone else has an info/experience and wants to share, please do.
robert_columbia, in response to your questions, I can respond from the standpoint of technical translation. While there are organizations (like the ATA that Eva mentioned) that offer certification, and there are college/post-graduate programs in translation, certification really wasn’t necessary in my experience (which is an admittedly small sample size).
A lot of translators start out working for translation agencies, and they will usually offer you a chance to do a trial translation. While some bad agencies use this as a chance to get small, free translations done, for the most part it is just a chance to evaluate your ability; translation agencies have plenty of people on staff who are competent enough in both languages to judge the quality of a translation.
They are really not too concerned with how you came upon your language skills(self-taught, bi-cultural upbringing, rigorous training and study at a remote Buddhist monastery, or whatever), just that you have them.
For any but the most basic, generalized translation, it is just as important to have at least one specialized area of knowledge in order to be a really successful technical translator. You don’t have to necessarily have the same depth of understanding as an engineer, but you have to be familiar with the terminology and how it is used, especially in your native language. (I knew an older gentleman, a native speaker of English who was old enough to be a member of the postwar occupation forces in Japan, who refused to use the term “handshake” in a document about modems in the 1980s because he thought the image of computers “shaking hands” was just a laughably bad mistranslation instead of a legitimate term.)
If you produce an acceptable trial translation, the agency will then start you off with a few small translation jobs; once you demonstrate that you can reliably meet deadlines, can follow job-specific instructions, and produce finished translations that don’t require a lot of editing or generate a lot of customer questions/complaints, you will gradually be assigned bigger and bigger jobs.