Book Translation

A literary translator specializes in translating literary works – books, novels, novellas, etc. Literary translation is not just a skill but an art. It’s about making sure that the emotions your book evokes flow seamlessly into the new language. As a self-published author, I know how important it is to stay true to the author’s voice while still being able to express my own creativity.

English to German / German to English. No matter if English is the source or target language, let me know in advance if it’s UK or US English.

Anything, really. As a Paranormal/Contemporary Romance author, I have a passion and specific knowledge in these areas, but as an avid reader of all kinds of genres, I’m happy to translate whatever you want me to – Sci-Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Thriller, or your autobiography. Just send me a message and let’s chat!

I accept payment via PayPal. All prices in € (EUR), PayPal fees included. Excl. 20% statutory Austrian VAT (VAT only due if your invoicing address is within the EU and you can’t provide a VAT number).

For Literary Translation:

I’ll send you an invoice for a 50% advance before the agreed starting date. Once the payment has been made, I’ll start the translation on the agreed date (and book an editing slot if you chose this service). I’ll send you an invoice for the other 50% when the translation is done (before editing, if you chose this service). Once the payment has been made in full, I’ll send you the translated documents (if you chose editing services too, I’ll send you the documents after editing).

For Editing & Proofing:
For translation service clients: No advance needed. I’ll send you an invoice of the full price before delivering the project.

However, if I find that any previous invoices weren’t paid in time, I will require the full sum for editing services to be paid in advance. The reason is, I have to pay the editor out of my own pocket, some in advance too, so if I can’t trust the client to meet an invoice in time, I have to take appropriate precautions. Thanks for your understanding.

For all other services:
(Proofing only, Promo Material Translation, Formatting)
No advance needed. I’ll send you an invoice of the full price.

If my schedule allows it, I can squeeze you in. This service attracts a surcharge. Please contact me for a quote.

The advance will be due 7 days before the agreed starting date to reserve your spot. That means, if you decide 8 days prior to the starting date that you want to cancel for whatever reasons, just let me know, and I will cancel the invoice. However, any payments already made to me won’t be redeemed. For works already in the making (e.g. Editing, Proofing, etc.), all fees must be paid.

Everything you want me to translate as Microsoft Word documents, your book cover, and the link to your published book. Literary translations usually include the manuscript, blurb, cover contents, and everything included in the front & back matter. For Marketing Material Translation, send me everything you need translated as Microsoft Word document too. For Proofing only, send me the Microsoft Word document your editor provided. For Formatting, send me everything you want me to include (e.g. images, links, etc.).

The one good thing about translation agencies is that they are fast. Everything will be thrown into a Neuronal Machine Translation software before a human being will do a final check – hopefully. The translators are not specialized in literary translation, which is an important skill set if you want the finished product to sell. I’ve had many authors asking me for help because their agency provided poor quality, which they are blissfully oblivious to until the first 1-star review trickles in.

If you team up with a specialized literary translator, you’ll benefit from their insight, training, knowledge of the genres, and familiarity with the book industry. Also, you can develop long-term partnerships with your translator, which can be incredibly fruitful for your future projects.

Please don’t. While NMT’s provide high quality nowadays, they don’t have a human brain. There are many reasons why you should never rely solely on software, but let me name a few:

1. Subject: Where the English ‘you’ can refer to one person or multiple people, this is not the case with other languages. A software can’t spot this. The algorithm will learn with time, yes, but it will never reach a 100% accuracy.
2. Gender: English doesn’t differentiate between a (fe)male “friend”, “lover”, “client”, but most languages do – again something a software can’t spot.
3. Context: I can give you five different translations for the phrase ‘What’s on your mind?’, depending on the context. The software will always go with the most common translation according to its algorithm.
4. Style: No software will point out close repetitions, therefore can’t remove them or replace them with synonyms.
5. Jokes: Not every joke makes sense in every language. It’s not uncommon I have to come up with something new because an English joke can’t be translated into a German joke.

I can as long as it follows the style guide of the target language. The style guides are the Chicago Manual of Style (US), the University of Oxford Style Guide (UK), and the Duden (DE). They include guidelines on how to use the written word in the according language. Now, as an author myself, I know that it’s important to stay pragmatic here. For example, most style guides don’t allow brackets in novel writing and tell you to replace them with ellipses or em-dashes. However, it’s more and more common for modern novelists to include them as a fun way to express a character’s afterthoughts. You will find editors who accept this, others won’t. So, there is a fine line between following the rules and breaking them.

My point is, I’ve had authors before who had no clue about those style guides and literally broke every single rule, like wrong dialogue tags, fragment sentences without verbs, writing ten “I”-sentences in a row, etc. Basically, they do everything that is frowned upon in the novel writing world with the excuse, “That’s my writing style.” If that’s the case, these things will definitely get lost in translation. Breaking the rules should be an exception, so do this carefully and with purpose. If an author wants to work with me but ignores this, I reserve the right to refuse the project. It’s my job and duty to follow the guidelines, and I can’t do that if the author doesn’t follow theirs.

Of course, no one “reads” those style guides, so don’t be afraid if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Two ways to help you here are writing courses and – way more important – READING. Read as many books in your genre as you can. You should always read more than you write. When you read a lot and get a feel for the voices of different authors, you will iternalize the style guides subconsciously.