Whenever I told anyone Spanish that I was a writer, the first thing they asked me was whether my books were available in Spanish. Every time I had to sadly shake my head and say that no, at the moment they were only available in English but that I hoped, sometime in the future, that they would be translated.
When I was still under contract with a vanity publisher, I sent off an email asking them how much they would charge. In no time I had a reply from their translation department. The cost for the translation would be 5200 GBP, but that was not all. Bearing in mind that being a vanity press I had paid them to publish my book originally, they kindly reminded me that translation costs would not cover printing costs. Therefore, they would probably require further thousands of pounds for the privilege of them publishing the Spanish version.
Apart from them not deserving my hard-earned cash, there was the point that I did not actually have thousands of pounds of disposable cash available. So, I politely declined.
However, as time went by, more Spanish people asked me if I could get the books translated, including the local shops that stocked a few English books and even my local mayor.
I therefore, once I had extracted myself from the vanity press contract, looked into other ways of getting text translated. Google Translate, although they professed that you could translate your whole book with them, I somehow thought this would not be a good idea. I had seen some of the howling mistakes that they sometimes made!
The next idea was to search out individual translators that advertised online. Once again, I found that a book with my number of words would cost between 5 – 6,000 GBP. I despaired of finding a way to affordably translate “A Woman Scorned” and “O What a Tangled Web!”
Meanwhile, there was a lot of press about AI and how it could be used in writing. I was horrified at the idea, as writing is an art, and comes from within the author, surely AI could not replicate it.
Then I found out about another online translation service called Deepl, which uses AI to translate. That I could deal with as they were not writing or creating, merely translating. If you wish to translate large texts, like a book for instance, then you have to pay for the premium service, whilst a few random translations through the day, are free.
Well, I thought, if I could be patient and only translate the maximum amount allowed per day, eventually I could get the entire text translated. Okay, it took a while, and also, I was a little bit sneaky and logged in using my husband’s email, thereby getting twice as much done in a day.
Once finished, I sent it to my digital marketer, Libélula Marketing Digital, for her to check through and see if it was a good translation. Unfortunately, whilst most of it was okay, there were certain phrases and words that were not the best to be used. So, I thought again and finally produced a solution that worked.
When I publish my books on Amazon Kindle, I use experts who sell their digital products on a service called Fiverr. The ones I use continually are one to justify the A4 text written in Word to be compatible for publishing as paperbacks and e-books and another to resize the cover to fit the paperback.
I therefore wondered if I could find someone to check my Spanish translation, and there surely was. So, for $100 (a little less than previously quoted) my text was checked and corrected.
This time, after running past Libélula, I got a thumbs up! Then it was all systems go, translations checked, text justified, cover re-sized, book 1 “Una Mujer Despreciada” - A Woman Scorned - was published on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple Books. Then I repeated the process for book 2. “Que Telaraña Tan Enredada” - O What a Tangled Web! – and it was also prepared and published.
Now, every day I am reading aloud to practice a speech in Spanish that I shall be giving in my local bar where my Spanish books are being presented, how cool is that?
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