(no subject)

[the_rck]

Someone I don't know at all has just e-mailed me out of the blue. She's interested in translating my Weiss Kreuz fics into Russian. I'm not against the idea, but I'm also not sure about just giving the project a green light. I know nothing about this person (except that she was polite enough to ask first) and have no way of knowing how good or bad the resulting translation will be. I took half a semester of Russian twenty-five years ago, and that's not even enough to remember the alphabet.

At any rate, has anybody out there ever had their fic translated? What sort of questions should I ask?

Comments

[branchandroot]

I've had people ask to do Russian, German, and Spanish translations. I generally tell them to go for it; I mean, it's not like I'm going to be able to do any of those, not even the Spanish ones, and more accessibility is better. As long as it's clear that a) I'm the author but b) they're the translator, I figure it's good, and anyone who reads it will be able to draw their own conclusions about the relative quality of the original and the translation. *grins* Just like English-language anime fans do. I generally ask for a link to the finished product, but mostly just so I can include the link in my own archive.

[melannen]

I'm with this - I've had fics put into Russian and Chinese, and I just say yes if they ask. So what if it's not the greatest translation, it's better than I could do, and they're doing it for love just like I am! I've asked for a link to the result, but it's mostly so I can brag on my journal that somebody actually wanted to translate me. I also usually ask them to link back to the English original (just in case), but I think most translators will do this without you needing to ask.

For the record, I'm in one fandom that's kind of bilingual - they do a fic fest every year where all the prompts and fics get translated so they're in both English and Russian - and the English translations aren't always the best, but it's easy enough to tell what is the translation and what is the original.

[the_rck]

I'm almost certainly going to say yes. I hesitated and asked for a little time to think (with the warning that I might be offline all this week) just to see if I could come up with any downside to it.

I think I will ask for links. It's kind of amazing that someone wants to bother.

[the_rck]

That's all true. I mainly hesitate because the idea of having my stories translated never occurred to me. I think I'd have a similar reaction if someone wanted to podfic my stuff. I'd hesitate, trying to see if there was a downside.

I'm almost certainly going to say yes. I'm just boggled that anybody wants to do the work of translating my stuff.

[tassosss]

I don't know about what questions to ask, but the fact that she's asking probably means that she really loves your stories and will try to do them justice.

[the_rck]

I am inclined to say yes. I asked her for a week to think about it (since I might be offline that long) just in case I could think of or someone could suggest a downside.

I guess I'm surprised that someone likes my stuff enough to go to this length.

[teldreaming.livejournal.com]

If you're nervous, I'd ask for a look at other stuff she translated or written, and do a Google-translate-glance over the comments if any. Seeing how other native speakers react to her work can give you a better idea of how talented she is as a writer. Russians tend to be much blunter about feedback in general, in my experience.

But really, there's little downside... a lot of Russian fandom is fanfic-bilingual, so you might even attract new English-language readers this way.

[the_rck]

Part of me is thinking that any translation is a complement. I was mainly asking in case anybody could see a downside.

I think I will ask if she's done other translations and maybe poke at them a bit if there are comments. Nobody else is offering to translate my stuff, though, so it may not matter if she's ever done it before or how well she's done.

New readers is generally a good thing.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

I wrote an Interactive Story program, many years ago, and offered it as freeware. The idea is that you read each page of the story, then had two choices for what happens next. You clicked on your choice and were taken to the next page of the story. This repeats until you get to the end of what's already been written -- and then you can write the next chapter. People translated the program into 10 or 20 different languages. I never checked up on it to find out if the translations were any good. I figured my program was entering into new worlds that I wasn't likely to ever travel in, so I just let them translate it and didn't worry about it. That seemed to work okay. It's all been forgotten by now anyway.

For whatever that's worth. :)

[the_rck]

That's neat! I don't recall you ever mentioning it before.

I am inclined to tell this woman to go ahead, just to link to the original and to give me links to the translations. I was having a momentary panic when I first got her message and looking for potential invisible pitfalls. I'm coming to the conclusion that there really aren't any. It's just that my first reaction to something like this is always doubt and anxiety.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

It's happened to me. The oddball piece was that she asked permission, I was slow getting back to her (in that I rarely access my fandom LJ), and she went ahead and did the translation and hoped I didn't mind.

Since my personal feelings are made pretty clear on the interwebs that I feel transformative work should beget transformative work, I didn't mind. For fic, attribution is all I feel is necessary. Not sure what your policy is, might be reasonable to have one/apply a creative commons license to your stuff?

[the_rck]

I should look into a creative commons license. I want to have say over where my stuff is posted, but people are welcome to remix my stuff or to write fics of the fics (or sequels or whatever). I hadn't thought to apply that to translation.

I'm planning to say yes, I think. I just want links back to the English version and would like to know where the translations are posted so that I can link to them from my stories.