Questions tagged [translation]

Questions about changing work from one language to another.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
18 votes
7 answers
8k views

How to address family members solely by relationship in dialogue?

Most English speakers probably just care about You, Mom, Dad, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Grandparents, Great-Grandparents and Ancestors, Children, Grandchildren, etc. That's great... as long as you are ...
5 votes
6 answers
1k views

Software to change American punctuation to British

My apologies if this is off topic. American and British writing have different punctuation styles. Is there any software that can change American style punctuation to British? I am referring to ...
5 votes
2 answers
436 views

Untranslated text with a work being translated

I am translating an academic work (MLA style) which contains a untranslated section by the author. The original work is in Portuguese and the untranslated section is in Spanish. Do I leave the Spanish ...
15 votes
3 answers
2k views

Historical Fiction: using you and thou

Generally speaking, English once used 'you' as the second person plural (equivalent to 'vous' and 'vós') and 'thou' as the second person singular (equivalent to 'tu'). When talking to a person in a ...
5 votes
4 answers
757 views

How to write Arabic in dialogue for an English piece?

I have a character who is a Syrian refugee to Canada. His first language is Arabic, but he's lived in Canada long enough that he's learned English and uses this as his primary spoken language. On ...
9 votes
3 answers
448 views

Naming non-English folklore creatures

I'm working on a novel that involves folklore/mythological creatures from mainly the Norse and Scandinavian myths, but in the world of the novel, there exists beings from all cultures. I wish to write ...
2 votes
2 answers
295 views

Should this introductory quotation be translated, untranslated, or dropped?

When I first wrote "Gawain's Guilt-Girdle" (14 lines of verse) I introduced it with a short (modernized/translated) quotation from the Middle English work Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I think my ...
3 votes
1 answer
121 views

Translation of a Translation

I'm working on my undergraduate thesis in German Studies (I'm in the US), and the paper is written in German using MLA. There's a quote that I would like to use that was originally in German, but I am ...
4 votes
2 answers
265 views

Chants in fictional languages

I plan at several parts of my book to have war chants done in the fictional language of my main race/species. Would it be better to write the chant in their language? Put the fictional language with ...
4 votes
2 answers
201 views

Transcribing a fictional pictograph based language

I'm a fresh pup to this site and I have a bit of a quagmire at my fingertips. My novel takes place in a dystopian future approximately half a century from the modern day. Consumerism and promotional ...
5 votes
3 answers
202 views

For nonfiction books, do you translate or transliterate names, brands, etc. that aren't in a Romanized language?

For nonfiction book translations where the target language does not use the Roman alphabet (e.g. Russian, Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, etc.), if a particular name, brand, band or song title is ...
12 votes
1 answer
460 views

How are multilingual scenes handled when the story's main language is translated into that of its minor one?

Say you have an English book in which there is a particular dialogue where one of a handful of participating characters is speaking French. In this dialogue the fact that he's speaking French is a ...
5 votes
2 answers
363 views

Writing scenes that involve two languages

(I realize there have been similar questions before, such as this and this, but the answers to those unfortunately did not help much with my specific issue.) I have three characters. Sally speaks ...
10 votes
5 answers
804 views

How can I keep my dialogue nuanced and informal without breaking the illusion that the story is a translation (from a fictional language)?

The story I'm writing is in English, but it's set in a constructed world with a range of different languages. The general conceit is that anything the viewpoint character (of which there's more than ...
4 votes
2 answers
2k views

Using a foreign language that uses a different written alphabet

What is the best way to incorporate a different language that uses another alphabet into a fiction manuscript? I am trying to use Russian in an English manuscript, but I don't know if I should use the ...
7 votes
5 answers
540 views

How to handle a pidgin language?

Question: In reference to this question about how to show a foreign language in a manuscript, I am wondering: What is the best way to handle a pidgin language in a manuscript? In a wider sense: How ...
7 votes
6 answers
236 views

Should one blog in a few languages?

Greetings. I've been blogging for a while now and I do it in Russian. But, some of my English-speaking... AHEM "Internet-friends" are unable to read my personal blog, 'cause they're just not familiar ...
6 votes
2 answers
80 views

How should we plan for translations' space needs when designing diagrams that require text?

Our documentation set includes some diagrams where text is integral and can't be handled in callouts, like flowcharts and entity relationship diagrams. Our documentation is translated, so these ...
11 votes
5 answers
899 views

How does one add puns in another language?

Back in college, I took a regular English course that was required for all majors. The teacher just happened to be a grad student in British Literature, so we read a lot of British literature. All the ...
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Can I publish my book in the Russian language with advertising and selling online?

I'm based in the USA. I wrote a book in the Russian language. My book had already been published in Russia - 500 paper copies. Now I would like to republish my book in a digital format and as an ...
0 votes
0 answers
44 views

conversation language translation [duplicate]

If two characters have a conversation one in a foreign tongue the other in english should there ba an asterisk and a translation of foreign language some where else or from the english speaking ...
4 votes
1 answer
103 views

How can we make images with (necessary) text more translatable mechanically?

Our documentation set includes some diagrams, such as entity relationship diagrams and flowcharts, where text is integral and cannot reasonably be handled in callouts. Our documentation is translated ...
6 votes
6 answers
1k views

Can a foreign language novel have English character names?

Situation: My main character is born and raised in a foreign, non-English speaking country. After his 18th birthday he moves due to some circumstances in Great Britain, learns the language and lives ...
9 votes
9 answers
499 views

What's a word for a person who took a very rough story and made it into a book?

I have written a book. Well, actually, my mother-in-law told the story of her experiences as a German forced laborer in the Soviet Union after World War II. This was given in German and recorded ...
9 votes
2 answers
2k views

Can one be a co-translator of a book, if he does not know the language that the book is translated into?

I am translating a religious book from language A to language B and have hired a student worker to help me. He is a native speaker of language A but does not speak language B at all. What I ask him to ...
5 votes
3 answers
202 views

Famous mistranslations - correct them?

Often enough works of literature, particularly old classics, receive renewed translations. Sometimes, the older translation might contain mistakes. And sometimes, the work being an old classic, the ...
2 votes
1 answer
74 views

Translating a rendering in Greek of a word/term/name in a different language into English

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias So I was reading this article on Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias, wondering how the author came up with the name. It basically says that "Ozymandias" is a ...
5 votes
1 answer
5k views

How much does translating a novel cost?

I've read that writers and editors are often paid on a per-word basis. Then I did a search about the cost of translating a literary work into a different language and I've found varying information. ...
4 votes
3 answers
2k views

Do British publishers change US English spelling to British English spelling?

I have read the Red Rising trilogy as paperbacks published by Del Rey, a US publisher. (I bought these books while in the US.) Now being based in Europe, I want to starting buying the follow-up ...
3 votes
1 answer
119 views

Showing the transition of language comprehension change

This is a followup question to What language shall they sing in? I'm writing a middle-grade novel in English with time-traveling kids from 1995 America who go to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. My ...
2 votes
2 answers
124 views

Can you get a work translated into simple modern English published?

I am wondering if you could translate a book from Shakespeare to simple modern English and have it published somehow. As far as I know, you can translate non-English books and have them published, but ...
6 votes
3 answers
483 views

How to indicate that the source language is gender-neutral?

The source language in question is Standard Chinese. It is a gender-neutral language. One big thing that English speakers complain about English is the gendered pronoun, namely the third person ...
12 votes
7 answers
3k views

What language shall they sing in?

I'm writing a middle-grade novel in English. I have time-traveling kids from 1995 America who go to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. None of the kids speak anything but English (aside from a few ...
1 vote
2 answers
53 views

Reversing title and subtitle in foreign edition

I am publishing a book with an American publisher. My contract allows me to make a separate contract with one particular foreign publisher for a translation in his language. That foreign publisher ...
6 votes
6 answers
6k views

Believable (but easy) archaic English

Do you know any "shortcuts" to translating passages of my story into believably sounding archaic English? I mean, without taking a full school course? A crash course? An automatic service? A phrase ...
4 votes
4 answers
2k views

How does one get Fanfiction "Published"?

When the final chapter of "The Legend of the Sword of the Day and the Sword of the Night" was translated to English I kept hearing on the chatroom where it was posted that we had best read it now ...
3 votes
3 answers
371 views

To translate a novel with Westerner's point of view

I am an Easterner. I have been translating a novel, that is originally written in my native language, into English. During the process, I have also been learning about cultural things, meant to ...
5 votes
4 answers
611 views

Audio version of copyrighted written material

I want to do a free daily podcast of the Bible. Would I need permission of the copyright holder of the translation I am reading or would this be considered fair use? Would I need to state the source ...
5 votes
2 answers
392 views

Referring to people in a book

I'm writing a book (travelogue) about Japan, comparing it to Sweden, where I'm from. During my travels I communicated mostly in Japanese but occasionally in English and Swedish. The book is in English ...
13 votes
6 answers
30k views

Are music lyrics copyrighted?

I tried to find copyright information about music lyrics, but it is too confusing, because it is related to the usage. There are lots of websites providing lyrics, but it seems they are somehow ...
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

ISBN and international translations for sale in another country

If I understand the ISBN correctly, if I as a publisher, created a Spanish translation here in the US, but was also selling it in, say, Brazil, do I need a separate ISBN issued from Brazil where the ...
6 votes
1 answer
768 views

Are translated Basho poems copyrighted?

I'm wondering if translated works of ancient poems are in the public domain, or if they're copyrighted by the translators. It would seem like if the author on a given work is listed as "Basho", then ...
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

Footnotes for Translation purposes

I am writing a novel that includes occasional words or phrases in another language. If I use a footnote to provide a loose translation of the word and that same word appears once or twice more on the ...
9 votes
8 answers
5k views

The use of footnotes to translate foreign words in a novel

I'm writing a fantasy novel and one of my characters speaks in English, but sometimes utters single words in an ancient dead language, and I don't want to abusively use that language. For example: ...
8 votes
2 answers
694 views

How many liberties can one take with syntax and grammar rules when writing poetry?

I've begun writing a small fable in verse for my girlfriend, whereas she gets one part of the story for each day before Christmas starting December 1st. She likes it, however she tells me nearly each ...
3 votes
2 answers
869 views

Does the 'writing-style' change when book gets translated into another language?

I am studying the writing style of Leo Tolstoy by reading an English translation of Anna Karenina. As a general rule, do translations affect the original style? In what ways?
2 votes
2 answers
136 views

Describing the face and physiological responses in different languages and peoples

The English language evolves from the English people, and the English people live way up there, away from the equator. So, it is no wonder that the English language will reflect this. He was a tall, ...
6 votes
2 answers
175 views

Is it confusing for English speakers to see mixed tenses in narration?

I translate fanfiction stories from Russian into English as a hobby and I'm a bit confused about tenses. In Russian, it's normal to mix past and present tenses in generally past narration, but I ...
1 vote
5 answers
191 views

Using the grammatically correct way or the casual way to express the same idea in another language?

In casual conversation, it is perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition. How many job applications did you apply to? The grammatically correct way is supposed to be: To how many job ...
2 votes
4 answers
1k views

Is a glossary needed in a novel?

Is a glossary needed in a translated-novel? or I would only need to put the translation of the native words under the brackets?