Joy Matkowski wrote:
> 1. We USians are at fault for being English-only. If
I weren't
> linguistically incompetent, I could go to amazon.de,
etc., the way I go to
> amazon.uk (although I encountered some language
barriers there, too).
You hit the nail on the head, Joy. Time to take that French
class I've been meaning to take. If the mountain won't come
to Mohammed......
>
> 2. From what I've heard novelist acquaintances say,
the income they get from
> their books is peanuts.
Well, I don't know who your acquaintances are but most of the
novelists I know are getting quite a few peanuts. Certainly
not what they deserve (in most cases), but enough to do the
math and realize that a translation could easily be factored
in to the advance a publisher paid a good foreign author and
the publisher would still come out ahead if the book found an
audience. Since the U.S. publishers don't buy a lot of
foreign product that would make this a buyer's market for
them, thus making it easier to lowball the writer in
question. You know, just like they do here.
> Translating isn't cheap, and you probably
couldn't
> get a good (above Babelfish level) translator to
work on a possible
> percentage sometime in the future, the way writers
do.
You're right there. I doubt they work on spec the way writers
do.
TL, who just can't seem to shut up on the subject.
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