How Will You Preserve My Voice, Nuances, and Other Complex Elements?

Finding the balance between technical accuracy and artistic beauty is my favorite part of translating books! Accuracy is obviously extremely important. Essential details must be perfectly preserved so as to maintain the integrity of your story and/or message. But accuracy is the bare minimum of what is needed for a good translation.

Your book is not a bland instruction manual on how to assemble a piece of furniture or solve a math problem. Instead, it's a reflection of you, what's in your heart, the creative beauty in your mind, your personality, your humor, your hopes and fears. You've poured your soul into your book and you need a translator who will treat it as if it were their own.

Your unique rhythm, tone, word choices, sentence structuring, and use of irony or subtle cultural references set your book apart and must be preserved during the translation process. I want your English-speaking readers to have the same experience as your Italian readers. I want them to feel the same emotions, laugh at the same jokes, and be just as enthralled by the twists and turns.

This is why, in addition to accuracy, a good translation requires a great deal of intuition and creativity. It's one thing to get all the words and expressions technically correct. It's quite another to re-create the same experiences, feelings, and impact for an entirely new audience. 

As a translator, I don't just read your words, I feel how they feel in Italian, and I re-create that feeling in English. I rely not only on my extensive "technical" knowledge of Italian, but also heavily on my intuition which I have been cultivating since learning Italian in 2000, spending years in Italy, and translating Italian professionally since 2005.

To achieve this highest possible level of translation quality, you and I must work also together as a team. If you simply want to send your book to someone and receive the translation back in a few weeks as a simple transaction, I'm not the translator for you.

If, instead, you want someone who will ask you questions about the more complex and nuanced parts of your book and offer you multiple options, please contact me. If you want someone who will explain in detail what subtle changes need to be made to resonate with an English-speaking audience, and give you an option to approve or modify these changes, I'm the translator for you!

Here's a breakdown of my process:

1. I ask you to send me a detailed message about your book. I'm curious about the plot or message, of course, but what I'm really looking for is how you feel about it. Why is it so important to you? What do you want your readers to think and feel as they read it? What do you believe is your unique style and voice that set you apart from other writers?

2. I take this information and begin to analyze your writing. I look at things like:

• Is your overall tone more formal or casual? (Or maybe it depends on which character is speaking.)

• How do you structure your sentences and paragraphs?

• Are there any recurring themes that I need to be sure to capture?

• Do you use irony, and if so, how subtle or blatant is it?

• Are there any cultural references or subtleties that I will have to modify so as to make them understandable to an English-speaking reader?

3. We decide on an appropriate frequency of communication. Some authors prefer once a week, or once every other week. Others prefer after every chapter, or every other chapter. For these communications, I use a simple template that looks like this:

• Words translated since the last update: This allows you to keep track of how far along we are in the process.

• Questions: Sometimes there is an ambiguity in Italian that is not present in English, which often gives us several options. My questions often have to do with working with you to find the best possible option. Or if there's a wordplay or joke in Italian that doesn't make sense when translated into English, I will offer you some options. These questions require a response from you, but they're never urgent. (I'm sure you're busy!) I will continue translating even without a response, and because I'm a very organized person, I'll be able to easily go back and make any changes once you've responded.

• Comments: Unlike the Questions section of my updates, my comments do not require a response, although you're always welcome to respond if you'd like! My comments usually have to do with explaining punctuation, formatting, or grammar choices that are specific to English that might initially seem a little odd to you as an Italian. My clients often love the comment section as it helps them learn new aspects of English writing or interesting cultural references!

4. I also send my draft translation along with this template. This gives you plenty of time to review my translation and/or have someone else review it for you. You'll have frequent opportunities to ask any questions, suggest changes, or provide any additional clarifications about your text.

5. After I've completed the entire translation, I devote another week or two (depending on the length of your book) to rereading everything from beginning to end and making any necessary changes. There's no additional cost for this. This is simply because I take pride in my work and want everything to be perfect for you.

As far as payment, we will establish a plan together before the work commences. We often split the book into four equal parts. In this scenario, you will send a quarter of the payment after I deliver a quarter of the translation. In other words, you do not have to pay upfront, but only after receiving an agreed-upon portion of the translation.

I know it can be scary to trust someone you meet on the internet, so I hope this process reassures you that there is no risk. If you don't receive the translation, you don't pay. By the end of our collaboration, I'm confident that you'll be 100% satisfied with the outcome and excited to publish the English version of your book!

See the next article: What Should I Look for in a Sample Translation?