What I Wish I Had Known Before My First Book Translation
This week, I have just completed the first book translation of my life. The book is about self-development and psychology. It will be on sale in a few months!
My task was to translate the 300-page book from English to Thai — my native tongue. I started translating in August 2019. So, it took me about 5 months to complete. While this article is for all the Thai translators out there who are about to get started on their first book, it is also applicable to translators of other languages too.
In retrospect, here are things I wish I had known before I started my first book translation.
1. Focus!
As a 27-year-old freelancer, hustling was in my nature. I got a lot of things going on in my life: public speaking coaching, tutoring, running a high school drama program, and more. However, after I began translating the book, I soon realized that the juggling was killing me. Translation requires a deep focus and at least 8 hours a day. It is time-consuming and requires great attention to detail. I had to use every part of my brain for analyzing and understanding the source text, choosing the right words in Thai, making it look and sound natural to Thai readers, reviewing my work for mistakes, not to mention all the punctuation. Soon enough, translation became a full-time job in itself. A few months into the translation, I had to drop everything else and stay focused.
Before you start a book translation, make sure you clear all the other tasks on your timeline first. Keep in mind also the financial sustainability of this path. Then, instead of worrying about the myriad of “other things I have to do,” you will be able to happily focus on your translation!
2. Solitude
Are you ready to shut yourself off from the world?
I am not suggesting that you live like a hermit for five months as you get your first book done. Instead, what I propose is that you put your phone away or in silent mode when you work. The flooding of social media can disrupt your train of thoughts and slow you down.
When I was working on the translation, I found it hard to make time to meet with friends. I greatly enjoyed the translation so I felt immersed in the process. As it is a highly immersive process, I spent a lot of my energy on it. Thus, at the end of the day, I didn’t have enough energy left to socialize with a lot of people. Also, I was constantly worried about making sure I finished the work on time too. Sadly, I had to turn down many invites to social events around the town.
3. Ask for More Time!
“You don’t know what you don’t know.”
For newbies, estimating the completion time can be the hardest thing as it is your first time translating a book. For myself, I thought I needed 4 months. Instead, it took me almost 6 months to complete the book. Admittedly, had I focused way early on and devoted a full-time commitment to the book, I might have been able to finish the translation in 4 months.
Make an Excel sheet tracking the amount of time required for each translation project you have completed in terms of word numbers or pages. This will greatly help you estimate your speed. Also, consider the content of the work. For me, subject matters such as psychology (which is plenty in this book, by the way) are way harder than anecdotal stories. Take into account that you should take a break every one to two hours — go eat, walk around, and move your body. Don’t forget that you will encounter other distractions too, like kids, cats or parents.
After 4 months in, I had no option but to ask for more time. It was not ideal to ask for an extension, but the publisher should understand that it’s normal for newbies to take as much as 6 months to finish.
4. Review, Review, Review
After a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, I completed my first draft of translation 5 months into the project! As a golden rule, all translators should review their work three times before they submit the work to the publisher.
The first round is for correcting your own work. It is also the most time-consuming and seemingly tedious round. I was bored to death at the beginning of the first round. In this round, you compare your work and the original text sentence by sentence. My sleepiness turned into a shock when I discovered how many sentences I missed and the numbers I typed wrong. I missed a WHOLE paragraph once!! This glaring mistake would have been inexcusable to the publisher and you may get blacklisted for being sloppy. (Yes, translators get blacklisted by publishers.) The first round is when you clear up these easy mistakes. It took me over one month to complete the first round.
The second round is when you read your own work as a reader. Take off your translator hat and put on a bookworm hat! Read your work as you would your favorite book. Read on a couch, read on your iPad, read with your cat on your lap. Put the original text away. The mission of this round is to read Thai like a Thai. If you come across any weirdly farang-sounding sentence structure or grammar, you fix them in this round. You should also “beautify” the wording. I used Klangkam (which means Thesaurus) by Dr. Nawawan Panthumetha — a wonderful reference that contains words in a wide range of categories and sample sentences. Now, I know how to say “determination” in seven Thai words, thanks to Klangkam. It took me two weeks to complete the second round.
After the second round, you should send your work to another trusted reader.
The third round is very similar to the second round. I only began the third round after I received the feedback from my reader. Read on.
5. Get a Reader!
After the second round of review, I am sure you would be as tired as I was. The worst thing is: I could almost remember every page and sentence. I could not see my own mistakes anymore. I was at risk of glancing over my errors and blind spots. I needed someone with a fresh perspective to help read my work and provide constructive feedback.
Luckily, my translation teacher was able to be my reader. The feedback I got from him was invaluable. For example, I used some millennial slangs unknowingly. However, the author of the book is already 65-year-old. As the book is narrated in the first-person narrative, the adolescent slang seemed out of place. My teacher was able to easily point that out.
Other comments are equally valuable. He shared the comments with the Translator and Interpreter Association of Thailand (TIAT) community here.
6. Type All Proper Nouns in the Original Language!
The biggest comment I got from my teacher/reader is the inconsistent spellings of proper nouns.
Proper nouns are very tricky. In a 300-page book like this book, there are plenty of people and places. In fact, there are at least 300 proper nouns. How do you spell Massachusetts or Mark Zuckerberg in Thai? How do you make sure that every time the Northeastern state and the billionaire wunderkind is mentioned, their names are spelled the same way?
My answer is: Type all the proper nouns in the original language first. In this case, I should have typed them in English even though I wrote my translation in Thai. Then, create a spreadsheet of the proper nouns. For each noun, add its transliteration spelling (e.g. Massachusetts is แมสซาชูเซตส์ in Thai). Lastly, when you are done with the Thai translation, click “Search” in your Word document and choose “Replace” with the Thai translation.
I wish I had known this earlier. Instead, I translated each name each time recalling from my memory. As a result, during the review, I had to go back to each name and make sure it is correct. It was a painfully mind-numbing experience…I wish I had got the spreadsheet done first!
The publisher is very adamant that I spell the proper nouns consistently. It is excruciatingly hard for the editor to fix misspellings for the same reason above.
For names of countries and the US states, I referred to the Royal Society of Thailand (ROYIN) Dictionary guide (ชื่อภูมิศาสตร์สากล).
Likewise, I also followed the ROYIN transliteration techniques (หลักเกณฑ์การทับศัพท์ภาษาอังกฤษ).
7. Put Yourself in a Thai-language Environment
I actively put an effort into speaking and reading Thai as much as I can.
Being a US-university graduate, I had found it easier to express myself in English. Even when I spoke Thai, I sprinkled English words here and there. Especially with conceptual terms, English was my to-go language.
My outlook changed after I started taking translation classes with the Translator and Interpreter Association of Thailand. I re-discovered the beauty and depth of the Thai language. Most of the time, one can always find a Thai word that can capture the essence of a foreign word. The Thai word is often more concise too.
Here are some of the Thai novels I read to level up my Thai:
- นิราศภูเขาทอง (และนิราศอื่น ๆ) โดยสุนทรภู่ (Journey to Phukaotong by Sunthorn Phu)
- นิทานเวตาล พระนิพนธ์ในพระราชวงศ์เธอ กรมหมื่นพิทยาลงกรณ์ (Baital Pachisi)
- ระบำชีวิต แปลโดยเสาวณีย์ นิวาศะบุตร (Zoya by Danielle Steel)
- ไผ่แดง โดยม.ร.ว. คึกฤทธิ์ ปราโมช (Phaidaeng by Mom Kukrit Pramoj)
- And of course… I re-read my childhood favorite series: แฮร์รี่ พอตเตอร์ แปลโดยสุมาลี และงามพรรณ เวชชาชีวะ (Harry Potter by JK Rowling)
Reading great literary works considerably helped with my vocabulary and Thai sentence structure, which is very different from English.
The translation books which prove indispensable for my work are:
- การแปลให้เก่ง คู่มือนักแปลมืออาชีพ โดยผ่องศรี ลือพร้อมชัย (วัชรวิชญ์)
- เคล็ดวิชาแปล ศิลปะการแปลบันเทิงคดี (Art of Translation) โดยครูหนอน
During the translation process, I listened to the THAITIAT class recordings again and again. It helped refresh what I learned. As I listened to the recordings, I caught myself writing down notes to improve my translation on the spot.
During the process, I sometimes felt disheartened. Some paragraph was challenging. The review was very tedious. I had to decline family trips for fear of missing the deadline. However, like a golfer whose eyes are on the hole, I reminded myself that eventually I would get to see the book with my name as a translator on sale in bookstore shelves.
This book is my first time. The advice is something I learned along the process. I hope that it is helpful to you too.