Friday, March 29, 2013

Lost in Translation

I am not unaware of a huge list of Spanish-language books that have yet to be translated into the English language. Some people in Spain imagine themselves on the cutting edge of Reformed theology and think that we here in America are clamoring to read more of them. I am not saying that every book should not be translated into every other language eventually, but God has no need of translators. Who is your audience anyway? There is also a long list of English language books that never get translated into Spanish for various reasons, especially if they are too politically and culturally American so as to be not that meaningful to people in other countries. Sometimes things just get lost in translation, in other words.

I did translate five books into English from Spanish but only because the publishing company asked and was willing to pay the price for translation and book production. Publishing companies pay several thousand dollars to get a single book to market in their meticulous and quality controlled way so they like to know that the book translated into Spanish is from an author who is very popular and well known to the target audience, the Hispanic market of America, so that at the very least the costs of book production will be covered. Just some local pastor of a sleepy little village in Spain might not be known or heard of in America even if all his friends over there like him very much and highly recommend him.

I am just saying that the poor and under-capitalized translator is only going to do the work if paid and if no publishing company is going to pay then obviously the translator is not a publishing company by virtue of translation of alone. It takes several days, weeks, perhaps even months in some cases, to do a translation job. The rights belong to the author who gets the royalties and the publishing company who leases the rights and gets a commission also on future sales but the translator only gets the one-time translation fee. Thus there is no incentive for the pathetically poor translator to bother with translating books that may or may not sell a half-dozen copies now and then.

Thus there is no reason for some huge publishing company to be beating up on some poor little translator who actually does not know what happened or care that much. I just have no idea.