Translation: before or after?

Your English is better than that of most Americans. Try to translate them yourself, then find a native speaker to tweak the idiom, and you'll save time and money.

Boa sorte.

That's a good question and one I've thought of myself. I have pondered translating my own MG book and then trying to find an American agent - when I finally have some time...

I agree with LeonardK do the rough translation yourself than find somebody to smooth the text out.

The only disadvantage of going this way is you may have fund the translation out of your own pocket. Still I am sure you can find somebody with reasonable rates.

nvf said:

I believe that the final result would be much better if some Portuguese-English translator read the books in the original language, understood them, and than translated them to English. I think that doing a good translation is almost as difficult and important as the original writing itself.

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I agree. I work in the translation department of a language services company. You're going to want a translator who can spend some time getting acquainted with your work and your use of language. And you'll definitely want somebody who specializes in literary translations. It'll be a little hard to find a person like that, as many translators do contracts, legal documents, certificates, manuals, and so forth, and aren't very familiar with literary work. Your translator will need to be nearly as good a children's book writer in English as you are in Portuguese. But it seems like your English skills are good enough that you'll be able to tweak the translation as necessary once you get it back from the translator.

Good luck with it! And congrats on being published in your native land.

I write my books in English and then do a rough translation into German, I then get someone who knows me really well (my husband) to work with me on the proper translation - we do it together. Okay, in my case we're only talking of up to 3000 words so it's not like it takes weeks and weeks but I really believe that it's helpful to be part of the translation process especially if, as in my case, the writing is humorous and not easy to translate into a rather "serious" language.

Definately try the translation yourself first. Even if the language isn't exactly spot on your translator will get a good idea of where you're going and how you want to express something. I also think that your "voice" as a writer will come through better.

Cath

You're right, DON'T DO THE TRANSLATION YOURSELF, at least not by yourself. Get a professional 'literary' translator and always keep in contact in case you need to explain something

I'm a professional translator, and I've been asked many times to "improve" the quality of translations done by non-natives or non-professionals. I never accept those projects, ever; simply because "correcting" them takes more time than doing the translations from scratch--I learned that early in my career.

This is particularly true with literary translations. You're a writer, so you know that writing literature is nothing like writing a business newsletter for instance. Literary translators are usually writers themselves, so they know that literary works have many different levels.

About being a non-native, let me give you an example. English is not my native language--I [SIZE=-1]started learning [/SIZE]English when I was 7, but when I was studying Journalism in the United States, I always used to get the highest grades in English (composition, grammar, etc) but then, I would make a massive mistake that not even the most illiterate native speaker would make, and most important, as a non-native speaker of English, my constructions, though grammatically correct, don't always sound natural.