Writing in Spanish, publishing in English

ideagirl · Sep 11, 2009

Telstar said:
The OP is not bilingual. There is quite a difference between being very proficient in a second language and being bilingual, which means native in both or almost native in one and native in the other.

So, I say once more that (2) is the best option, with eventually a (paid or not) editor in addition to (before) betas.

The OP's English on this board is better than half the Americans I know, and a translation from scratch--starting with trying to find the right voice in English, after already having found it in Spanish--is harder than just translating the Spanish parts when you already have a decent amount of the book in English and you've already found or at least gotten close to the right voice in English. So my vote remains "write in both language," a.k.a. "try to write in English but switch to Spanish whenever you want (switch back and forth as needed), especially if you hit a wall and want to write with more flow."

KCathy · Sep 12, 2009

ideagirl said:
Writing it in Spanish, having it translated and then selling it in the English-language market is pretty much a non-option, practically speaking. In addition to the very high cost of a quality translation, just finding the right translator is a major task. Literary translation is a very particular art: to be a good translator, it's not enough for the person has to be absolutely bilingual and highly educated (or otherwise possessed of a very broad knowledge base). They also have to be a talented writer. Being able to translate academic articles or marketing pieces is quite different than being able to translate a novel.

So your options are: (1) write it in English, get comments from native-English betas and sell it here; (2) write it in Spanish, translate it yourself, get comments from native-English betas and sell it here; (3) write it in Spanish, sell it in the Spanish market and push your agent to work on selling English rights so your publisher will pay for a good translation; or--and this is probably the best option--(4) try to write it in English but let yourself write parts in Spanish if you just feel like you can't say what you're trying to say in English, and then work on just translating those parts before getting comments from betas and selling it here.

I say (4) is probably the best because I am bilingual myself and in my experience, the most natural thing for a bilingual person is to write in both languages, resorting to the stronger language either when you can't find the right words in language #2, or when you just want to get the story down (i.e. write naturally and quickly) and then fiddle with it later.

Isn't it nice when someone else posts exactly what you were thinking so you don't have to? Now I can meander off into a pointless personal anecdote!

I've done just enough translating to understand how incredibly tricky it is to hold onto meaning while sifting all the slippery words that shape-shift back and forth while you're trying to nail them down. Getting someone else to do that for you without awkwardly wording things or missing the point would require an incredibly gifted translator and might even be harder to do the better your writing is.

I just tried to translate a chunk of Cien Años de Soledad in which Garcia Marquez describes some kind of medical event causing a woman (Remedios, if I'm remembering right) to die when her intestines explode like hot soup? Yeah, that was easy to translate. It sure sounded poetic in Spanish, though.

Your English is obviously fantastic; I'm going to go with writing in Spanish so that you don't risk getting distracted and translating into English yourself because YOU know what the heck you meant by exploding soup guts, followed by beta readers for polish (just like the rest of us typically need anyway).

Good luck!

Writing in Spanish, publishing in English

ideagirl

KCathy

Writer when I grow up