Get Translation Experience
Short post as I have no time: babelcube.com - translate children’s books, cookbooks, novels, etc. send in a request, then do the first 10 pages, if approved you do the whole book. u then get a share of the profits from each copy of the book sold for the next 5 years. if the author accepts your first 10 pages but cancels ur translation later, u get $500 compensation. if they accept ur entire book translation but cancels after, u get $750 compensation. traduzionelibri.it - similar but i think you get a share of the profits forever, and you can also do audiobook recording. on both of these sites, most of the books are in english waiting to be translated to non-english languages. i applied to one swedish-english and one japanese-english novel on babelcube. the swe-eng accepted me within 20min, the jp-eng still hasn’t accepted after a few days.
1. try it even if you don’t think you’re quite good enough to translate a novel. these are indie novels. that means most of the writers are actually really bad, with simple sentences, low vocabulary levels and cliché dialogue.
2. the layout of both of these sites suck and you have to get around some confusing/broken navigation.
3. you shouldn’t translate these books expecting to make an income. instead translate them thinking you’ll A. improve your vocabulary in a foreign language while getting paid to do it, B. build up a portfolio and reputation as a translator you can use to get better jobs later.
4. if you’ve written a book yourself, these seem like a fantastic idea to use (get your book translated to chinese, french, whatever and you don’t have to actually pay any money, you just forfeit some of the translation’s profits!
how to translate fast? if it’s supported for your language, use DeepL. you can get a free trial and just put the whole book in there. the quality of the final translation varies according to language pair, but in my case it make the end result feel like a proofreading job instead of translating
