Adventures in Translations

Well, hello there,

It’s a new month and time for a new check-in. Where have things been lately? It’s been a busy month for sure.

In August, the audiobook launched for Dead Station on Amazon Audible. It has done well, giving a new level of access for people to enjoy the story. Getting all that set up and going took some effort.

Also, I took a deep dive into the world of translation. There were some mixed results in that front. Doing some translation work on Dead Station was something that I wanted to explore. I wanted to expand the story to a more international audience. Translation is a whole thing when it comes to writing. Of course, there are a ton of services that people use for this kind of thing. After conducting extensive research on the topic, I settled on a service named Shadow Scribe AI. The idea here is that Amazon lets you release your book in different Amazon marketplaces such as Amazon Germany, Amazon Spain, Amazon France, and so on.

Almost all of the services that I could find for translation had levels of service. The highest level of service was having a human translator. The middle level of service involved an AI language tool doing the translation and then having a human review it. The lower level of service used an AI language model to do the work and hoped for the best. I opted for the middle level of service, and so far, have received mixed results. Let me caveat this by saying that doing this work with human-only translation is very, very expensive. Of course it is… My author business is a pretty small operation, so I don’t have tons of money to blow on translation.

I did multiple translations of Dead Station and VEHO, the backstory. I had both stories translated into German, Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. The book was released in each of the target markets. I went with these markets and translations because all available information indicated these were the best markets for the Amazon Kindle platform performance.

As far as translations go, my German translation is by far the most successful. After creating a marketing campaign on Facebook and focusing on Germany and Austria, the book is performing well and has received positive reviews. My Spanish translation has been met with mixed reviews and is doing just a little better than breaking even. The French translation has not been well reviewed (Gotta love the French), but it has held its own in sales and is positive in revenue. The Brazilian Portuguese translation is the newest one I have launched, but it is underperforming right now. We will see what the future holds for it.

I am glad I went through that experience; it was another learning experience that I got to work through, and as always, I enjoy that.

It did pull me away from working on the follow-up to Dead Station for almost a month. I am now 37,000 words into that story, and I am shooting for 80,000 words in the first draft. I am moving along pretty well so far, even with taking almost a month off from it. Right Now, the Working Title is Tressell 113: A Military Zombie Apocalypse Space Opera Humanity Shattered Book 2. I know, it's a long title, but necessary for Amazon search.

The story picks up just a matter of days after the Dead Station. It follows what happens when the team heads to the colony planet Tressell 113. Writing the opening sequence was such a blast. I am trying to be a little more intentional about following my outline this time around. So far, so good, there might be something to this planning thing… My goal is still to release this second novel before the end of the year, and I'm on track so far.

Shamon

P.S. The image is concept art for the second book’s cover.