Recently, it seems to some that such a “conservative” source of information as a book is beginning to lose ground and lose relevance. But in vain: despite the fact that we already live in the digital age and generally work in IT, we love and respect books. Especially those that are not just a textbook on a specific technology, but a real source of general knowledge. Especially those that will not lose their relevance six months later. Especially those that are written in good language, well-translated and beautifully designed.
And you know what turned out? There are no such books.
Either - either - either. But this wonderful book, which combines everything that a thinking and practicing specialist appreciates, is not there.
So we decided that it should be. And not just one - there should be many such books. We decided and opened our own publishing house ITSumma Press: perhaps the first publishing house in Russia created by an IT company.
A lot of effort, time and money was spent. But the day before the conference we received a pilot edition and held the first book we published in our hands (the entire edition was presented to the conference participants in the end). Incredible feeling! You never know in advance where your craving for beauty may eventually lead you. The first book, for obvious reasons, was a kind of trial balloon. We needed to feel the whole process of book publishing ourselves, to understand what we can bring right away, and what we will need to think about more. And in the end we were very pleased with the result. This is an important business that we want to continue and develop. And in this text, I just want to tell you how it all began, how we argued about the name, how we concluded an agreement with, no less than O'Reilly themselves, and how many editings need to be done before giving the text to the production of the printing house.
"Mom, I'm an editor now"
In the second half of last year, we received an unusual letter: a large publishing house invited us, as experts in our field, to write an introductory word for a book about Kubernetes that they were going to release. We were flattered by the offer. But having looked through the working copy of the book, which was about to be prepared for publication, we were greatly and not very pleasantly surprised. The text was in a state very far from the "release". It was translated... as if with the help of a Google translator. Complete confusion in terminology. Inaccuracies, factual and stylistic. And finally, just complete seams with grammar and even spelling.
To be honest, we were not very comfortable signing under such an unprepared text. On the one hand, a desire immediately arose to offer help with proofreading and editing, on the other hand, yes, many of our employees have spoken at various industry conferences more than once, but still, preparing a report and editing a book are not the same thing. However ... we became interested in trying ourselves in a new business and we decided on this little adventure.
So, we received the text and set to work. A total of 3 proofreadings were carried out - and in each we found something uncorrected last time. The main conclusion that we made as a result of all this is no, not the need for multiple editing, but that it is impossible to know for sure how many books are published in Russia without it. The fact is that low-quality translations work exactly against the purpose for which books are published in general - to gain knowledge. No one would like to buy expired yogurt, and even with an incorrectly indicated composition. How is nutrition for the mind different from nutrition for the body? And how many of these books probably end up on the shelves of stores and then on the tables of specialists, bringing them not new knowledge, but the need to verify the correctness of what is stated in practice? Making, perhaps, mistakes in this process that could have been avoided if the book were of really high quality.
Well, as they say, if you want to do something well, do it yourself.
Where to start?
First of all, to be honest: we are - yet - not ready to write books ourselves. But we are ready to make good quality translations of interesting foreign books and publish them in Russia. We ourselves are actively interested in the development of technology (which is not surprising), we read a lot of relevant literature, quite often in the format of paper publications (but this may surprise someone). And each of us has our own set of such books that we would very much like to share with others. Therefore, we did not experience a lack of material.
What is important: we can focus not on books of general demand, but on highly specialized, but interesting books that "big" domestic publishing houses will not be interested in translating and publishing.
The first book chosen was one of those published in the West by the O'Reilly company: many of you, I'm sure, have already read their books, and certainly everyone has at least heard about them. Contacting them wasn't the easiest thing to do, but it wasn't as difficult as one might expect. We contacted their Russian representative and talked about our idea. To our surprise, O'Reilly agreed to cooperate almost immediately (and we were in the mood for many months of negotiations and a number of transatlantic flights).
“Which book do you want to translate first?” asked the Russian representative of the publishing house. And we already had an answer ready: since we previously translated a series of articles about Kafka for this blog, we are following this technology. Just like for publications about her. Not so long ago, Western O'Reilly released a book by Ben Stopford on designing event-driven systems using Apache Kafka. This is where we decided to start.
Translator and "interpreter"
We decided to solve everything around the New Year. And they planned to release the first book by the spring conference Uptime Day. So the translation had to be, to put it mildly, in a hurry. And not only with him: the production of the book includes editing, the work of a proofreader and illustrator, the layout of the layout and the printing of the edition itself. And these are several teams of contractors, some of which had to be immersed in IT topics beforehand.
Since we have experience in translation activities, we decided to handle it on our own. Well, at least try. Fortunately, our colleagues are versatile, and one of them, the head of the systems administration department Dmitry Chumak () - a linguist-translator by first education, besides, in his spare time he is engaged in the development of his own Computer-Assisted Translation service "". And another colleague, PR manager Anastasia Ovsyannikova (), also a professional linguist-translator, lived abroad for several years and is fluent in the language.
However, 2 chapters later, it became clear that even with the help of Tolmach, the process takes so much time that either Nastya and Dima need to change positions in the staff list to “translators”, or they need to call someone for help: work fully in the main direction and devoting 4-5 hours a day to translation was unrealistic. Therefore, we brought in the main translator from outside, leaving the editing and, in fact, the work of releasing the book itself.
Thousand Little Things and Red Cursor
We were so inspired by the idea of promoting knowledge to the masses that we forgot and were not ready for many important little things. It seemed to us that he translated, typeset, printed an edition, and that's it - reap the laurels.
For example, everyone knows that you need to get an ISBN — we knew too and did it quickly and smoothly. But what about those small numbers next to the incomprehensible abbreviations UDC and LBC that stand in the corner of all the title pages? This is not a test of your vision, like at an appointment with an optometrist. These are damn important numbers: they help librarians quickly find your book even in the darkest nooks and crannies of the Lenin Library.
Copies to book chambers: we knew that the book chamber of the Russian Federation requires a copy of each published book. But they did not know that in such quantities: 16 copies! From the outside it may seem: a little. Knowing how many sleepless nights of editors and tears of a typesetter cost the result, our editor-in-chief asked me to convey that she could not stay within the normative vocabulary when she was packing an 8-kilogram parcel to Moscow.
The regional book fund also needs to give copies for storage and accounting.
In general, few people in the regions have enough resources to publish books: they are mainly printed in Moscow and St. Petersburg. And so in the book chamber of the Irkutsk region we were greeted with enthusiasm. Among the collections of fairy tales of local writers and legends about Baikal, our scientific and technical publication looked ... rather unexpected. We were even promised to nominate our book for the 2019 Book of the Year regional award.
Fonts. The office turned into a battlefield when it came to how the headings in our book should look. ITSumma is divided into two camps. Those who are for "serious, but with such small ponytails on the tips" Museo. And those who are for the "florid, with zest" Minion. Our lawyer, who loves everything strict and official, ran around with surprised eyes and suggested “Let's get everything in Times New Roman zafigachim”. In the end… we chose both.
Logo. It was an epic battle: our creative director Vasily was arguing with the executive director Ivan about the logo of our publishing house. Ivan, an avid reader of paper books, brought 50 copies of different publishers to the office and clearly demonstrated the importance of size, color and, in sum, the concept of the logo on the spine. His expert arguments were so convincing that even a lawyer believed in the importance of beauty. Now our red cursor is proudly looking up into perspective and proving that knowledge is the main vector.
To print!
Well, that's all. As I already wrote, we took the pilot edition to Uptime Day and presented the speakers and authors of the best questions to the reports. We received the first feedback, a request “fill in the order form on the site already, we want to buy” and some set of thoughts on how, at our first glance, a good book can be made even better.
First, there will be a glossary in the next edition: as I said, unfortunately, publishers of books on IT topics do not maintain uniformity in terminology. The same concepts are translated in different books in completely different ways. We want to work on the standardization of professional vocabulary and on the fact that you don’t have to go to Google for terms that are incomprehensible at the first reading, but you can clarify by simply scrolling to the end of our book.
Secondly, there are also terms that have not yet entered the common vocabulary. We will work on their translation and adaptation into Russian with special care: new terms need to be clearly, clearly, concisely translated into Russian, and not just a calculation (such as "retail", "user"). And it will be necessary to provide them with a link to the original English wording - for a period until the localization becomes universally recognizable.
Thirdly, 2nd and 3rd editions are not enough. Now the fourth iteration is underway, and the new edition will be even more verified and correct.
What is the outcome?
The main conclusion: everything is possible if you really want it. And we want to make useful professional information accessible.
Creating a publishing house and releasing the first book in just 3 months is difficult, but real. Do you know what was the most difficult part of the process? - Come up with a name, or rather, choose from a variety of creative options. We chose - maybe the least creative, but the most suitable: ITSumma Press. I will not give here a long list of options, but some of them were very funny.
The next book is already in the works. In the meantime, you can read briefly about our first book and, if it interests you, pre-order at . If you have in mind some special book that Russian-speaking publishers have neglected, then write about it in the comments: perhaps we will eventually see eye-to-eye and translate and release it!
Source: habr.com