This post is an attempt to reach publishers. So that they hear and treat their translations more responsibly.
During my career as a developer, I have bought many different books. Books from various publishers. Both small and large. First of all, large publishing houses that have the opportunity to invest in the translation of technical literature. These were very different books: we all went through or are going through the path of finding ourselves. And all these books had one thing in common: they were translated in such a way that it was impossible to read them. Over time, of course, you get used to both the translation of terms (silently translating to those that are used daily) and the broken style of presentation, which shows that this text is taken from English. However, there is no habit of the price that publishers ask for popular publications.
Publishers are invited to comment.
Let's try to understand what a book is? Let's take a 600-page book, which is something in the middle in the IT publishing market. Printing one copy, based on the price tag of the Chekhov Printing House, which is used by large publishing houses, is 175 rubles. And printing, for example, 2 copies is equal to 000 rubles. Further, if you take a popular book, then its price will be about 350 rubles. Those. the publication will receive (000 - 1) * 500 - 1% = 500 rubles.
But the publishing house has a lot of expenses. Below are my miserable attempts to calculate, but Peter Publishing House came to the comments and explained in more detail. I copy from the comment + link to the comment:
My pitiful efforts
- pay for the warehouse;
- for transportation from the printing house to the warehouse;
- distributor services (as far as I know, about 150 rubles per book ... but this is a fantasy)
- translation and editor services;
- a certain small percentage - the salaries of the entire staff of the publishing house (there are many books, therefore the percentage is small);
Response . There's more , I recommend to read
- You forgot about the payment to the copyright holder/author (advance payment + royalties).
- You incorrectly calculated taxes (underestimated). There is VAT, there are actual taxes.
- You have not taken into account the βrate of turnoverβ, which dictates the requirements for marginality. As you yourself noticed, the book is not published in a month. Circulation is sold not for a month. And the costs from the very start are not very small (advance + administration, which preceded the search, acceptance for publication, obtaining rights). And expenses accompany the book until the sale of the last copy. If publishing does not bring in more income than alternative ways of investing, then why does the publishing house exist?
- If you have a team, then there is an office (offices), where they work at some computers, etc. Their maintenance costs money.
- The assumption that employees' salaries are a small percentage is only relevant if there are really a lot of books. But if there are a lot of them, they inevitably get little attention (which you donβt like). And if there are few books in the work, then the percentage of these expenses cannot be small. In general, this expense item dynamically takes up as much as readers are willing to pay extra for it.
- commercial risk. Not all books sell as planned, which means that at best, not all books make a profit. Moreover, not all books, in principle, are sold out. Naturally, all these risks are calculated and offset by an increase in the price of all published books. Thus, popular books pay for unsuccessful ones.
- The most disastrous point of your calculation is the distributor's commission. It is not fixed 150r. It is not fixed at all. The publishing house ships books in bulk. Nets are put on the shelves at any price that is considered justified. Your calculation results in a ~10% increase in the publisher's price tag. This is very far from the truth (the difference is several times, the increase from the publisher's price can reach 60%, which the wholesaler takes for himself).
Therefore, the exhaust will be, but not fabulous. For example, the accounts will end up with a little more than 500,000 rubles from 2,000 copies. From the point of view of big business, the amount is not that serious. So publishers are starting to save. For example, in the list above, I did not indicate the proofreading by the carriers of the technology about which the book was written. Why? Because publishing houses have given the model βtechnical specialists proofread a book for free, correct it, correct it, and in return they get their last name in small print somewhere where no one reads.β One is a sense of self-importance, the other is cost reduction. Sounds great, if not for one "but".
Publishers don't need our edits.
Not everyone knows, but I have which I write from time to time. It is on github and distributed under a free license. With this work of mine, I applied to two publications (I will not give the names, but their books are on your shelves). For the first time, I tried to apply at an early stage, when it was written by 30 percent. Then, after a long correspondence (about 80 letters), we argued:
- I wanted my own cover, which I ordered from the designer of the Lebedev studio. They are not;
- they wanted me to delete all copies of the book from github. It's impossible, that's why I argued that it's impossible;
- I wanted to reserve the right to separately publish the English version. They imposed a ban, justifying this by saying that if they were approached by an English-language publisher, they did not want to give up the opportunity to make money on it. But they have never been contacted..
I demanded to change the contract, but they did it in such a way that outwardly everything looked as if I could publish in English separately - in another publishing house. But in fact, no. That was the end of the conversation.
I turned to another edition. They asked for the text to be read, I sent it. They rolled out the terms:
- The publication will cost me from 200,000 rubles.
- from 500 copies
- low-density paper (a la newsprint, when the letters show through);
- in the implementation - 45% to me, 55% - to them.
At the same time, the work was checked by their translator. Those. what does it mean?
The publishing house does not have programmers. Instead, there are people who do technical translation. The publishing house does not have programmers in the management. What does this say? That the management does not know what the text is about. All they really care about is sales. There is a person on staff who translates technical literature. He probably ate the dog on this, didn't he? So they trust him, consider him an expert in this field. This person receives a book from some author and compares it with his own experience. Since a stream of books comes to his input + some is in the process, he will not delve into the text much. What they wrote to me:
Quote:Β» This is not a destructor at all, as it might initially seem due to the similarity of declaring finalizers in C # and destructors in C ++. The finalizer, unlike the destructor, is guaranteed to be called, while the destructor may not be called.
Interpreter: The statement βthe destructor in C++ may not be calledβ is complete nonsense (and this is not to mention the use of the reflexive form of the verb, which is inappropriate here).
The discussion of exceptions in the second part is more interesting, but hardly original - Richter's book "CLR via C #" certainly has all this. The promised multithreading is beautifully covered in the book translated by <Publishing House> on this subject.
The author's handling of terminology also does not contribute to the credibility of the book.
But here's another example: literally on one page, three translations of the same term (stack unwinding) are used: unwinding, unwinding and unwinding. How is this to be assessed?
In general, for publication in the form of a book, the material must either be rewritten or carefully edited.
I do not pretend to have a good style, the absence of errors in grammar, spelling. But⦠does the translator analyze errors in the description of the technology? And confidently so, offering to rewrite everything and not thinking that he does not know something. The answer was:
if you do not release the memory from under the object, the destructor will not be called, because there will be a memory leak.
Exceptions are described superficially everywhere, unlike my book.
The author's handling of terminology also does not contribute to the credibility of the book.
This is programmer terminology. Is your expert a .NET developer?
But here's another example: literally on one page, three translations of the same term (stack unwinding) are used: unwinding, unwinding and unwinding. How is this to be assessed?
All three words are actively used.
At the same time, I tried my hand at editing a translation from English into Russian. The text is a typical hell. Both in style and translation of terms. Those. written in Russian, but not in Russian. It is written in English. Familiar? I roll up my sleeves and start to edit. Sometimes in paragraphs. The answer was something like this: why are you doing this? We know better what should be right. Our translator is very good and after him there is no need to look at the style and translation. Just some terms, code listings. You don't have to spend time translating.
How to
Translation into English for me . Here he and his team have a completely different approach. So I have something to compare. He and the second translator bombarded me with questions at first. About inheritance, Wirth tables. methods, about GC. So many questions were asked that I'm sure they both would have passed the .NET programmer interview. Then, over time, the questions became less and less. And at the moment there are almost none. Why? Because they came up with the correct terminology. He recently sent me this:
To say that I was surprised is an understatement. Those. it turns out that translations can be good? π But on one condition: when the editing from the programmer goes along with the translation, and not at the very end, when the publishing house will feel sorry for the time spent.
The editor and programmer-checker should work in parallel with the translation
Conclusions for yourself
Publishing houses do not need high-quality translations into Russian. It's expensive for them. While the programmer subtracts, until he makes a complete editing, until it is agreed with the publisher (disputes for each paragraph), a lot of time will pass. Maybe even a year. During this time, the technology may become obsolete and useless. And the book should be thrown on the shelf right now, while the topic is hot.
On the other hand, the Internet is full of articles. Free articles. And the publisher is losing customers. Especially with a lousy translation. But dear publishers. Why do we buy books?
Personally, I take books because the author of the book, unlike the author of the article, thinks globally. Those. I get a deeper and more thoughtful description of the technology. I personally find it easier to read a book than from a reader or a screen. There is no screen luminosity, you can turn pages. Because I get tired of screens and I want something tactile. Book.
Therefore, dear publishers. Mammoths of typography. Among translators there is a translation order. If a native speaker of the source language translates first, then a native speaker of the target language does the editing anyway. It doesn't seem strange to you. This is logical and seems normal to you. So in the case of IT books, programmers are carriers. And we need to listen. So that later we read your books, and you have an income in the era of blogs and free information.
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Technical translation of the book:
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I take transfers to this day
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I haven't read any translations for a year now.
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I haven't read any translations for two years now.
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I haven't read any translations for four years.
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Haven't read any translations for over five years
175 users voted. 46 users abstained.
About editing
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Editors-programmers should be listened to and trusted. Checking but trusting
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Translators do a good job, programmers are not writers and itβs better not to listen to them
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Your choice (in the comments)
133 users voted. 52 users abstained.
Source: habr.com