donjohannes
New Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- Austria - Santiago (1998)
Liechtenstein - Jerusalem (via Russia, Armenia etc) - and back (2013-2014)
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So I'm not looking for kind words but your brutal assessment of the translated text:
Mountains, by all means, pilgrimages, some! I began by perusing your maps with great interest! On your map, I noted a number of pilgrim sites that I have hiked to. One such glorious place was up to Serles. Though, I must confess, I did not make it by sunrise! We descended to your destination, the Mariawaldrast, (run by the Servites), and one of Austria’s oldest pilgrimage sites dedicated to the Virgin Mary. So at different times we have shared sacred soil and your experience is of great interest to me.1) Readability. I like it - but I would say it is in ‘well educated English’. Not much you can do about that if you are, indeed, well educated - but it’s not to everyone’s taste.
2) flow. Fine. There is the odd conjunction or preposition missing. I think I spotted two.
3) linguistic soundness. Fine,
4) content: captivating/boring. Well I got through the two pages! I’d read it.
5) how likely you etc.
1) Readability. I like it - but I would say it is in ‘well educated English’. Not much you can do about that if you are, indeed, well educated - but it’s not to everyone’s taste.
2) flow. Fine. There is the odd conjunction or preposition missing. I think I spotted two.
3) linguistic soundness. Fine,
4) content: captivating/boring. Well I got through the two pages! I’d read it.
5) how likely you etc. 8
@Marbe2
thanks for the feedback. There might be some things I have discussed in PMs that have not yet been mentioned in the thread. Here is the gist of it:
Because the book is 448 pages (in that particular format at least - with all the images) I could not even think of doing a manual translation (time!) nor shelling out the 10,000 € it would likely cost to pay a professional translator. Using DeepL (machine translation) as a basis - may very well have opened some doors where previously there were none. Because that is what you are reading: a machine translation of the published German text (which I confess, as most of my writing, is pretty flowery) with a first edit (fixing mistakes, probably adding new ones and making some adjustments - sorry the " got messed up when transfering the text into Indesign). Unfortunately I simply do not have time for a re-write. But with the feedback generally favorable, I will chip away at that first edit over then next month or two in my free time and then pay an editor to polish it to the degree my budget allows.
Unless a publishing house throws itself at me, I would offer it as a cheap (5-7€) or even free ebook (depending on how much the editor ends up asking). The ebook would be availbale in the usual file formats, but I would provide an additional PDF version for those who appreciate the images and don't mind giving up the flexibilty of the free flowing text that comes with ebook reader files.
Some here have already asked about possible hard copies. Hard copies are wonderful. If a publisher is interested, and the "448-page hard cover in full color" would come with a reasonably low price tag for the reader, then I'm open to the idea. The "reasonable price tag" was the reason I have self published in the past. I did not want a reader to pay 60 € for a two volume set of my Jerusalem books (who would pay that?!). I was able to print and distribute them at half that price while retaining full creative control. Naturally self publishing comes with a caveat. Printed books in color with that kind of page count, only start to have a reasonable production cost when you print 2,000 copies or more. That is not only a significant investment, but also a commitment. You will need to sell a lot of them to break even. Being fortunate enough that I'm frequently booked for large venues (when there is no virus) in the German speaking countries, I've had no difficulty selling multiple editions of my books directly peer to peer (which is well, as I don't do amazon anymore and the shipping costs of a 2,4 pound hard cover are exorbitant precluding book sellers outside Austria). Anyway. The problem with an Englisch language book is simple: I cannot market them directly. So, hard copies in my case would require the support of a publisher. Print on demand is no workaround here as it would result in exorbitant prices for the kind of book we are talking about. So for now, hard copies are not on the table. That said, not even digital copies exist as of yet, so I better get back to work ;-)
Thanks for the reply. I will start in England and plan to do the French leg to Great St. Bernard Pass in the first summer (either 2021 or 2022) and then the Italian leg the following summer. I haven't seen your previous videos, so have some catching up to do (from reading the posts above).@Rex
Thank you. I think you already got to look at the updated version, in which I have started to integrate some of the valuable suggestions by the kind people here and eliminated at least some of the punctuation problems and mistakes.
All the best for the VF! Are you starting in England or Lausanne? I only know the southern part between Lake Geneva and Rome as I walked it backwards on my way home from Jerusalem. I love Italy and the Italians. So I very much enjoyed the VF. Ultreia!
@donjohannes, the first few pages had me completely hooked. I've read things written by native English speakers that were only a fraction as good as this— in terms of every one of the criteria you asked about, I would give it 9-10 on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is useless and 10 is excellent.That had me wondering whether I should translate more of it, especially after I found a cheap way to get that process started. It would still be an investment of time and probably I would just pay someone to "english-ify" it to an acceptable level. But it all depends on the base translation.
I agree1) readabilty - Very good, but for a sophisticated reader
2) flow - Very good
3) linguistic soundness - Excellent
4) content: captivating/boring - Very good
5) how likely you personally would be to read beyond the pages translated - Very likely
The quality of translation seems excellent.
I will send a few specific comments by private message.
Not long after I posted I found Reelhouse and purchased the video. I just finished watching it a second time, and look forward to re-visiting the experience in the future.@Baba John
thanks for the feedback.
There is a 60 minute film about the first part of my walk (the first 5000 miles from Liechtenstein zu Jerusalem) here: https://www.reelhouse.org/birettballett/ For a map visit: http://4kmh.com/neo/
It is very different in style form the Via Alpina Sacra travel doc, as I have mentioned above. There is no music and no verbal exposition, just glimses at the journey with natural sound. It is more a meditation than a documentary one could say.
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