.
Metallicman Books
Guys, I can take each DM book and rewrite it for easy machine translation. I have no problem with that. Then, I can pay to have a native person translate the text into a readable format. What do you all thin about that as a solution?
Years ago I was looking at self-publishing before abandoning pretty much all efforts at writing, except for posts here and there like this one. There were too many roadblocks for my taste.
Print-on-demand is the way to go for a project such as turning MM's posts into books, and everything that came out in the 1990s on said to forget distributors and bricks-and-mortar bookstores because they simply don't want to deal with small fry. The returns issue is just one part of the problem.
Even the Library of Congress doesn't want to deal with self-published books, classifying them as "vanity press" publications and not making the copies publishers send for copyright available in the Library.
I have found in translating at least European languages into English that machine translators online have come a long way, and for some languages using them might be a viable option. Several books in Russian turned out surprisingly readable using one to translate to English. However, translating to and from non–European languages such as Chinese might pose problems. That needs more investigation.
Small runs of these books for MM visitors might be the way to go, but at least look into the idea of assigning ISBNs and finding a way to get them on Amazon. For blogs I respect, including this one, having hard copies of past material is preferable just in case. And it's not the internet going down I worry about for most of these sites including this one, but the censors, bots, and hackers...
@Kman Metallicman ISBNs are already taken care of. and yeah self publishing really isn't viable unless you use print on demand. For others going this route take KMans advice on returns -NEVER EVER check that box on Ingram unless you are damn sure your book is best seller, otherwise you are looking at thousands of dollars worth of debt. It's catch 22 though because the big brick and mortar store like Barnes and Noble won't shelf your book unless you offer returns. Just another way for greedy corporations to fuck over the little guys.
DM needs to be published. He’s got really awesome stuff....
EDIT: AND MM. Honestly I thought you were getting published. Why isn’t this a thing?
Thanks Alice. Already self published - unfortunately big named publishers don't care for any of this stuff ......I wonder why.
No idea because its bloody brilliant. Excuse my english 😉
Quote from congjing yu on December 6, 2021, 1:55 pmActually translation of the books to Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish should assist in the widest distribution. We can always use machine translation, but much can be lost as (unfortunately) I use many American idioms. And they do not translate very well.
The best thing to do would be to take one volute. Say volume #1. Then I would re-write it into short sentences, with no idiom; or replace the idioms with accurate meanings. Then translate via machine, and then have a native language user perform the final editing. Any ideas?
I think this effort should be as-is. Idioms and all. This way your personality is reflected faithfully to the books, and this is very important. Translations have to be done by volunteers fully proficient in both ends of the translation effort. My native language is Spanish. So I can translate to Spanish (latin-american) or Spanish (Spain). Idioms implicit meaning has to be accurately translated to native language equivalents. This is the way it has to be done, IMHO. Machine translation sucks the life of the documents and makes them extremely boring.
Quote from perolator on December 17, 2021, 2:24 amQuote from congjing yu on December 6, 2021, 1:55 pmActually translation of the books to Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish should assist in the widest distribution. We can always use machine translation, but much can be lost as (unfortunately) I use many American idioms. And they do not translate very well.
The best thing to do would be to take one volute. Say volume #1. Then I would re-write it into short sentences, with no idiom; or replace the idioms with accurate meanings. Then translate via machine, and then have a native language user perform the final editing. Any ideas?
I think this effort should be as-is. Idioms and all. This way your personality is reflected faithfully to the books, and this is very important. Translations have to be done by volunteers fully proficient in both ends of the translation effort. My native language is Spanish. So I can translate to Spanish (latin-american) or Spanish (Spain). Idioms implicit meaning has to be accurately translated to native language equivalents. This is the way it has to be done, IMHO. Machine translation sucks the life of the documents and makes them extremely boring.
Quite right about translations... I have already commented to MM that I (me) comprhend all his little jokes and references to U.S. movies, characters, quotes, and music (he's only a couple years older than me). I highly doubt that ALL of the readers here get that same info when translated.
What I consider the very best of the Scandinavia produced Netflix offered shows are BARELY passable - and they have Big Bux to do a proper translation. The Korean ones are laughable; a Thai one was preposterous; I don't bother with Bollywood shite.
I don't think that a machine could do justice to MMs references and jokes; I really think that a human, and a very well-versed human would be necessary - IF you want to keep that personalization intact.
Here's a hilarious translation of a vintage Chinese movie clip. Check it out. It's under a minute.
Quote from congjing yu on December 18, 2021, 8:44 amHere's a hilarious translation of a vintage Chinese movie clip. Check it out. It's under a minute.
I laughed out loud! "You be scaring away all the women with your monkey trix and shit!" Sounds like the brothers from Airplane wrote that shizzam.