The bloody book again

[uisgebeatha]

So. That book, eh? I might have gone quiet in blogland, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not been busting my ass getting it in shape for the Grimly Long Publisher Hunt. Yeah, I can juggle a freelance career, being a tortured writer *and* the demands of brazen housewifery- I’m that awesome

Comments

[kimbleshi]

Footnotes are better than a glossary at the back in my opinion as I tend to find out about the glossary too late... Pratchett uses notes a lot and I have never had an issue with them.
Re: Clunkyness of translated text I think that it reads fine like that. Convenient translation also works.
Young adult seems to sell well - both to young adults and adult adults, I will certainly pick up young adult book without any shame. Send it to the young adult people, then send it to the adult people, then send it to me.

[uisgebeatha]

Hmm, yes. Glossaries can be inconvenient, though I'm pondering swaldman's suggestion elsewhere to have a glossary for mythical creatures, which makes some kind of sense, and that would probably halve the number of footnotes.

Convenient translation would work but can't in mine for reasons I'll shove in another comment! Will probably go with the Horowitz Method.

Yeah, YA is flavour of the month at the moment it seems; I'm working my way through Craigmillar Library's supply at the moment for 'research' ;)

[rochvelleth]

‘Mi aerodeslizador está lleno de anguilas,’ said Pedro. My hovercraft is full of eels.

Well indeed :)

Hm, I'm not sure about the foregn language issue. I think I would prefer footnotes, but then I'm unusual :) I would like it even more if there was an appendix at the back with the translations so that you had to look them up. But yeah, unusual. So actually I reckon the Horowitz Method is a good way forward...

I guess you have to decide who the foreign language text is for. If you wrote -- "My hovercraft is full of eels," he said in Spanish -- then would the reader lose anything by not having the Spanish supplied? A sense of mystique maybe? (NB not an argument for losing the language bits, just I guess working out why they're there and who they're for might help you decide how and whether to translate them!).

[uisgebeatha]

I love that Omniglot literally has a page just for 'my hovercraft is full of eels' in every language :D

[rochvelleth]

Ahhh, OK, so having a convenient translator nearby is definitely not the way forward! :)

I guess the Horowitz Method (you're right, sounds very painful :P ) would be nicely unobtrusive for scenes where they are speaking to each other and deliberately excluding others. Translation in italics maybe?

I do not know this thing you call a 'bank holiday'... :P

[uisgebeatha]

Yup; have gone with translation in italics next to the speech. Although I've made exceptions for the two-line Biblical quotes where I've decided the footnotes can stay, and the one bit where there's a single Spanish word in an English sentence. Gah. Still, have halved the number of footnotes now I've done that and added a glossary.

I follow a really funny lady on Twitter who posts bad casting calls and she often refers to bank holidays as freelance invoicing days, and says things like 'happy Saturday! Or in the freelance world, Tuesday.' :P