Translated

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By EelKat Wendy C Allen

"I have some serious problems. I have two finished novels with the same hero. My text is in Russian. In our market financial thriller does not represented yet. Translate costs very expensively. Certainly, I have polished synopsis and 3 chapters. May be when I wrote to literary agent, that my text is not translated yet, it was a big mistake? I'll be grateful, if you answer. It is really necessary for me."

Yes, I can see translation is an issue for you. Your question to me is not clear, I am having difficulty in understanding exactly what it is that you are asking of me. I'm sorry, but you must understand that I have Autism, and if things are not said very clearly, very specifically, and very presicly I have great difficulty in understanding what is being said to me. This is part of the reason why I do not speak verbally with others, because very few people speak in good grammar and I very rarely understand what is being said. Even people whom English is a first language speak with so much slang, double talk, and euphemisms that I can hardly make heads or tails of what it is they are trying to say to me. When non-English speakers try speaking English to me I generally smile and nod and have no clue a word they said. (Keeping in mind here that I am almost deaf and read lips rather than hear words, and people mumble when they use slang or when they don't know the language well.)

Anyways, I am trying to translate your translation of what you meant to say. I appears you meant to say this:

"I have some serious problems. I have two finished novels with the same hero. My text is in Russian. Financial thrillers are not sold in Russia yet. (???) (There are no publishing houses in Russia that accept financial thrillers.)(I have submitted my manuscript internationally because there is no market in Russia for financial thrillers.) Translation costs are very expensive. I have edited and polished my synopsis and 3 chapters. (And sent them to an American agent for review...???) Was it a mistake to tell the literary agent, that my text has not been translated yet?"

As you can see from my corrections I am attempting to fill in the blanks and try to figure out what exactly it is you are saying to me here.I think you are trying to say you sent your manuscript to an English-speaking agent, telling them it was not translated, but you want it translated, because you want to sell it in the USA instead of Russia because you feel Russia does not have a good market for it, but America does. Is that correct?

Also what exactly is a financial thriller? I'm not sure what a financial thriller is. I have never heard of this term before. Do you mean like back robberies and cops and robbers sort of thing? I've no clue what you mean by financial thriller. I'm not sure if you are referring  to a genre and using the incorrect name for it or if there is such a genre and I've just never heard of it before. It is possible there is a genre called financial thriller and I've never heard of it, because I don't read or write thrillers and am thus unfamiliar with the category as a whole. I read, write, and watch horror and sci-fi and I read and write dark, gothic, paranormal horrorish romance. So questions to genres outside of this I can't really help you with, sorry.

My advice to you is to find someone whom English is their first language, and whom has very good grammar, and ask them to dictate your correspondence with agents and publishers. When an agent, editor, publisher, or author gets a letter from you, they will not take you seriously as a writer if you can not type in absolute perfect grammar.

Publishers, editors, and agents are going to label you are an "yet another ESL writer" (English as a Second Language Writer). And there are a lot of them. America is am imegrant melting pot with half the first-time authors in the States, sending illegible manuscripts to publishers. It doesn't matter what languageis your first language, or how well you speak it verbally, if you can't write it "Perfect Palmer" you do not stand a chance at getting published.

Sorry to say this, but they don't care that English is not your first language, they are NOT going to sympathize with you. It does no good to say "Sorry if my grammar is not perfect, Russian is my first language." They don't care. They don't care if you are a 6 year old American who has not yet mastered spelling or an adult from Russia who spent 10 years learning English, if you can't give them a manuscript written in perfect grammar, they aren't even going to bother wasting time on you. They are going to look at your shoddy English and conclude that you are just too lazy to get it right, no matter how hard you tried to get it right. This is just the way things are in the publishing industry. Sad but true. Because of this it is next to impossible for ESL writers to get published by English language publishing houses.

So many would be authors retort back with "But it's a great story, the readers will love it!"

It doesn't matter how good your story is, because good stories are a dime a dozen. It doesn't matter if you have written the greatest story ever told, if you can't use good, perfectly proper grammar to convey that story.

Editors. publishers, and agents are NOT looking for good stories. They have thousands of stupendously, great, stunningly fabulous stories sitting in the slush pile stack ceiling high around their desks. Most stories are great. Most stories are fabulous. Most stories are utterly amazing. Nearly every person who writes a story, writes a great story.

Finding great stories to publish is not the problem. The problem is finding a great story that is told legibly by a writer who knows the English language inside out and used perfectly polished grammar, that only requires the barest minimal editing if it even requires editing at all. THAT is what editors, publishers, and agents look for.

All writers have one thing in common: they are great storytellers, telling amazing stories that readers love.

However, very few writers have a solid grasp on English grammar.

Millions of great stories cross editors' desks every day and yet only a dozen well written manuscripts cross their desks each year.

Did you make a mistake in telling the agent your manuscript was not yet translated? No. You were honest and up front about your story's lack of translation. It would be far worse had the agent loved your proposal (written in English) and requested to read the manuscript, only to receive a Russian document which they could not read.

Normally I would recommend only submitting to one or two agents/editors/publishers at a time and waiting to hear back from each one before submitting to another one, however in your case, I think it would be more advantageous to submit to as many as you can, as often as you can. With each one, explain that you have written a Russian language manuscript, but the story is aimed at the American market and you are seeking an American publisher willing to translate it into English and publish it. End the letter by asking, if their publishing house does not have a service for translating non-English manuscripts, could they possible recommend an agent/editor/publisher who does work with non-English manuscripts.

An option you might try is to use one of the many free online translation software programs, to translate your manuscript into English for you. Now this will not be a perfect translation, but it'll be a start. Than find an American in Russia who works as an English teacher, and ask them to help you edit the manuscript, from the software translation into proper readable English.

It is in your best interests to have the manuscript translated first, and send it out to agents/editor/publishers after it has been translated. Explain that you wrote it in Russian and had it translated into English, so are uncertain if there are any errors, but are confidant that it has been professionally translated and will be ready for publication with only minor editing.






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