RetroFed
Jürgen Hubert, juergen_hubert@literature.cafe
Instance: literature.cafe
Joined: 2 months ago
Posts: 3
Comments: 12
Posts and Comments by Jürgen Hubert, juergen_hubert@literature.cafe
nonfiction
Comments by Jürgen Hubert, juergen_hubert@literature.cafe
I am extremely skeptical that “AI” would do a good job with this. Old folk tales have a lot of local cultural, historical, and cultural context which the translator needs to take into account and explain. AI systems, in contrast, would turn this into a language they know best - which is largely Reddit posts of the last decade.
And the notion that “the Bible and Shakespeare have covered all plots” to be extremely reductive even for the English language. It gets rather insulting when you consider cultures outside of the Anglosphere, or “The West” in general.
Yeah, getting useful feedback is a major challenge for self-published authors. And I’d argue that “friends and family” are probably the worst people to give you feedback on your manuscript. Either they won’t give you honest feedback because they might hurt your feelings. Or they will give you honest feedback, which might result in hurt feelings on your part. It’s best to find someone who has enough detachment from you to proofread your work.
Personally, I try to get around this by inviting both alpha readers (for the first draft) and beta readers (for the nearly finished work) to give feedback for my manuscript. This seems to work fairly well, so far.
…we really need a “comparative folklore” group.
And enough people with expertise to join it.
Oooh! Does Portugal also have heretical prayers to Saint Christopher which compel him to bring you treasure?
There are a number of self-publishing platforms - Amazon KDP is the biggest, but there is also Draft2Digital, OneBookShelf, and a couple of others. You don’t necessarily have to publish exclusively at one single platform. If you publish in print, you will also need to provide a PDF document with the necessary layout (I use #TeXLaTeX for typesetting, but I don’t recommend it unless you already have experiences with it from an academic career ant the like), as well as a cover.
You also need public domain works that are available somewhere, preferably as digital download. I am very lucky in that there is an abundance of public domain German-language folk tale collections which I can use, but I don’t know what the situation is in Portugese. You could start with searching Archive.org, but if you want to do some serious research, I recommend looking at the citations of modern-day folk tale collections - they often use old sources which might be in the public domain.
(I’ve discovered a bunch of Italian-language folk tale collections which might be in the public domain this way, but that’s probably not much help to you.)
I like the concept. Unfortunately, November is one of the busiest months at my day job, so this is not feasible for me.
It helps that my books tend to be very modular (100 mini-tales united by a common theme). My editing process works like this:
- Proofread the tale on my reMarkable 2 at least one day after writing it.
- Proofread the complete, assembled manuscript in PDF version on my reMarkable.
- After integrating alpha reader feedback (that’s what I am currently working on), proofread it again in EPUB format - this time on my Kindle app on my small-screen e-ink reader (I used to do it on a Kindle, but I sold it).
- And then I send it to beta readers and incorporate their feedback.
This way, I try to make sure that my books are as polished as possible without obsessively redoing everything all the time.
While that’s not exactly what you are looking for, one option is to search for old public domain works in these languages that have not yet been translated into English and translate these and publish them yourself.
I am doing that for German folk tales, of which there are far more than I could possibly translate in a lifetime. And while I don’t know about Spanish or Korean, I do know that there are some Italian folk tale collections in the public domain (I am currently trying to learn the language, and am now taking evening classes at the A2 level).
I’ve translated a bunch of folk tales from the Darmstadt region, including:
- Treasures of Darmstadt Palace
- The hauntings of Rodenstein Castle
- A different haunted castle on Schnellerts Mountain, which reappears from time to time so that its ghosts can reenact a murder scene
- Two tales of the foolish people of Griesheim
And I’ve started on some texts about Perchta, the guardian spirit of the souls of unbaptized children.
I can do better than that - I have a wiki.
Here is the section on Devil-tales. They lack the footnotes and commentary that are part of the manuscript, though.
A collection of Devil-tales from German folklore, plus an eclectic mix of folk tale translations for my Patreon campaign (at the moment, this means a bunch of talea from the Darmstadt region).
That’s a big “if”.
I am extremely skeptical that “AI” would do a good job with this. Old folk tales have a lot of local cultural, historical, and cultural context which the translator needs to take into account and explain. AI systems, in contrast, would turn this into a language they know best - which is largely Reddit posts of the last decade.
And the notion that “the Bible and Shakespeare have covered all plots” to be extremely reductive even for the English language. It gets rather insulting when you consider cultures outside of the Anglosphere, or “The West” in general.
Yeah, getting useful feedback is a major challenge for self-published authors. And I’d argue that “friends and family” are probably the worst people to give you feedback on your manuscript. Either they won’t give you honest feedback because they might hurt your feelings. Or they will give you honest feedback, which might result in hurt feelings on your part. It’s best to find someone who has enough detachment from you to proofread your work.
Personally, I try to get around this by inviting both alpha readers (for the first draft) and beta readers (for the nearly finished work) to give feedback for my manuscript. This seems to work fairly well, so far.
…we really need a “comparative folklore” group.
And enough people with expertise to join it.
Oooh! Does Portugal also have heretical prayers to Saint Christopher which compel him to bring you treasure?
The Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing
I am a self-published author, and I am curious how many other authors around here are going that route. As far as I can see, self-publishing has the following pros and cons:
There are a number of self-publishing platforms - Amazon KDP is the biggest, but there is also Draft2Digital, OneBookShelf, and a couple of others. You don’t necessarily have to publish exclusively at one single platform. If you publish in print, you will also need to provide a PDF document with the necessary layout (I use #TeXLaTeX for typesetting, but I don’t recommend it unless you already have experiences with it from an academic career ant the like), as well as a cover.
You also need public domain works that are available somewhere, preferably as digital download. I am very lucky in that there is an abundance of public domain German-language folk tale collections which I can use, but I don’t know what the situation is in Portugese. You could start with searching Archive.org, but if you want to do some serious research, I recommend looking at the citations of modern-day folk tale collections - they often use old sources which might be in the public domain.
(I’ve discovered a bunch of Italian-language folk tale collections which might be in the public domain this way, but that’s probably not much help to you.)
Who else is translating public domain works? (de.wikisource.org)
For those of us who are bilingual and want to self-publish books, I feel that there is a vast, untapped market for translating public domain works.
I like the concept. Unfortunately, November is one of the busiest months at my day job, so this is not feasible for me.
Nonfiction books on Privilege and how it warps you?
One of my long-term goals is to publish a collection of German folk tales about villainous nobles. While modern-day folk tale reenactions often focus on beautiful princesses, brave knights, just monarchs and so on, the peasants of earlier centuries knew perfectly well that some nobles were utter bastards, and told tales about them.
It helps that my books tend to be very modular (100 mini-tales united by a common theme). My editing process works like this:
This way, I try to make sure that my books are as polished as possible without obsessively redoing everything all the time.
While that’s not exactly what you are looking for, one option is to search for old public domain works in these languages that have not yet been translated into English and translate these and publish them yourself.
I am doing that for German folk tales, of which there are far more than I could possibly translate in a lifetime. And while I don’t know about Spanish or Korean, I do know that there are some Italian folk tale collections in the public domain (I am currently trying to learn the language, and am now taking evening classes at the A2 level).
I’ve translated a bunch of folk tales from the Darmstadt region, including:
And I’ve started on some texts about Perchta, the guardian spirit of the souls of unbaptized children.
I can do better than that - I have a wiki.
Here is the section on Devil-tales. They lack the footnotes and commentary that are part of the manuscript, though.
A collection of Devil-tales from German folklore, plus an eclectic mix of folk tale translations for my Patreon campaign (at the moment, this means a bunch of talea from the Darmstadt region).
That’s a big “if”.