How to tell a translator what your book should sound like

Most people commissioning a book translation specify exactly what is easy to specify: from which language, into which language, by when, and in what file. The thing that decides whether you will like the result almost never gets written down — how the book is supposed to sound. Six short questions remove most of the argument that would otherwise come later.

1. How formal

A book can be conversational, neutral or formal, and all three are equally valid. But if you do not say, somebody else decides for you.

Put it in one line: "conversational, no slang" or "formal, no direct address to the reader". Even that line beats silence, because it gives the work something to be measured against.

2. Short sentences or long ones

Some people write long, winding sentences; others write short ones. Translation tends to lengthen — because it explains what the original only implied. If your rhythm matters to you, ask explicitly for it to be preserved.

3. Names and terms

The cheapest decision to make in advance and the most expensive to fix afterwards. Prepare a short list: character and place names in the spelling you want, terms that recur in the book and need one fixed translation, and words that should not be translated at all. Twenty lines covers most books.

4. What may be changed

This is the question people forget, and it shapes the result more than any discussion of quality. May a long sentence be split in two? May a joke that does not survive the crossing be swapped for an equivalent one? Should measurements and dates be converted to local convention? Should a note be added where cultural context is missing?

Your answers may be completely different from what a translator would do by default.

5. Who the reader is

"English" is not one destination. American and British readers expect different spelling and different phrasing. The same goes for Spanish in Spain versus Latin America. This is a commercial decision before it is a linguistic one — where the book will sell and who it is speaking to.

6. What kind of book this is

One line about the type of book prevents whole categories of misunderstanding. A novel, a memoir, a children's book, a professional manual and a work of non-fiction want completely different things: a children's book lives on rhythm and reading aloud, a professional book needs a term rendered identically every time, and a novel needs characters who sound like people.

Add who it is for — adults, teenagers, practitioners — and what a reader should feel at the end. It sounds abstract, but it is exactly what settles the moment someone has to choose between two options that are both defensible.

And the three paragraphs worth more than all of it

At the end of the document, attach three paragraphs from the book: one of description, one of dialogue, and one from the passage you love most. Ask to see them translated before the whole book begins.

One page of real output tells you more than any amount of preliminary correspondence, and it is the cheapest way to discover early that the two of you understood each other differently — while it is still easy to fix.

More on what happens to speech in translation: why dialogue sounds stiff. And on staying consistent across a book: why your heroine's name changes.