True — I hired friends who have translation experience but are not super experienced. That's how I got away with that budget for two translations (+ cover & design services).
If you are thinking of producing books in multilingual editions in the future, you might want to get some independent expert feedback about the quality of the translations your friends produced this time around. Those translations might have been fine. But there are many ways translations can be inadequate, from misunderstandings of subtle but important nuances in the source text to prose that sounds awkward and unnatural in the target language. Such problems can seriously impact both how accurately your message is conveyed and how well your book sells.
I worked as a professional translator (Japanese to English) for twenty years, and I always feel very uncomfortable when a paper or book I've written is translated into a language I can't read.
tkgally|5 years ago
I worked as a professional translator (Japanese to English) for twenty years, and I always feel very uncomfortable when a paper or book I've written is translated into a language I can't read.