gonna get tinnitus from the tocsin ringing in my ears

[tenlittlebullets]

omfg, buried in Saint-Merry stuff up to my eyeballs. There's the translation of the public-domain portions of À cinq heures nous serons tous morts, the trial transcripts (which fortunately are just a matter of picking over Google's versions for weird OCR errors, but dude, I'M NOT TRANSLATING THEM SOMEBODY ELSE DO A HIGHLIGHTS VERSION OR SOMETHING, the whole thing runs to like 100,000 words), similar OCR-picking for Rey-Dussueil's novel Le Cloître Saint-Méry, and chasing down more primary-source accounts (most of them by famous authors, so hopefully already available online in translation) in Sayre & Löwy's L'insurrection des Misérables. Plus hemming and hawing over some of the amazing in-copyright print sources (mostly Sayre & Löwy and the explanatory notes for À cinq heures...) and how much I could share/translate without (a) getting dinged by the publishers, and (b) taking bread out of the mouths of the excellent people who've managed to study this stuff professionally. I almost wonder what would happen if I approached the publishers about doing an official English translation? Because I think there are a number of people in UK and American Les Mis fandom and assorted other historical interests who would be happy to shell out money for these books, but are being held up by the language barrier or the cost of importing books from France, which is ridiculously high even compared to other European countries.

Comments

[kerrypolka]

I have a friend who's a proper freelance translator, would it be all right if I asked her about this? (Alternatively you could get in touch directly, she's tabi_no_sora and lovely!)

[tenlittlebullets]

Oh man, that'd be great!

[kerrypolka]

She says (all following words hers):

With in-copyright sources, the process should go as follows:

- Contact French publisher and ask them if the English-language rights are available (you never know, they might have signed a contract last week to translate the text in question into English, and then all your work would be wasted).

- Find out if French publisher would have any problem with you translating some excerpts and shopping them around to English-language publishers. They probably won't mind.

- Start translating!

The French publishers may take a dim view of extracts being published online, but if the English-language rights are available then technically your friend wouldn't be doing anything wrong - the English words are hers and nobody else can lay claim to them. But it's a bit of a grey area, as publishers can argue that it makes the works less appealing to Eng-lang publishers if they've already appeared in translation. Then again, you could equally say that if the extracts appearing online were popular they might encourage an Eng-lang publisher to get involved! Annoyingly, a lot depends on the French publishers' attitude to translation (and the likelihood that they will find out that something's been published online!)