kdrobertson
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German Mob Sorcery Update (& Potential Release)
🕑 Added 2025-11-05 08:17:11 +0000 UTCA couple months ago, I asked for input on a translated excerpt of a German version of Mob Sorcery. The feedback was broadly positive, with the criticism (mostly) being that parts of it were too literal at times. I did some other research and the translator appeared to be pretty decent, and had other books and authors they worked with, so I went ahead.
To be blunt, the final translation has gotten mixed reception. I've been told it's worse than AI. I've also been told it's pretty good. In the long-run, I will use a different translator if I publish Book 2 and later. I also haven't been able to take on much feedback due to the language barrier of implementing changes into the book (particularly where two beta readers disagreed on the same sentence).
Edit: In some good news, I might have a better translator for Book 2 onward. So I might still power on and publish more German translations.
The whole issue has taken up so much time that I'm extremely close to just ditching the idea of publishing translations entirely. I avoided doing them because I wanted to avoid grifters and assholes, thought I did the right thing, still ended up dealing with the sort of person I absolutely detest dealing with, and nobody benefits.
I'm not made of money, though, and it's possible the Mob 1 translation will be received well enough to justify pushing ahead with more German editions. At this point, I'm still leaning toward using it after I clean up some basic formatting errors my translator was too lazy to fix. Otherwise, I really don't want to spend too much time on this, as it's taking time away from writing new stuff.
My view is that either this sinks or swims. Translations cost time and money, and I've spent enough of both on this. If it succeeds, I'll press forward despite how frustrating this experience has been. If it fails, I'll go back to ignoring translations like I have for years.
What Next
I'll release the book on Amazon in a week or so, and post here to let you know it's come out, unless I get extremely heavy pushback. There won't be a pre-order, because Amazon has some long-running technical issues with them, so I'll be really thankful to those who pick it up and/or review it when I drop it.
While I don't want to make this a "read it or else" thing, I'm considering this my only foray into translations as this has been an unexpected pain in the ass. Hence, if it goes well, I'll push forward (and find a new translator). If it doesn't, I'll nix it.
At the moment, the series title will be "Mob-Zauberei". Let me know if you think that's really dumb or something. I do want a title with German in it for search and visibility reasons.
So if you read German, are willing to give it a shot (even if you might hate the translation), and are willing to either buy it or use your time on Kindle Unlimited, I'd appreciate if you check it out. You can be honest with your reviews. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.
And thanks to everyone who has helped so far, or offered to, however this has gone down.
Comments
Kartaal
Some input from a German friend: If I see the english title and cover I have a clear picture of what this is gonna be. Classy mafia dons with big tits and animal ears hiring sorcerous guns for hire to wage a somewhat civilized gang war. If I read the German title, I'd be wondering if this is gonna be a weird class thing, would be unsure if it's like an ironic dig at the cover girl or genuinely classist, and would need to read the introductory blurb to realize what it's about. Unless I had my bilingual brain on and intuited that it's a clunky translation, but you know how it is with relying on people's brains and that's still not a great look. So yeah, 'mob' probably a bad choice for words given that's what has this issue (as Hugo mentioned)
ProVVoke
The Chinese market is huge, but you'd have to leave the Amazon umbrella to reach it, in addition to dealing with even more translation headaches and possible censorship if you get big enough. If I was going the translation route that's the market I'd consider
