We transcreate rather than translate, then produce the entire edition, and hand you the files. You publish it yourself, on your own account, under your own name.
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Transcreated, not translated
The title, the register and the form of address are decided again for the target market, because a title that works in English is an argument about the book, and arguments do not survive word-for-word. You choose the direction before anything starts, and you approve the title and a three-chapter calibration sample before a single further chapter is written.
If you do not read the target language, every approval comes with a back-translation. The literal meaning of each title option. The English rendering beside the calibration sample. A plain list at the end of everything the localisation changed and why. Approving text you cannot read is worse than not approving it at all.
Localised, not just translated
Anything that only holds in your own country is replaced rather than carried across. Emergency numbers, helplines, legal and employment references, institutions, examples that do not land.
On the last edition we produced, that meant a page of UK crisis resources becoming a page for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with every number checked against the body that issues it on the day it was written. One of those services had launched three months earlier. Written from memory it would have been missing.
If your book touches health, law, safety or crisis support, this step is a condition of delivery rather than an extra.
A different book to print
A translation is not an edition. The words change length, the length changes the page count, and the page count changes the object. On the last book we took across, the English edition ran 184 printed pages, the German 202 and the Spanish 260.
| English | German | Spanish | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Printed pages | 184 | 202 | 260 |
| Spine width, inches | 0.414 | 0.455 | 0.586 |
Spine width is page count multiplied by the thickness of one sheet, 0.002252 inches on white stock.
The Spanish spine is more than forty per cent wider than the English one. A cover is drawn to one exact width, so that is a new cover file at new dimensions, not the same artwork scaled up. The interior is set again to a new page count. The barcode block moves. The price changes with the paper.
All of that is inside the price on this page. It is also the part that a quote priced by the word leaves out, which is why an edition costs more than a translation and is worth more.
How one book crossed into another language
The full record of one edition. The title decision and the word we rejected. The help page rebuilt for three countries. The 284 corrections from proofreading, found after every mechanical check had already passed. And the two mistakes we made on the way.
Read the record →Checked before anyone reads it
Every chapter is run against the source on fifteen mechanical checks before a human sees it. A chapter can be right on average and still have one paragraph quietly compressed, and an average hides exactly that.
Then a separate proofreading pass by a language model that does not see the original. On the German edition of Everyone Is Difficult, that pass and a person reading after it returned 284 corrections to a manuscript that every mechanical check had already cleared. Nearly half were the same fault, an English idiom rendered literally into the target language, which is precisely what someone holding the original cannot see.
How we know it does not read like a translation
This is the part everyone claims and nobody demonstrates, so here is how it is actually established.
The prose is measured against the target language, not against the source. Spanish drops subject pronouns where English carries them. It prefers the definite article where English takes a possessive. It builds longer sentences and needs ten to thirty per cent more words to say the same thing. A translation that follows the English leaves all four of those traces, and all four are countable. We count them, and a manuscript that fails goes back before anyone reads a word of it.
The finished text is translated back with an independent engine and set against the original, paragraph for paragraph. An omitted sentence, an inverted negative, a figure that shifted while its digits stayed the same. None of those survive that comparison, and none of them require anybody to read the target language.
Then the finished text is read cold, without the original, by a second system that has never seen the English and is asked one question. Which language was this translated from, and how can you tell. If it cannot tell, that is a result. If it can, the answer arrives as a list of the passages that gave it away, and those go back into the edit.
Then, on a sample of twenty passages, that same reader is asked to rewrite each one the way it would have written it. How much it changes is the number. Above ninety per cent unchanged means the text already reads as though it were written in that language. Below seventy and the edition goes back rather than forward.
A native sign-off can be added to any edition and is quoted in when you ask for it. Where it is not part of the agreement, what you are relying on is the four measurements above. We would rather hand you numbers you can check than a name you will never meet.
Where the machine sits in this
A model produces the first draft of each chapter. It runs against a brief, a settled glossary and a calibration sample you have already approved, so the decisions that shape the text are made before it starts, and the checks, the proofread, the measurements above and the localisation research all come after.
We say so plainly because you would find out anyway, and because the first draft is not the part you are buying. It is the eighteen steps around it, and those took two editions and a written record of every mistake to arrive at.
What you receive
- Title and subtitle, transcreated and approved by you
- The complete text, paragraph for paragraph against the original
- Interior for paperback and hardcover, in the house design
- A new front cover for the target market, and both wraps
- Ebook, and a narration file with the pauses written in
- Description, categories, search terms and a price recommendation for that marketplace
- A written account of everything the localisation changed, with sources
What it finds in the book you already published
Nobody reads a book as closely as the person rebuilding it in another language. On the last edition, the localisation pass returned seven factual errors in the English original. A noise-exposure figure out by a factor of three. An arithmetic slip that put a career cost five times too high. A claim about equipment that was simply not true, repeated in five places.
All of them had been through editing. All of them were in the published book. You get that list with the edition, and it is yours even if you never publish the translation.
The rights stay yours
We take no licence and no share. A fixed price for the production, the files delivered, and you publish. Your original edition is untouched. There is no term, no reversion, no imprint, nothing for an existing publisher to object to.
If the new edition is in English, we can also launch it for you. It gets a page in this catalogue that links to your listing, a post on our channels and a category review at thirty and ninety days. You still publish it on your own account, and it is still entirely yours. For the launch you only let us show its cover, title and short excerpts to advertise it.
When we will tell you not to
A book with no sales history. A second market multiplies what is already there. It does not create demand that was never there.
A book built on one country. If the argument rests on a national tax code, school system, health service or broadcaster, it stops working at the border, and production does not change that. Subject is not the test. Psychology, work, relationships, attention, money and health all travel, as long as the book is about living with the institution rather than about the institution.
A language outside the three. We do not deliver a language we have not taken an edition through from end to end. Every new one starts with a calibration sample, and if that sample does not hold, we say so and nothing is charged.
Before you commit, €200
A production check on the book you already have out. We run your existing files against what the retailer actually requires and send you a findings list, with the location, the measurement and the requirement for each one. Page geometry and bleed, embedded fonts, spine width against page count, safe margins on the cover, contents against the typeset pages, orphaned image data, and whether the ebook file validates.
It is not an opinion on your book. It is a measurement of your files, and most books have three to five findings in them. If you go ahead with a localisation within six months, the €200 comes off in full.
What it costs
| Localisation | €2,500 | The complete edition, per language, delivered as files. You publish it yourself and keep every right and every royalty. |
|---|---|---|
| With launch | €2,900 | The same for an edition in English, plus a page in this catalogue, a launch on our channels, and a category review at thirty and ninety days. You publish it yourself and keep every right and every royalty. |
Per language, per title, for books up to roughly 70,000 words. Longer books are quoted on the two steps that scale with length, the transcreation and the proofread. You publish every edition yourself, and we take no share of your royalties, ever.
Two smaller things we also do
Hardcover edition, €400. Interior and full wrap for a book that already exists as a paperback, built against the retailer’s template for the actual page count. No new cover design, no editing, no text changes.
Narration file, €400. Your existing text prepared for voice recording. Chapter structure, everything that is not spoken removed, a pronunciation list for proper names, and two output versions for different narration engines. The recording itself is not included.
Both assume a published book and a settled text. Neither includes editing. They are quoted flat because they take hours rather than weeks. We confirm them by email, and they are paid in full when ordered.
Languages
English, German and Spanish, in any direction. Each of the three has a finished edition behind it, produced end to end, with the mistakes written down. That list grows when an edition exists, not when a page is updated.
Nothing in the process assumes a particular source language. Titles, register and everything tied to a country are decided for the market the book is going to, and the checks measure the target language rather than the distance from the original. The one value set per language pair is the length band, and that is fixed on your calibration sample before the rest of the book is translated. The two directions we have finished editions for are English into German and English into Spanish, because that is where our own catalogue starts.
Editions are produced and verified by the measurements described above. A native sign-off is available on any of the three and is quoted in when you ask for it, rather than being assumed and then quietly skipped.
Any other language is tested on a calibration sample first and quoted separately, before the book is committed. A longer list on a website is easy to write and hard to honour.
Tell us the title, the language you have in mind, and roughly what it sells. We will say honestly whether it is worth doing, and we will tell you what the edition will run to in pages before you commit to anything.
Or write to if you would rather not use a form. It reaches the same person.