Thank you, Babelcube…

– for showing me its okay not to make any money on a book translation. It’s so rewarding to help a struggling author bring their art to the world.

– for pushing me into a crash course of Internet research about how to make an epub format look right on Nooks and other e-readers, because otherwise my laborious translation that looks so pretty in Word looks like caca when you download it from Barnes and Noble or Apple iBooks.

– for teaching me through real-life experience that an agreement that says 55% of net for first $2000 of sales means maybe $0.10 per book when the esteemed author is pricing the book at $0.99.

– for showing me that just because the author claims xx thousand books were sold in his mother-language edition the same will be true for the translation.

– for encouraging me to broaden my skills in marketing, because if I don’t try to sell that translated book, nobody else will. Certainly not that author far away in some exotic non-English land, and certainly not Babelcube.

Yes, Babelcube, I truly thank thee for thy lesson that translation is a journey and the reward is in the experiences along the way and not the $$ at the end.

I posted the above on the LinkedIn group “Translators of Literary Works” in the summer of 2015. In response to comments I added this:

I really do like to help people whose creative work I like. Babelcube is good if you want to build some portfolio examples. Choose short projects. And Babelcube is fun if you are translating a book that is interesting to you.

Even on the “negative” side, the frustration of realizing that translating a self-published book includes becoming a self-publishing service of formatting and marketing — I learned a bunch of new stuff. I keep on thinking of that quote: “Experience is a hard teacher.” (But a good one.)

As for the money, OMG run! Run as fast and as far away as you can from Babelcube if you want to make money.

Although money is not everything, it seems to me that the only way Babelcube can survive beyond being a playground for beginning authors and translators is if they make it somehow financially workable and worthwhile for the translator.

How could Babelcube do that? The good thing is they already have the electronic and legal foundation in place — the payment through PayPal or your bank, and the translation agreement and the various tax forms that you complete and “sign” online.

They don’t have to discard the “royalties only” model. But they could add some options to it. The same books are in the list that were there when I signed up with Babelcube in February 2015, like forlorn and forsaken dogs at the animal shelter, pets that noone wants. Sigh. It’s so sad.

Why doesn’t Babelcube do that Ebay thing – Buy it now! For xx amount. In other words, allow the author to post a fee that will be awarded to the translator in addition to the royalties. Babelcube could even go all-Ebay and make it an auction where translators submit bids and the author can set a ceiling price (as in, they will pay a maximum of $xx for the translation).

Now that it is the summer of 2016, I can add a few update notes. From February 2015 until July 1, 2016 I have made a total of roughly $25. I translated 9 short books (some were actually just short stories) of which 2 the respective authors never actually published, who knows why. One book sold the most copies; it sold 27 ebook copies at $2.99. My share of royalties, and this is just a guess because Babelcube never reveals the specifics of how much is the “profit” from which you get your supposed 50% share of royalties — anyways, my share of royalties from those 27 books sold appears to be around $10. And that would mean the royalty is something like $0.35 for a $3 book.

So, I am still visiting Babelcube to see what’s available to translate, but I have strict rules now — absolute maximum of 10 thousand words and actually looking for only two to five thousand words. And let me repeat, there is a value to working with Babelcube, i.e., you get your name in print on Amazon and the rest of the bookseller sites, right next to the author’s name. It’s a good portfolio entry.

On the other hand, some have had much more lucrative experiences with Babelcube, if you believe this post:

http://www.proz.com/forum/business_issues/286819-what_do_you_think_about_babelcube_part_2.html

The person who had a good experience says he sold 261 copies in 3 weeks.

This guy is translating into Portuguese, if I understand correctly. Also, he himself did an active marketing campaign for his translation on Facebook and other social networking sites. Those two things might be the secret to his success. I’m translating from European languages into English. The English self-published ebook market is way oversaturated. And I did not do a very extensive marketing campaign. I timidly tried a few cold-call emails looking for reviews on Amazon, and I posted Amazon links to the books on one of my blogs, but I don’t think I have the secret sauce for selling books.

This painting is titled “Babel” by Chris Murtagh.