Just Finished Translating my First Series
I remember it like it was yesterday… and yet, it was in February 2021 when International Best-Selling Time-Travel Romance Author Mariah Stone contacted me to discuss the possibility of translating her 10-book Highlander series into Spanish.
Two and a half years later, we have brought 9 full-length novels, 2 novellas, 1 reader magnet, and an author website to Spanish-speaking readers worldwide.
The journey has been amazing. Both my editor (Ayelen) and I (Carolina) have learnt and grown a lot since we started working together on every book Mariah has published for the Spanish-speaking market so far. Moreover, this blog, which has been in the making for the last two years, finally came to life.
Even though parting with these books and these characters, which have made so many Spanish-speaking readers dream of highlanders and adventures in the Scottish Highlands, is sad, we are also excited about embarking on new projects and continuing to work with Mariah on her other series.
To round up an era, today, I want to talk about my experience translating this series. A while ago, I wrote an article to answer a question many authors have asked us: “Should I hire several translators for my series?”. Based on my professional experience, I believe there are countless advantages of having one trained, experienced literary translator working on a series. While in that article I explained why hiring several translators is a bad idea from a theoretical standpoint, today I’d like to focus on the practical one, providing examples from my own experience with this series.
Theme:
Called by the Highlander is a series of historical romance books with a third-person narrator: this omnipresent narrator focuses on one of the characters’ points of view at the time. There is one rather naughty matchmaking Highland faery, Sìneag, present in every book that likes to send modern people back to the Middle Ages to meet their soulmates.
Even though each book features a different couple as the main characters, the series consists of three families (or clans) that fight for the independence of Scotland, so many characters are present across the books.
Being the translator of the whole series allowed me to know each character and their relationship to other characters in the series, as well as their unique traits, the way they talk, the things they’ve been through (sometimes traumas mentioned in previous books), the experiences that torment them, their ambitions, their strengths, and weaknesses, etc.
If another translator were to take over midway, or even just a single book in the series, this would potentially introduce a dissonance in characters’ behaviours in different books.
Language consistency:
When the translator already knows the author’s voice, terminology, and narration style, it’s easier to keep a consistent voice throughout a series.
In the case of Mariah’s series, choice of vocabulary plays a major role. On the one hand, modern characters are trying to blend in in the Middle Ages, but when caught with their guard down, some modern expressions, concepts, and ideas slip out. On the other hand, there are the Highlanders from the Middle Ages who lack the contemporary interpretation of time, modern devices and technologies, but possess a very traditional belief system, so everything they fail to understand must be an artefact of magic or witchcraft.
Understanding this and keeping language consistent throughout the series is absolutely key to the foreign audience, and being in charge of the translation of every book allowed me to successfully reproduce characters’ expressions and mindsets in Spanish (even when some tweaking was necessary here and there).
Plot and character consistency:
In a long series, it is utmost important that the translator is familiar with all the characters’ stories and traits in order to avoid omitting essential details due to lack of context.
When it comes to the main plot in Mariah’s series, it’d be brave Highland warriors (both female and male) fighting alongside Robert the Bruce for Scottish Independence while falling in love with heroes and heroines out of their time. (Or the other way around: modern women and men falling through time and falling in love with brave Highlanders.) This plot is present and developing in each book to different extents. So much so that as the books go on in the series, the years pass, and we see Robert the Bruce fighting minor battles in the first books (with important victories) until he fights the historical Battle of Bannockburn in book 10, alongside all the brave warriors readers fell in love with during the series.
The first example of character consistency in Mariah’s series that comes to mind (though there are too many) is in book 4, Highlander’s Love (El amor del highlander). The author cleverly introduces readers to characters that will become highly important in later books, namely brothers Angus and Ragnall Mackenzie (books 5 and 7, El deseo del highlander and La novia del highlander, respectively). These completely different brothers are first introduced in a rather short chapter full of information, so their descriptions must be accurate and reflect their personalities (which are very different from one another, as one is an outcast whereas the other one would make the perfect laird), their brotherly support for each other, their family drama and conflicted past. As they’ll become the main characters of their own stories, readers won’t be at all satisfied if their first impressions of these heroes clash with their later representations.
Author vision:
When working on a complete series, the translator becomes familiar with the author’s style and better understands their vision. The translator can clearly identify the texts’ subtleties, the tone of the narration, and the intention and meaning behind words and faithfully express them to the foreign audience.
In Mariah’s series, for instance, Sìneag (that mischievous faery I mentioned earlier) has some traits that are never described (because the author shows, she doesn’t tell). So, readers learn throughout the series that Sìneag has some psychic powers and that she can read characters’ minds, know their names and look into their souls without it ever being mentioned. Instead, the narrator has Sìneag talking to different heroes and heroines in the books, and that’s how readers come to learn so much about this faery, who also happens to take bribes in the form of food.
Sìneag’s example is perfect because if you take each book separately, she’s by no means a main character (in fact, she appears for a few pages at the beginning and then for some pages towards the end, and that’s that). But when you take the whole series, this matchmaker is the character that ultimately brings all the books together.
Productivity:
Contrary to some authors’ opinion, having one translator for a specific series accelerates the translation process. When the translator becomes familiar with the text’s theme and terminology, they spend less time researching for the following titles.
In the case of Mariah’s books, this proved to be ultimately true when it came down to Middle Ages setting descriptions, historical names, battles, and events.
Each book required some degree of research, though. In book 7, for instance, the heroine is a modern woman who has diabetes and travels back in time with her kit. So, I needed to do some research on medical terminology.
In my translator experience, working with the same books (or books in the same universe or series) helped me increase my productivity a lot, keep a constant translating rhythm, and avoid any delays in deadlines (except when my computer died, and I almost lost the whole translation of La novia del highlander, but that’s a story for another day.)
Feedback and constant learning:
One of the most enriching experiences for a translator working in a whole series is reading feedback from editors and reviews from readers. Much like writers, translators are curious creatures; feedback and reviews help us improve our craft, especially when we can incorporate them into the next titles we’ll be working on.
In the case of Mariah’s books, in book 9, El reclamo del highlander, I mistakenly wrote the name Angus instead of Aulay on two occasions, which my sharp editor caught (and this helped me double check that I didn’t repeat the mistake in other instances).
Readers of the series also mentioned in the reviews the translation of specific words sounded rather childish for adult characters (such as mamá and papá instead of madre and padre). Even though this feedback is related to the region readers are from, I decided to take it into account and keep these terms more neutral in the following books.
Audience:
Much as a home audience gets hooked on a series and seeks a consistent narrator voice, plot, theme, character development, etc., when a foreign audience gets hooked on a translated series, it is crucial all this remains consistent and the only way to guarantee that is by working with the same translator throughout the series. Readers will get used to characters talking in a certain way, places described with specific terminology, and the narrator’s storytelling style. So introducing a new voice (that is to say, a new translator) in a series might end up causing a lot of damage, costing a lot of readers that will find the new book strange and drop the series never to pick it up again.
My conclusion:
All the advantages mentioned above of choosing one translator for a whole series and sticking to them are beneficial not only for the author and the translator involved, but also for the foreign audience. They greatly improve the reading experience of your new readers.
From my perspective, I must say this has been a gratifying experience for me. I’m very excited about releasing new titles in the new series. Mariah continues to thrive in the Spanish market with her Duques y secretos series (Dukes and Secrets), a daring change from time travel to the Scottish Highlands to the ballrooms of Regency London.
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