Translation funds for indie authors

In these later years, the number of translated books has dropped awfully. In fact, book translation is very expensive for indie writers, due to the lacking of a traditional publisher. To translate books into another language, indie authors must indeed contact a book translator. Since book translators are often freelance, their translation rates are necessarily expensive for indie authors, especially for those who released only ebooks, free ebooks and Kindle ebooks. Do not believe this is a problem only for European writers, also non European authors have difficulties to get their book translated for a small rate or for free.

But untranslated books are a real crime against culture and literature and every author should expect to get their work translated into several languages. Furthermore, translated books always grant also mentions and reviews on important literary magazines, as happened to many others indie authors who got their books translated into European languages, such as German, Spanish, French and Italian.

Fortunately, for authors who can’t afford to hire a freelance translator, there are various opportunities to get their books translated for free. These opportunities are called: translation funds or translation grants. In this post, I published a list of organizations that support book translation.  Every office accepts books that match specific requirements.

However, today, you don’t need to submit books for translation to offices that are only in your country, because many chances can be found by submitting books for translation grants abroad. That is why I chose to publish a list of links where authors and translators can find the right references to their translation needs. To fund book translations, applications can be sent from authors, publishers or translators. I specified the kind of applicants for every link I mentioned below.

Hence, if an organization accepts only applications from translators, authors must search for a freelance translator who submits books on behalf of them.

To translate books into any language, until a few years ago authors, translators and publishers could submit books to The Sharjah International Book Fair’s.

This important literary Arabic Fair offered translation grants to translate books from any foreign language (not Arabic) to any other language (not Arabic) and from Arabic to any language or any language to Arabic.

Books had to be protected by copyright and had to not be in the public domain.
Translation grants were for the following genres: Fiction, Non-Fiction (including memoir, history, cookery etc), Children’s and Young Adult books and Poetry.
The amount of the grant was up to $ 4000 dollars for general titles, and up to $1500 for Children’s books.

Applications could be sent until 26th February 2017.

To submit for translation grants of The Sharjah International Book Fair’s, applicants had to send a copy of the book in addition to the application form. If the book was not in Arabic or English, the first chapter had to be translated into Arabic or English and sent with a book description. Unfortunately, the link of this opportunity is not longer working.

For translation into English, translators can submit books to Pen America, the literary foundation established in 2003 by Priscilla and Michael Henry Heim.  The fund grants run between $2000 to $4000. As of 2017, this American foundation will offer grants for the translation of the Italian literature.

The European translation funds, instead, have very high figures, up to 100.000 Euros for important translation projects submitted by publishers. But the call for book translations is currently closed.

To translate books from German into foreign languages, you can submit books to Goethe Institute.

I also checked other websites, but those are about Governmental institutes that funds only translations related to a book written by famous local authors.

As regards this side, it is important to note that when a book becomes recognized internationally, it gets usually translated for free by international book publishers.

What you can do to test the interest of a European or Italian audience towards your book is to get a professional editorial review in the language you want the book to be translated.

Often, funds are only granted to the applicants selected by the committee of the literary foundation that offers translation funds, and this reduces the chances to translate a book for free.

In this case, you can also try to get translation loans. These are small bank loans that indie authors can get to translate their book into any language. Usually, these loans have a favourable rate that allows you to hire a freelance translator.

Australian authors, who want to get their book translated into another language, can get a small loan on this Australian website https://www.moneyme.com.au/loans/small-loans.

To translate their books, British, American, Canadian and Australian writers can also ask for a personal loan to this website: http://personalmoneyservice.com/.

Small and personal loans are also available at any bank office in any country.

For more information about personal loans to translate books, you can see these websites:
https://www.santanderbank.com/us/personal/borrowing/loans/personal-loans https://www.lendingclub.com/public/personal-loans.action

https://www.creditkarma.com/shop/personal-loans#newloans
https://www.wellsfargo.com/personal-credit/
https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/borrowing/personal-loans-and-lines-of-credit.html.

To compare loans and get the best personal loan to translate your book, you can also see this guide https://www.thesimpledollar.com/personal-loans/.

Source of the image: comtranslations.com