I mentioned in my last blog post that I was working on a translation of Journey to the Center of the Earth. I’m now happy to say that the translation work is done! I finished it a few weeks ago, and have had time to work back through the text and make my first set of revisions. I’m now partway through a second set of revisions, and will probably repeat that process once or twice more before I start the work of typesetting.
Due to my background in workflow automation, I focused very heavily while working on my translation of Around the World in Eighty Days on building a system or toolchain that could be used on future translations. This approach seems to be paying off, as the revision work is moving quickly, and I’m finding fewer problems with this manuscript.
Once I’m satisfied with the state of the text, I have an automated process for generating the typesetting files. This is something that I spent a lot of time setting up, and I’m hopeful that the process will take much less time that it did before. If all goes well, I’ll have both the ebook and paperback for sale on Amazon before Thanksgiving. (I don’t know that this is the sort of thing that people would think to buy someone as a Christmas gift, but it would make a good Christmas gift for any sci-fi fan.)
One thing that I’m planning to do with this translation that I didn’t do last time around is to include a map and a diagram. The most consistent piece of negative feedback that I received about my translation of Around the World in Eighty Days is that a map would have been very helpful. I hadn’t included one (ironically), because my original plan was to also create a hardcover edition with a map for every chapter, and restored versions of all of the original illustrations. I spent a considerable amount of time working on both of these pieces, but was nowhere close to being finished. I would like to come back to this project at some point, but for Journey to the Center of the Earth, I think that I can manage a map of Iceland, and a diagram showing the layers of the earth’s crust.
Over the last few months, I’ve been focused almost entirely on translating Journey to the Center of the Earth, and am sad to say that I’ve neglected my website. I’m trying to change this, and have a few blog posts that I’ve written but haven’t posted. I’ll try to post some of this material over the next few weeks, and will also publish a detailed post on my translation Journey to the Center of the Earth once it’s available.