Your Ultimate Guide For Vietnamese Literary Translation Services

Vietnamese literary translation services are a leading factor contributing to the dissemination of Vietnamese literary and cultural books to many audiences around the world. Moreover, such services also make it easier for audiences to reach out to their favorite foreign authors.

Without Vietnamese literary translation services, people would not be able to read most of the famous literary books available in archives and libraries worldwide.

Below is an essential guide that helps you understand Vietnamese literary translation services and allows you to introduce valuable books to the Vietnamese audience.

Why Should You Translate Your Book?

The translation process poses great difficulty and requires high expertise. However, it cannot be denied that translation plays an important role and provides numerous advantages.

• Reach a wider audience 

Reaching a wider audience is valuable for authors when introducing their books to global audiences. They can translate the original language of their books into many different new languages appropriate for different contexts in different countries.

The emotional connection will make it easier for audiences to receive and understand the content of the books.

• Increase sales and rankings

A more significant number of audiences increases revenue and compliments the author for a valuable book.

Highly-rated books and best-sellers should be available in most languages. This will increase the popularity and love of the audience for the book.

• Benefit from cross-reading numbers

Audiences who are bilingual will easily find your original book in English directly. For people who read in their second language, it is also possible to find and read the same book in their favorite languages. Furthermore, it is an excellent opportunity to increase revenue for authors.

• Enjoy reduced competition

Authors who have access to translation will find it easy to introduce their books to an international audience. This will be more beneficial in competing as well as reaching potential audiences while others do not approach the translation in advance.

How To Translate A Book Into Vietnamese

In addition to being fluent in various languages, you also need to have diverse valuable tips to get a comprehensive Vietnamese literary translation. Here are some ways which GTE Localize summarizes:

• Determine the Vietnamese market

Before you decide to publish a book in Vietnam, you need to consider the following factors:

• Who are your competing authors?
• Is the title of the book the same or different?
• How do you make your books attractive in the Vietnamese market?

Vietnam is a potential market for most foreign authors who work in the book industry. In the first two months of 2020, the growth rate of book products is 150% over the same period last year, and almost all of the audiences chose Vietnamese literature to read. Moreover, the e-book market also strongly increased by about 30% at the same time. It can be seen that reading online books has become the optimal choice for many people in the current situation.

So, choosing a target market will help optimize book publishing and reach the right market and audience.

• Consider Vietnamese literary translation services

Professional Vietnamese literary translation services can understand and customize your book’s tone and ensure your wording and message stay the same. They will also be able to localize things like cultural references, accents, etc.
You should check to ensure Vietnamese literary translation services use native speakers of your target market to translate. This is extremely important because they have experience translating the right words for that country.

A professional Vietnamese literary translation service will also work with you to process feedback, discuss language options with you, and offer suggestions on achieving the best results when translating your book into another language.

• Edit and proofread

You need an editor for the translated version of your book. The editor corrects any spelling, grammatical, and mechanical errors the translator makes.

Most Vietnamese literary translation services include proofreading and editing in their price. So, you do not have to bother hiring an extra freelance editor to do it.

• Publish

After completing the three steps above, you may be ready to publish and launch your books in Vietnam.

Make sure that your title, cover art, and marketing materials are also precisely localized to attract the maximum number of target local audiences.

You can track and measure sales and performance and see how cost-effective the literary translation process is when set up based on the audience you already have.

Literary Translation – Why It’s Challenge

Literary translation is crucial for an author to reach audiences from different countries, and it is considered one of the most challenging translation tasks compared to document translation.

Literary books express subtleties, messages, and expressions challenging to localize. Even with in-depth knowledge as well as fluency in both languages, high-quality literary translation is difficult.

There are a few essential obstacles to be aware of:

• Change the author’s expression

Translators must have a deep understanding of literature and subject matter expertise to ensure the accuracy of the knowledge and feeling that the author expects to share through the book.

Translators also need to ensure that in translating literature, the author’s unique expression and writing style are not affected. This means that word choices should not be too literal or exaggerated from the original book’s meaning.

• Lack of understanding of Vietnamese culture

Some literary books will use characters’ names as a word for personality. For example, Chi Pheo, the name of a character in a book of the same name by writer Nam Cao in 1941, has become a common expression for a man of an unkind character.

Thus, if translators do not have broad knowledge, the accuracy of your book will be reduced.

• Use slang and dialects

This is also a challenge for translators when dealing with Vietnamese literary translation projects. For Vietnamese literature, many writers also use slang, which helps them portray the character’s personality.

However, if translators are inexperienced and have little knowledge of slang, they may convey the wrong meaning of the word.

Thus, you need professional Vietnamese translators who can translate your books while preserving the characters’ unique talking styles.

Summary

It can be said that the market for translated literature books in Vietnam is vibrant, diverse, and constantly updated. It can easily be seen that the book market share in big cities is quite high, accounting for over 50%. In particular, contemporary translated literary books are updated quickly and timely.

Therefore, many authors have turned to Vietnamese literary translation services to get quality and professional translations so that they can bring their books to a global audience, especially Vietnamese readers.

Choose Cost-saving Vietnamese Literary Translation Services

The main task of a literary translation service is not to create a completely new book but to convert the original book into another language to maintain the original’s spirit and content while staying close and familiar to Vietnamese audiences.

Choosing the right editor in a highly specialized translation service will help your books reach a wider audience as well as retain a large number of loyal readers.

With the advantage of being a provider of book localization with more than 5 years of experience, GTE Localize can translate many popular books to meet the requirements of each customer.

We do not just translate word by word; we change the wording, images, and illustrations to fit the target cultures and social norms.

To learn more about Vietnamese culture as well as other Asian countries, please download our free white paper.

Contact us to get budget-saving Vietnamese literary translations!