The Song of Loss, my “gorean fantasy” novels saga.
Hello everyone. I don’t know if you know this, but IRL, I’m an illustrator and… novelist; but in French, of course. So I’ve decided to do something crazy: start publishing an English version of my novels. Now, why is that a crazy? Well, I translate alone.
Yeah…
Totally nuts, Axelle.
The fact is, professionally speaking, there’s only one way to get a proper translation of a book from French to English: a native English speaker with a perfect command of French. Because, if you had any doubts, translation is all about adaptation and interpretation, not just word-for-word translation. If you’ve ever tried to see what Google Translate can do with, say, any slightly literary text, you’ll understand the problem. And you need to be a native English speaker to be able to interpret properly.
Of course, I don’t have a professional translator of this kind on hand: it’s expensive, and I simply can’t afford one. But translating my novels into English was my dream. And being by nature notoriously stubborn, I set myself a challenge that I confess is totally insane: I’m going to do it myself.
It can’t be good, and I know it. My written English isn’t very good, I’m practically incapable of speaking it properly, I don’t understand it orally and, in reading, I can’t do without a dictionary near me. But… long live technology. No, I didn’t ask ChatGPT to do it for me, let him die. But I did ask Deepl to help me.
The principle: the software translates my text, then I compare the final text with my French text, and sentence by sentence, I correct anything that doesn’t match the music, the poetry or the meaning of what I wanted to write. I reread everything, I check everything, words and expressions, I correct a lot, I rewrite a lot, checking my correction, and, finally, I reread the text in English, to see if I understand everything, if I can read it, if it makes sense, if nothing offends me… and I continue.
Why do my novels belong here? Because, in fact, the basis of the plot, but also of the context and characters, was inspired by my first adventures and discoveries of Gor on Second Life. Although I’ve completely reinvented the universe, the concepts are different, and the plot has nothing to do with Gor’s novels, it is, as a friend of mine put it, a kind of Gorean fantasy. And this same friend added: your novels are as if Gor had been written by a woman.
And there you have it. Of course, if you don’t read English, or if you know my novels, you don’t care! But there are English speakers who would like to read what I write. And so, I’m trying to open myself up to a new audience. You never know, maybe one day I’ll be able to launch a crowdfunding campaign to pay for a real translator? That’s one of my goals anyway.
Well… I don’t know if it failed or succeeded. English speakers will tell me. But I hope it’s a pleasure to discover. Happy reading!
Book 1, Armanth : chapter 1 : The Seeker
