When I was around 11 years old, I first conceived of the idea for The Saga of Life. During high school and university, I wrote a bunch of short stories, but it never became serious and never really led anywhere.
Until I was finally away from the educational system and could devote more time to a serious writing career. After creating a handful of novels and picture books, I looked at my list of “unfinished projects that I would like to finish some day” (which had grown quite long after all those years) and saw The Saga of Life.
Needless to say, I picked it up again and tried to execute on that vision I had so long ago.
- I created the entire website for it.
- I re-read my notes and planning, then extended/simplified/improved wherever needed. (For example, the original plan had 9 timeperiods and 8 books per cycle … like, what?)
- I edited all the original stories I had.
- I realized most of those original stories were just not good enough now, or too unrelated to the main storylines in the Saga of Life, so I shelved them and wrote new ones. (You can still find them in the “unpublished” folder of my website’s source code. They might move to published at some point.)
Then, a year later, I realized: why am I writing these stories in Dutch?
I’d been writing English devlogs, tutorials, non-fiction, etcetera for years at this point. In fact, I wrote more in English than in Dutch, so why was the Saga of Life completely Dutch? I probably defaulted to it because the original notes/planning was all in Dutch, and so were the original stories. Because, let me remind you, this project started when I was barely in high school :p
It seemed a waste now. I can write English fiction just fine. (In fact, it’s probably a bit better because I’ve read way more English fiction too.) Why restrict my audience to the tiny group of people who speak Dutch?
Making the Saga English
And thus, about one and a half year ago now, I decided to do the following.
- Add multilingual support to the website. (50% of the work is in the backend to actually add support, the other 50% of the work is to translate all website elements to all the languages.)
- Translate all older stories to English.
- For every new story, write the first draft in Dutch, then translate to English while doing the second draft.
And so I did! Finally, finally, the entire Saga of Life (3 cycles; 30 stories) is available in both Dutch and English. No translations missing, nothing lacking, we’re all caught up and I can move forward.
Am I happy it’s done? Yes!
Will I keep doing this going forward? Probably not!
It was hard, oh so hard, to get this mountain of work done. So let me talk about that.
How much effort is it?
For the first cycle ( = 10 stories), I tried the following approach.
- Ask AI to translate. (Copy+paste in ChatGPT or similar, ask it to translate, while keeping style and such.)
- Then go through the text myself to check how it’s done and improve where needed.
This is by far the fastest way to do it.
- The copy+paste, then wait for translation and move it back, takes 20 minutes. (It’s very boring work of course, but it’s fast.)
- Reading through and fixing mistakes is much faster because the translation is mostly fine. This takes roughly 4 hours.
This was a bad idea, though. The AI translation is stiff and just not great. It even removes complete paragraphs at random, and obviously fails to translate any made-up elements of my universe.
After some very boring, uncreative work, I end up with a mediocre translation.
For the second cycle, I manually translated. This is (at most) 2 days of work, though obviously not the full day.
I do the first 5 chapters one day (and work on something else the remainder of the day), then finish the other 5 chapters the next. If I notice some glaring error here, or some paragraph that REALLY needs to be better, I might update the original Dutch version too. But that’s rare.
For the third cycle, as stated, I translate and edit at once.
- Go through the story from start to finish.
- Whenever I make a change to the story, write it down as “also change this in the original Dutch”.
- When done translating the entire thing, go through the long list of “changes to backport” and update the Dutch version too.
This is (at least) 2 days of work. That final backtracking step to also update the original takes longer than I want every time.
The Advantages
The first advantage, obviously, is that we now have the stories in multiple languages. Wider audience, especially more kids of a younger age who might be able to read it, etcetera.
The second advantage is that it makes me a better writer. Translating can be hard. An easy sentence structure in Dutch might be impossible in English. I need to actually look up words in the dictionary, think about several options, then creatively find a different approach. This makes both my Dutch and English stories better going forward.
For example,
- Researching different ways to say something has led me to give characters a far more distinctive voice/dialogue.
- Researching different sentence structures often revealed more concise ways to say the same thing, in both languages. (Though, in general, English is far more concise and has a single verb for something that takes an entire sentence in Dutch.)
- Going through multiple chapters of a story very quickly (on the same day) and translating them often revealed patterns. One time, I used the sentence “X shook their head” like 10 times in a few pages. Most of those could just be removed, some could be rewritten to something better.
- I have a tendency to repeat myself when I think a certain point or bit of info isn’t clear. Sometimes it fits the rhythm/flow and actually punctuates something, but most of the time this just reveals itself as useless sentences when translating. (Perhaps because I also try to translate as little as possible, so I am eager to remove sentences entirely)
- In older stories, I sometimes “glued together” a few things that should’ve been different paragraphs. (Or, at least, needed rewriting to make the glue seem logical.)
- For example, character A notices something, character B does something, character C says they notice it too. They’re related and happen at the same time, but when translating it becomes clear that it is far simpler and more clear to just add line breaks and split them into separate paragraphs.
- In fact, 80% of my changes to bring back to the Dutch version is just “LINE BREAK BEFORE/AFTER XYZ”
The third advantage is that different languages cause you to think differently. I have a completely different set of ideas, connotations, pictures, preferred words, and more when working in Dutch, than I do when working in English. Writing my first draft in Dutch simply leads to different stories and more variation in storytelling.
For example, several of the Saga of Life stories (both published and upcoming) got their greatest moments from puns. Dutch puns on Dutch words. The actual pun only appears in the Dutch version, of course, but that doesn’t matter. Including that changed the idea and the narrative, which I can translate to English, and made it a different story than if I’d started in English.
(For example, the third story is called “The Great Bustairs”. In Dutch, it’s called “The Great Stairs”. Why? Because the word for stairs is the same word to describe the animal species of Cosmo. It doesn’t work as easily in English, where that species is called the Great Bustard. But you can see how that pun influenced the entire story idea, which would not have happened otherwise.)
The fourth advantage is the edit + translate combo. Translating helps to really critically look at what you’ve written. If I don’t translate, I’ve noticed, I’m far more likely to miss errors or be reluctant to change anything. But because I’m completely rewriting something in a different language, I am far more likely to scrap an entire paragraph and write it again.
Or to do bigger structural changes to the overall story, like ripping out an entire character or streamlining a chain of events through multiple chapters.
Though that is also harder to do this way, bringing me to …
The Disadvantages
Firstly, it is hard to edit + translate at the same time. I only do it because I know I must. Editing is important, translating has to happen, but I am too hyperactive in my head to read my own story three times (or more) and do this all separately. It just won’t happen. I can barely motivate myself to read back a story once after finishing it.
And so I pull it together, but this presents a different problem. Namely the fact that you’re really doing two completely different tasks and juggling them in your head all the time. I’ve improved a lot at doing this, after using the technique for 10 stories, but it’s still often overwhelming to start.
For example,
- I might have a paragraph that reads clunky to me.
- I translate it, making it better.
- But now I also need to translate that back to Dutch and put it in the original story.
- Repeat 100 times, for small and large portions of the story, and it’s a mess that easily leads to mistakes if I’m not completely focused.
Secondly, it is a lot of work, duh. Even at a blistering pace (many hours of focused work, typing really quickly, make-decisions-move-fast-mode) it takes 2 days.
Days in which I basically can’t do anything else. It’s too exhausting and taxing for that. I need to get “into” the zone and the specifics of the story, then sustain that for hours while juggling two languages and my critical editor hat. It’s hard enough to accomplish this. But by the time I’m done, it’s probably evening and I just can’t get started on any other task.
I’ll talk about why this is a real problem in the next section.
Thirdly, it feels somewhat useless. Especially in the Netherlands, most people have a good command of English. Good enough, at least, to understand any translation I’d do. So I’m really only writing in Dutch first for the little kids who don’t know English. Is this pile of work justifiable when it is only for, at its best, perhaps a few thousand readers?
Additionally, by the time it comes to translating, I have moved on from the story and probably slightly grown as a writer. This makes me feel like the story is “meh” or that I want to rewrite basically all of it, but that’s not feasible. If edit/translate is already nearly too hard for me, then letting my perfectionism do its thing will just ruin me. And so I spend time translating stories that I think aren’t actually the greatest.
Should I continue to do this?
As you see, the advantages are there, but probably outweighed by the disadvantages. At least, if you leave out any principles like “I want the entire Saga translated” or “I want Dutch first because I am Dutch”, and purely look at the amount of work and what it costs/gives me.
I write this article precisely because the final set of translations just … broke me.
It is so much work, which can feel so pointless and hard and a waste of time, that it blocked my entire flow and life several times.
Normally, I can write a few chapters of a book in the morning, then work on some other project (probably board game) in the evening. I have enough time to exercise, take breaks, recharge, it’s fine.
But when translating (or edit+translating)? I am lucky if I get my 5 chapters translated over the course of the entire day. I am too demotivated to get started, then it takes me too long and I have no time left for exercise or other projects, and by the end of the day I am not even done with this story!
This process ruined my to-do list every time. I’d keep lagging behind, keep falling into worse habits just to get through this, and then not even feeling proud or happy when the translation is done.
An example
For example, this is what happened one week.
The plan was …
- To edit+translate #3#7 (Cycle 3, Story 7) on Monday and Tuesday. Then #3#8 on Wednesday and Thursday.
- This meant the weekend was left for more freeflowing work (a game as a gift for someone’s birthday coming up, crucial updates to my game website, finalizing my plans for the next Saga cycle next year, etcetera)
- And I’d hoped to perhaps record some music or do some other tiny fun activities in the evenings.
In reality …
- I felt too demotivated to even get out of bed on Monday. When I finally did, I did everything but translating.
- I forced myself out of bed on Tuesday, then lacked the power to work again. I ended up doing those website updates and some light administrative work instead—surely not a day’s worth of productivity.
- On Wednesday, I pulled through and translated half of #3#7, then couldn’t do anything else.
- On Tuesday, I mostly finished translating #3#7, could do nothing else again.
- On Friday, I finished #3#7, then felt too demotivated and overwhelmed to start on #3#8. I basically researched cool WW2 stories and only started translating 2 chapters late at night.
- On Saturday, I worked my ass of the whole day and finished #3#8.
- Damn, now I’m too exhausted and my sleep schedule ruined, don’t feel like I’ll achieve much on Sunday.
This is not healthy or sustainable. If someone with my productivity and work ethic stumbles so hard over these tasks, then it’s probably wise to change them. (Even on my worst days, I usually just get out of bed and at least do 1–2 hours of the thing I wrote down. With these tasks, as has become apparent, I just can’t.)
It completely ruined my schedule, forcing me to push everything else aside and delaying the time I actually intended to have a short vacation for the first time in 15 years. The work I did isn’t the best, because I had started to hate everything I ever wrote at this point. And when next week rolled around, I was obviously too tired of writing and language to start the next Wildebyte book.
I couldn’t make that silly little birthday game now, because time had run out and I had to hyperfocus on the translations to get anything done.
This was a pattern
You obviously realized that story #7 and #8 are not the last ones in the cycle, so this isn’t even the only time this happened :/
Add to that the fact that I also needed to translate all of cycle 2 still, like a “backlog of translations to do”. Just too much, just too boring and taxing for me.
Yes, I improve a bit with every edit and translation. But not enough to warrant the amount of work. The first few times, I recognized broad patterns in my prose that I could fix, or clever ways to shorten sentences. By now, it has just become very routine work that doesn’t improve the stories much.
Because if I want to do any bigger, structural, more meaningful changes … then I need to do them in two languages at once. While making sure I don’t make big mistakes or plot errors in a story that I haven’t seen in months (or years).
At this point, after writing so many stories, I feel like those big structural changes are actually what I need to focus on. I will write pretty clean prose on the first try every time. But I make big mistakes in what actually happens in all chapters and in the whole book, and this edit+translate combo makes me way more hesitant to actually fix that and learn from it.
Translation is a sentence-by-sentence thing. So it has improved my prose and taught me new words, but it did absolutely nothing for the bigger story problems that are actually the most important.
And once you start translating on auto-pilot … that’s when you start introducing new typos, accidentally skipping sentences, and actually actively making everything worse in both versions.
The new approach
I feel that I have learned what I can from these translations. But I also feel some sense of pride or achievement in having the Saga available in two languages (one my native tongue), fully covered, fully accessible.
It’s like imagining myself—or this project— in 10 years. Then I would have wanted that old Tiamo had stuck to the plan and kept translating everything. Because, well, once we start lagging behind 50 stories, then translating is surely too daunting a task to take on at that point. When the Saga is done, I imagine future Tiamo will be very happy if it’s done in both languages.
At the same time, I don’t want to break regularly again :p I value other projects. I value my physical and mental health, and I’d like to get out of bed each morning and don’t feel like I’m wasting my time.
And so I shifted my approach.
- Stories will become a bit shorter again. (It got out of hand, with many stories slightly surpassing my 15,000 word limit. But it was never a goal—it was supposed to be generous maximum word count. Most stories should be 10,000 words, realistically, on average.)
- I will keep translating, writing Dutch first and then English, until at least cycle 5. Then we’ll re-evaluate. I might drop translations entirely then or do English-first.
- This might seem a bit silly. But having an end-goal to something you’re uncertain about or conceive as hard to do, is much more comforting than thinking “when will it end!?”
- I will finish the first draft early enough that I can leave a lot of time between that and the translation. To actually make me interested in re-reading my own story. To give me enough distance to allow bigger structural rewrites.
- I will reduce my focus on line-by-line editing. I lose a lot of time/energy on really tiny improvements or perfectionism. Changes I make (and then write down to backport to the Dutch version) on the fly, but probably wouldn’t even mark as a “needed change” any other day or if I were in another mood.
- Translating has such a focus on the words, that I start to make changes by adding more words (to explain things better, or add more description, or re-state a theme).
- But this is often not actually needed, or even a good thing. If I do feel the need to punctuate something, then it should be shown through the story, in a tense or interesting way. But this is something that translating just really shuts down because you’re so focused on the literal words and how to transform them.
That first bullet point is more important than might seem. Cutting the word count of each story by 1/3 obviously reduces the translation load massively. It also simplifies the stories, making it easier to create big changes or quickly make decisions without introducing new mistakes.
The Saga was always meant to feel like myths that stood the test of time. But it has grown a bit too much into “try to put a full detailed novel into 15,000 words”. Let’s stop doing that.
Conclusion
Those were my thoughts after translating 30 stories for the Saga of Life.
You learn a lot about how to improve your prose (or accidental bad patterns in your writing), but then you hit a plateau where the amount of work just isn’t worth it. I value being productive and completeness, but I value not breaking good physical and mental habits more. And as it turns out, translating/editing 15,000+ words all the time is just too much for me.
The most important issues, I feel, are with big structural changes your stories need. And translating actually hinders that, as it’s twice the work (obviously) to make those large changes.
Anyway, we’ll see what the future holds, maybe I’m just too tired now after doing a lot of translating in a short period of time.
Tiamo