It’s been a long time since my last post and even longer since the last posting related to promotion for the memoir (almost three years). So I was surprised when I was contacted by John Ross at Camphor Press, “an independent publishing house focused on Taiwan and the wider East Asia region,” coincidentally the publishers of the book Barbarian at the Gate, a memoir about a Caucasian American who served in the Taiwanese Army. I had heard of the book in passing, and it was interesting to discover the similarities between the military cultures of Korea and Taiwan.
The book review and an author interview have been posted to the Bookish Asia site, “a book review site dedicated to showcasing quality fiction and non-fiction works about Asia.”
One thing that I appreciated about the interview is that the questions were very informed about issues related to Korea and military service. It is a reflection of an interviewer who’s well-versed on Asia, military service in Asia, and author interviews in general.
In other news, I’m completing the final edits on the EFL teacher’s edition of the English guidebook and hope to publish it by the end of the month or beginning of May. My translator is currently at work on the Korean edition for students, but it will probably require a couple more rounds of edits before I start looking for domestic publishers. And I’m still working on two novels and hope to have a finished draft of the more developed manuscript for editing by next year.
Awesome! I’ve blogged about this post to help spread the word.
Having just read your interview, especially that part about the poet who was supposed to help with translation, I can say that if you’re still looking for someone to translate your work into Korean, I’ve been working with two excellent translators who are very good about deadlines. Translating is what they do, so if you sign them up to work for you, and if you’re willing to pay their rate (which probably isn’t cheap, but it’s not astronomical, either—I can check), they won’t flake out: they’ll chug along until the job is done. Real pros. Anyway, please let me know.
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Hey, Kevin,
Sorry for the late reply. If there was real interest in a Korean version of the book, I would consider paying someone to edit my translation of the book (I did a really bad English to Korean translation of the book last year), but I probably wouldn’t pay very much unless I got an advance on the book. It may sound like I’m being cheap, which isn’t untrue, but the fact that I’ve actually lost money on this book is something that needs to be taken into consideration. I have had offers from friends and students to do it for free, but I don’t want them to waste their time.
Young
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Yikes—I just looked up an email in which one of the translators quoted her rate. She said “130 to 150 won per word.” Assuming 300 words per page, and 300 pages, that’s 90,000 words. At an average rate of 140 won per word, that’s 12.6 million won—over $10,000, US. Okay, that’s kinda steep. But maybe it’s worth it…?
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