Does starting a series create an implied agreement that the series will be completed?

[Relic]

I'm not even sure why this is up for debate. There is an implication, but no agreement. Unless we are children we understand that the world is unpredictable and that we aren't owed anything at all.  The fact that we have the energy to be upset when our entertainment fails us speaks volumes about our priorities. 

[Eggegg]

I’d rather them never finish it than rush to get everything out at the end and retro actively destroy the earlier work. I’m thinking about Stephen King and his Dark Tower series which he felt the need to complete and then meant I would hate the series forever.

Even The GoT tv series has ruined my opinion of past seasons the worse it gets.

But ideally an author would know how they were planning on finishing a series rather than crossing their fingers after book one. 

[Jo498]

2 hours ago, Eggegg said:

I’d rather them never finish it than rush to get everything out at the end and retro actively destroy the earlier work.

I would not go as far as "destroy" but GRRM managed (without rushing) one poor and one middling book after three very good ones and he might still manage to never finish the series so these possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

[Eggegg]

13 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

I would not go as far as "destroy" but GRRM managed (without rushing) one poor and one middling book after three very good ones and he might still manage to never finish the series so these possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Haha , yes good point. He does seem to be on a downward trajectory, hopefully he can turn the ship around.

[baxus]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

The publisher opinion I've always seen is that the "people waiting for series to be complete before they'll read the first book" phenomenon is so low as to be negligible. Exactly how they're working that out is unclear, though. Probably a comparison of the series that fail versus those that succeed which is rooted more in word of mouth/buzz/reviews and marketing.

This is horribly Anglo-centric, but almost every serious SFF fan I've met from non-English speaking countries basically gave up waiting for translations at some point and taught themselves English to stay in touch with the genre, otherwise they'd never finish series or never get to read them in the first place. In fact I've seen theories, especially in countries were English is very widely spoken (like the Netherlands and India), that series often don't get finished in translation because impatient readers rush off to buy the later books in the series in English rather than wait months or years for the translation to be done, and sales drop. The main exceptions to that seem to be countries with large internal SFF markets in the native language (China and Japan being the most obvious examples, Russia to a lesser extent).

As a native non-English speaker,  I can say that my usual MO is that I start reading books from a series when they come out in Serbian and if I like them I get them in English. If it's a complete series in English, I get all the books and then get Serbian translation of the rest of the books in the series when they get published.  Sometimes I read them, other times I just use them to complete the set.

[Buckwheat]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

The publisher opinion I've always seen is that the "people waiting for series to be complete before they'll read the first book" phenomenon is so low as to be negligible. Exactly how they're working that out is unclear, though. Probably a comparison of the series that fail versus those that succeed which is rooted more in word of mouth/buzz/reviews and marketing.

This is horribly Anglo-centric, but almost every serious SFF fan I've met from non-English speaking countries basically gave up waiting for translations at some point and taught themselves English to stay in touch with the genre, otherwise they'd never finish series or never get to read them in the first place. In fact I've seen theories, especially in countries were English is very widely spoken (like the Netherlands and India), that series often don't get finished in translation because impatient readers rush off to buy the later books in the series in English rather than wait months or years for the translation to be done, and sales drop. The main exceptions to that seem to be countries with large internal SFF markets in the native language (China and Japan being the most obvious examples, Russia to a lesser extent).

It is Anglo-centric, but it is true. English language is very prevalent in this genre of literature. I know I did the same thing with ASOIAF, I read the first two in translation and then borrowed the third and fourth in English (I eventually bought them in Slovene, though). The fifth one, I just bought the English one when it came out and never read it in Slovene - by that time, I was already on this forum and read a lot about the series on the Internet, so I was already more used to the English names, phrases, and generally talking and reading about that topic in English.

Some of my friends did the same thing with Harry Potter, but I was still too unsure of my English proficiency to read it in original back then. I might as well have read it I guess, seeing how the last two translations of that one are horrible.

I did the same thing with German with the Inkheart trilogy though. The third book was translated a lot later than the first two, and I just decided that I would try read the original.

Partly off-topic, but since we are talking of translations ... I have a question for @Ran. I saw Worlds of Ice and Fire in translation in a bookshop here! I did not expect that was going to be translated, so well done on taking over the world. Which other languages has that one been translated to? Do you have any information on how that one is selling in other languages?

[Ran]

@Buckwheat

Yes, translation rights have been sold in over 20 markets. As to sales, we have partial information on that, but I think it's probably safe to say that the book is very near 1 million copies sold globally -- and may be over that number; a number of markets where I know they have published the book have not yet reported their sales to date.

[Buckwheat]

Woooooow. Who would have thought there were so many nerds around who would buy a history of a fictional world spin-off from some obscure fantasy series. Thanks for the answer!

[C.T. Phipps]

23 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

Woooooow. Who would have thought there were so many nerds around who would buy a history of a fictional world spin-off from some obscure fantasy series. Thanks for the answer!

I'm so happy for this site because of it.

[baxus]

2 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

Partly off-topic, but since we are talking of translations ... I have a question for @Ran. I saw Worlds of Ice and Fire in translation in a bookshop here! I did not expect that was going to be translated, so well done on taking over the world. Which other languages has that one been translated to? Do you have any information on how that one is selling in other languages?

It has been translated to Serbian, and it looks pretty good (I also have the original version to compare it to).

As for sales, I have no idea what the numbers are, but the Serbian version is pretty affordable (cost me some 11-12€ with the discount I have as the member of the publisher's regular customers club).

[David Selig]

13 hours ago, Werthead said:

The publisher opinion I've always seen is that the "people waiting for series to be complete before they'll read the first book" phenomenon is so low as to be negligible. Exactly how they're working that out is unclear, though. Probably a comparison of the series that fail versus those that succeed which is rooted more in word of mouth/buzz/reviews and marketing.

This is horribly Anglo-centric, but almost every serious SFF fan I've met from non-English speaking countries basically gave up waiting for translations at some point and taught themselves English to stay in touch with the genre, otherwise they'd never finish series or never get to read them in the first place. In fact I've seen theories, especially in countries were English is very widely spoken (like the Netherlands and India), that series often don't get finished in translation because impatient readers rush off to buy the later books in the series in English rather than wait months or years for the translation to be done, and sales drop. The main exceptions to that seem to be countries with large internal SFF markets in the native language (China and Japan being the most obvious examples, Russia to a lesser extent).

I know a lot of people who used to buy plenty of translated SFF books but in the last 5-6 years have switched to reading almost exclusively in English. That's one of the reasons the science fiction book market here is virtually dead and the fantasy market isn't in great shape either. It's not really about impatience in my case, it's more like the fact that you never know whether a translation would be good, plus even a good translation is worse than the original if the writer has at least a decent prose. And, of course, there is literally thousands of times more books to choose from in English, especially if you are interested in less commercial writers or in let's say female writers of science fiction (a lot of the local publishers of science fiction are blatantly sexist, there is literally only 4 female writers with more than 2 science fiction novels translated in Bulgarian, and 2 of them are YA writers who had hugely popular movies made based on their books).

[Buckwheat]

5 hours ago, baxus said:

It has been translated to Serbian, and it looks pretty good (I also have the original version to compare it to).

As for sales, I have no idea what the numbers are, but the Serbian version is pretty affordable (cost me some 11-12€ with the discount I have as the member of the publisher's regular customers club).

Well, the online shop of the Slovene publisher lists it under the most popular books right now, but it also costs almost 40 € here. I do not have neither the English nor the Slovene one.

3 hours ago, David Selig said:

even a good translation is worse than the original if the writer has at least a decent prose.

As an aspiring translator, I feel it is my duty to protest against this statement. A good translator will be able to analyse and repeat the style of the author adequately.

[David Selig]

12 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

As an aspiring translator, I feel it is my duty to protest against this statement. A good translator will be able to analyse and repeat the style of the author adequately.

Not really, even the best translation of quality prose is not as good as the original unless the translator is a really good writer themself and an excellent translator too, which is extremely rare.

[baxus]

13 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

As an aspiring translator, I feel it is my duty to protest against this statement. A good translator will be able to analyse and repeat the style of the author adequately.

People who translate fantasy and SF books to Serbian do a pretty good job (based on books I've read in both English and Serbian), but there are some things that just don't translate that well and despite translators' best efforts end up sounding a bit weird or just off.

It's not a matter of particular translator's expertise, but rather that English and Serbian are quite different languages with different structures. For example, The Witcher series translation felt more natural to me because Polish, being a Slavic language, is much closer to Serbian.

[Jo498]

Most genre literature is not "quality prose" but very far from it. Although it can and will usually get even worse in translation, I would not completely rule out that occasionally the prose and style of genre fiction can actually improve by translation.

I don't have an example I can vouch for, though. I recall that some people claimed that the humourous prose of Israeli writer Ephraim Kishon who was very popular in German translation in the 60-80s had been considerably improved in the translations by Friedrich Torberg.

[3CityApache]

58 minutes ago, David Selig said:

Not really, even the best translation of quality prose is not as good as the original unless the translator is a really good writer themself and an excellent translator too, which is extremely rare.

You sound like it was a fact, not an opinion, which it's not. I don't think "even the best translation must be worse than original" and I don't think you have to be a writer to be an excellent translator, though I do admit some most memorable translations I read (and had a chance to compare to the original) was made by writers. Not all of them, mind you. And I do remember cases when translation made at least the same impression on me as the original, if not bigger.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, David Selig said:

Not really, even the best translation of quality prose is not as good as the original unless the translator is a really good writer themself and an excellent translator too, which is extremely rare.

There certainly seems to be a strong argument that Liu Cixin's work has gone down so well in English-speaking markets because his translator, Ken Liu, is a skilled author in his own right.

Translations can make a big difference. Apparently the English-language Witcher editions improved dramatically when they changed translators after two books.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I have seen people argue that Asterix in English translation is an improvement on the original.

[john]

I find (or found) Asterix funnier in English but that’s probably a cultural thing rather than a quality of translation thing.

[polishgenius]

4 hours ago, john said:

I find (or found) Asterix funnier in English but that’s probably a cultural thing rather than a quality of translation thing.

I haven't read Asterix in the original, but there is at least one place in which the translator made a marked improvement- Getafix is a far better name for the druid than Panoramix.


 

 

10 hours ago, Werthead said:

Translations can make a big difference.

Absolutely. There are two translators of Terry Pratchett into Polish, and (from a little I've read and a lot I've been told) one of them is markedly better than the other. The early translations of Harry Potter were also utterly terrible and done by someone who clearly didn't read English all that well-  one detail that went down in legend in our family being that they translated 'forget-me-not blue' into 'niezapominalny niebieski' which actually means 'unforgettable blue', but there was a lot of that kind of stuff though I don't remember anything more now. I don't know if they fixed it later or ran with the shoddy ones for evermore.

Haha. Having just looked up the people involved, I realise that I actually know the translator of the Pratchett- she's the wife of one of my dad's best friends. I haven't met her for years and didn't know that she did that- probably good I found out before I crossed paths with them again and stuck my foot in my mouth... I also see that in this case they did have the books she did- the Tiffany Aching series- retranslated by the guy who did all the others.