A few months ago, our Director, Eva Tunez Salvador, had the honour of carrying out the book translation of “Take your shot” by business coach Robin Waite from English into Spanish. Eva tells us a bit more about the project.
How it all began
“I met Robin at one of his workshops. When I told him about Genuine Translations, he said he was looking for someone to do the translation into Spanish of his latest book, Take your shot, because Spanish is the second most spoken language in the World (after Chinese) and he wanted to reach a wider audience.
He was right in doing so. He is a fantastic coach and Take you shot gives key advice in the form of a case study story to any business owner (no matter the country) who wants to grow their business rapidly. I read the book, I loved it, and I wanted to make it available to the 500+ million Spanish speakers in the World.
We started working together.
European Spanish or Latin American Spanish?
The first thing Robin and I discussed was whether to do a version for Spain and another one for Latin America’s Spanish speakers, or whether to do just one version using a neutral Spanish. We chose the latter. This meant I had to be very careful not to use certain words which are very common in European Spanish but very offensive in Latin American Spanish, and not to use colloquial expressions which were too specific to any of the Spanish-speaking countries. Only Spanish translators with experience in both dialects can do this well. Apart from my own experience in these dialects, having a team of fantastic translators from those countries at hand was useful when I needed to ask any queries.
What the translation service included
The project involved not only the translation, but also several proofreading, reviewing and editing stages, taking into consideration the formatting and layout of text and graphics/drawings and some cultural adaptations. For example, the change of currency references in the text from pounds to dollars, to make it more international.
I also had to do some terminology research on the field of golf, as there are many references to this sport in the book. That is something I really enjoyed and that I quite like in general about translation – you learn with every project, no matter how much you already know about the field.
The title translation
Like any good literary translator, I left the title for the end. The reason for this is that the title is the summary of the book, the hook that gets (or doesn’t get) people to read it. The translation of the title has to be spot on, and it is easier to achieve this after translating the entire book rather than at any earlier stage.
Since there is no equivalent literal translation of “take your shot” in Spanish, I had to be very creative and look at the reasons why the English title was chosen in the first instance. In this case, one of the characters asks one of the main characters to “take his shot” during a golf game; and that main character has a lightbulb moment and uses that sentence (“take your shot”) as motivation to grow his business. A wonderfully clever title for the book, in my opinion. Now, how could I make it work the same way for the Spanish version?
There were a few options which I ran through Robin, and we both agreed on “Ve a por ello”, which can be translated in English as “go for it” and “go get them” (also used in the sports’ context) and has the same strength as “take your shot”.
Don’t miss out!
It was truly an honour working with Robin Waite and translating what is surely one of my favourite books, “Take your shot”.”
If you haven’t read it yet, you can get your English or Spanish copy here:
Take your shot: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Your-Shot-Business-Attract-ebook/dp/B074679GZ6
Ve a por ello: https://www.amazon.es/Ve-Por-Ello-clientes-negocio-ebook/dp/B07RC31RPJ
Contact us
If you are an author and want to reach a wider international audience like Robin did, please get in touch with us. Genuine Translations work with a team of book translators and cover several languages.
