ES → EN
Spanish to English book translation
You have readers in Madrid, Bogotá and Buenos Aires. The acquisition editor in New York cannot read a word of the book.
Mi abuela decía que el mar se lleva lo que uno le da, y que por eso nunca hay que darle nada que uno quiera de vuelta.
My grandmother used to say the sea keeps whatever you hand it, and that this is why you never hand it anything you want back.
Se lleva is literally "carries away". "Keeps" is the choice: it holds the grandmother's flat, superstitious authority, where "carries away" would sound lyrical and lose her.
No le hice caso. Tenía dieciséis años y todo lo que yo quería, lo quería para siempre.
I paid her no mind. I was sixteen, and everything I wanted, I wanted forever.
A Spanish → English excerpt with the editorial reasoning attached.
Spanish into English, specifically.
Voseo and regional register
A novel set in Buenos Aires and a novel set in Seville are not the same book in English. We fix the target register in the brief before a word is translated, and we hold it.
Formality collapse
Spanish carries usted / tú distinctions that English simply does not have. Those relationships have to be rebuilt in English through diction and rhythm, not dropped.
Sentence length
Literary Spanish tolerates long subordinated sentences that read as breathless in English. Splitting them is a judgement call made per author, not per sentence.
Why this edition is worth commissioning.
English rights are what your foreign-rights desk is trying to sell at Frankfurt and London. A finished English edition is the strongest sales tool you can put in front of an acquiring editor.
Reviewed starts at $549 for this pair, delivered in 5–8 days. The sample chapters and the full translation brief cost nothing and arrive in 24 hours.