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24 Jun 2012 |
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| In May 2012 we published an Italian technical manual dedicated to OmegaT, the open source assisted translation tool, called Guida completa a OmegaT: tecniche, trucchi e consigli per traduttori e project manager. In this article, adapted from our latest talk at the ProZ conference in Barcelona on June 9th-10th, 2012, we explain the reasons behind this decision and the results we have seen so far.
Our action of publishing is just an example of what it may imply for a translator to become a self-publisher, which can be summarised in two sentences:
Development of the projectIt all started in November 2010, after a strategic meeting. At that time we decided that in order to sell our consulting and training services to translation agencies and freelance translators, we needed to clearly position as “experts” in technology applied to the translation process.In the meantime Sergio switched from Windows to Mac and we found out that the easiest way to manage the same projects both on Windows and Mac is using OmegaT, which is cross-platform and has been already downloaded by almost 350,000 users during its 10 years of life. We started to be part in the program's online community, gathering around the homonymous Yahoo! group, and we immediatly realized that, even if most discussions were extremely interesting both for newbies and for experienced users, searching the online forum was tedious and time consuming. On top of that, there were only very few sites dedicated to OmegaT, apart from the official website (and today, almost two years later, things haven't changed much). The program, very effective in our experience, is less known than it deserves. We had reached a fairly good level of hands-on expertise, so we decided we could publish on our website at least a few articles about it. Quite early, we realized that we could fill a whole book with all the material we found in the online forum, coupled with our everyday experience. So we decided, maybe a bit hastily, to start writing it down. We thought that it could have been a very interesting subject for translators and translation companies, our target audience. Additionally, it would have been the first book ever on that subject. We liked the idea that it could become a benchmark text for those who wanted complete and organic information on OmegaT, since there was no central, easy-to-search knowledge base.
BenefitsWhat was the advantage for us? First of all writing a book is an easy way to get remembered. "Ah, Sergio, the guy who wrote the OmegaT book", instead of "Ah Sergio, the guy who has a company with a nice logo and a strange name, offering training courses to translators..." Which one works best?
We also thought it could have been our way to contribute to the project. OmegaT is an open source project, so any effort to increase its visibility is welcome. Now I know that some of you are thinking: “If OmegaT is an open source project, why is your book only available for purchase?” Well, this is a common misunderstanding. But one thing is the program itself being developed and its documentation, which are open source and can be freely distributed. Another thing is the original content anyone can produce on how to use that program. Take Linux, for instance, or Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, etc. They are all open source software, but that doesn't mean that you cannot earn a living offering goods and services related to an open source project. Selling services related to an open-source product is actually the way most developers are earning their living: they give the product for free and then charge hourly fees for installation, configuration, training, etc.
We set a very reasonable (if not symbolic) price for our book. The digital edition costs 7.99 euros, which is what a professional translator earns in less than half an hour. The paperback version costs more, 17.99, because we need to cover the actual printing costs. Being a Print on Demand offer, they're quite high. Considering the amount of work we put into this book, we think it's a fair price. Learning by yourself what is covered in the book will surely take you lots of time, meaning it would cost much more than 8 (or 18) euros. How to write an ebook and how to distribute it After taking the decision to write the book, we had to organize authoring and publishing. One of our customers is Simplicissimus Book Farm, an Italian company specializing in online publishing. So, first we asked them what the best way was to make an ebook, which tools were the most appropriate, which standards we should follow, etc.
Thanks to their advice and a great deal of online search, we found out that the de facto standard is EPUB, which is just a few HTML files packed in a ZIP file. Not really high tech, I must say. So the best way to start would have been using either an EPUB editor (there are a few around), or an HTML editor. However, we had one special requirement: we wanted to create both a paperback version and a digital version.
We soon found out that there is no way to accomplish the same level of detail in formatting both the EPUB and, say, a Word. The only framework you could use to write once and compile to several formats is LaTeX. We've worked in LaTeX a few times and, frankly, we weren't so eager to write an entire book with it. So we assumed that at some point we should split the project into 2 branches: one for EPUB and one for the paperback. In fact, the EPUB only allows for a limited formatting. You can't even have tables (and our book is full of tables...) That's why we needed to create 2 different source files, one for each target format.
We wrote the first draft of the book in Microsoft Word, but then we discovered a nifty macro to generate an EPUB directly from OpenOffice, so we migrate to OpenOffice (LibreOffice, to be exact). When we finished writing and editing the text, we formatted the book in LibreOffice, in order to generate the PDF needed by the printing service. Then we stripped out almost all formatting, and we created the ODT we used with the macro to generate the EPUB. The biggest challenge was to strip all the format we knew it would have not appeared in the EPUB. This took me a lot of time.
Once the contents were ready, we send it to a few fellow translators and friends, in order to get some feedback and make minor adjustments. One of them, Andrea Spila, director of the European School of Translation in Rome, wrote the introduction. At that point only the cover was missing, and I designed it using a stock photo of a tin robot. Eventually, some weeks after the release, Sergio found the same toy robot in a shop in Barcellona: a lucky brake that allowed him to shoot more pictures and even a video starred by the robot. Once the two versions -EPUB and printing PDF- were ready we signed up in Narcissus, the self publishing plat form set up by Simplicissimus Book Farm. Since the text is written in Italian, it is addressed initially to the national market, well covered by distributing it on 29 different ebook stores guaranteed by Narcissus. Then we uploaded the files and wait for Narcissus to do the rest. We also enabled the print-on-demand service, which had just been launched. Opposite to Lulu.com, in order to activate the service you must submit an order of 25 copies of the book, or rather, the activation price includes 25 paperback copies. It's great to us, because we can sell those books directly during training courses that we organize or meetings that we attend. PromotionAfter the release is when the most difficult part comes: spreading the word. In order to promote the book, we did the following:
Results and conclusionsWe decided to write a technical manual on an open source cat tool to promote ourselves, assess our knowledge on this subject and contribute to the project. We think we accomplished this goal, because, at least on the Italian forums, people now know us as experts on OmegaT.
We chose the digital medium and the on-demand technology in order to distribute the book to as many readers as possible with a minimum initial investment.
We didn’t do this in order to earn money, because the amount of time we spent on this project exceeds by far even the most optimistic sales figures. In fact, our goal is to sell 100 copies in the first year. Considering that OmegaT has been downloaded only 7000 times by users based in Italy in the last 10 years, if we sell 100 copies, that would mean that about the 1.5% (a relatively significant percentage) of them has bought our book.
The most importantly we established lots of new connections after publishing the book. Thanks to this book, we have got in touch with several organisations, some of them interested in training courses on OmegaT. We also got in closer contact with OmegaT’s developers, and we even financially contributed to some small new features. We also had a chance to write blog articles on other blogs and online magazines.Next stepsWe want to make our Guide available for an international audience, by translating it into Spanish and English. Spanish translation has already started, thanks to a group of translation student from the University of Alicante and some freelance translators. As regards the English translation, we are currently looking for volunteers. During the next months we will offer our Guide as a textbook included in OmegaT traning courses.
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