Chinese Reader...Human

Umm, number of speakers has nothing to do with the price. It's the number of demands and suppliers(translators) that matters right now.

 

The book price, I was using the book price just for translation costs. I wasn't factoring the rest of that. Japanese translated books cost less than chinese is what I was saying

Well if you have more speakers isn't the number of people who can, and usually do, translate, higher?

 

But you do not know the translation costs. It's not public, it cannot be inferred from the cover market price. Just because the books are priced lower does not mean they were cheaper to translate.

 

ok, well I have never been in the translation business. You probably know more than I do about that

 

the price for translating a novel for publishing will be much much higher than the price of one book....because the publisher can sell thousands of copies...

 

Ahh, I see.

 

Not necessarily. You have to be bilingual to translate, and the number of bilinguals in any given population depends on a lot of factors such as the local education system, degree of global trade, history of colonialism, etc. And most pro translators only translate into their native language. Plenty of amateurs translate into a second language, but they also tend to rely a lot on native speakers to edit their stuff.

 

Ahh ok. As I mentioned, I didn't know much about this, thanks for the information.
And it looks like I have to wait the year or two until the book is finished being translated lol

 

Or you could spend the year or two on learning the language and improve yourself at the same time.

 

Well I am learning Japanese at the moment; because of a Uni course. Otherwise I would be learning Chinese, and I plan to after this course. But that will be in a few years.