Can one be a co-translator of a book, if he does not know the language that the book is translated into?
I am translating a religious book from language A to language B and have hired a student worker to help me. He is a native speaker of language A but does not speak language B at all. What I ask him to do is, whenever a Bible verse (for example, Mark 16:16) is mentioned in the book, he will find the corresponding name of the book in language B from a table and then copy and paste the name in language B to my file. Since the book quotes heavily from the Bible, my student has done a lot of work in this translation work.
My question is, should I add my student worker as a cotranslator based on what he did, though he does not know language B at all?
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1 answer
Your student worker sounds like a valuable assistant. But he is not a translator.
Even if he were doing actual translation work, a co-translator indicates someone doing work at the same level that you are, or close. And he's not.
If you want to acknowledge his contribution to your manuscript, by all means give him credit within the book. This can be immediately after your name:
Translated by Zuriel, with assistance from Student Worker.
Or he could be featured prominently in the acknowledgments. Or something in-between, like on the title page but not in the same line as your credit.
Your publisher may or may not want a say in this. But ultimately, what credit you give this worker is between you and him. Honor him if you wish (and if you call him a co-translator, no one is going to question you, if that's the title you really want to use) but don't feel compelled to give him more credit than he's earned.
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