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FWIW: At the end of the story/book add an Appendix "History of the MYTO". There you can add all the detail you want. If a reader uses it, fine. If they feel they don't need it, fine also. This ...
Whenever you translate, there is a kind of "semantic loss", which may be easily circumvented when it comes to fictional texts but which may endanger the essence of nonfictional texts such as philos...
For French words, at least, it is mostly a pretentious way to show the author is cultured, thought funnily enough their "French" is often incorrect, though it will pass mustard for most readers. F...
The dense pine forest was stained black as pitch (I don't know if you're aware, but "pitch" actually means "pine tar." It's pine sap cooked down until it's thick enough to spread like peanut b...
Plagiarism is an ethical concept, not a legal one, so there is no universal accepted standard. The 'five-consecutive word' is a rule of thumb, not a legal precept. If you are writing for a partic...
I haven't heard this five-word rule. But I can easily think of many sequences of five words that no one would seriously consider plagiarism. I think that I will was the first time that ...
You need to remember that plagiarism is not just about words; it can also be about ideas. So a key point here is that even if you change virtually all of the words, you still need to make sure yo...
If you have an agent, ask them first. If you don't have an agent, this might be a good time to try to consult with one. The specifics of your book and the specific market can be crucial to the deci...
I'd say first, can you just translate the words in the text and not give the original? Like in the example you give in the comments on Fortiter's post, why not just write, "Toward the beach, there ...
"Submitted by" might be your best answer. It obfuscates who the originator was (the authors/creators of the original work) and what you and your collaborator did, but the truth is, you are submitti...
Bear in mind that a compact numerical date format like 01/02/2013 uses a different convention in the US than in Europe. In the US it's interpreted as month/day/year, while in Europe it's day/month/...
The best date formats are the ones that are (1) clear and (2) familiar to your audience. You want your readers to focus on the content of your resume/CV, and this will be difficult if they have to ...
I see two problems. First, if the person died, how did the story come to be set down in writing? This is a problem whether the story continues after the narrator's death or not. Some readers wil...
Most stories in English are written in the past tense. If it happened five seconds ago, it's still past. Occasionally writers put a story in the present tense with the idea that this will give a s...
The best you can do, I think, is to try and pick up on the tone of the work that the original writer was trying to convey. Since your profile indicates that you're an Indonesian/English translato...
The other answers are correct to say that you need to read a lot. But it's not enough just to read. You have to read like a writer. Anytime you read a passage that is particularly clear or compelli...
Considering that many of those threads from your life probably also involved other people, another pitfall is that someone else might recognize himself in your book and not like what you write abou...
When writers base fiction too closely on their own experiences, they can sometimes lose the ability to truly play with the story. I think this is because they are not consciously making as many dec...
Most writers utilize elements of their own experience when they create their fiction. Some of the best fiction depends heavily on the writer's own life. John Irving is an excellent example of a hig...
I'm completely sure picks like "as he walked up to", "he screwed his eyebrows and" or "as far as I know" will happen notoriously but they don't constitute plagiarism because they are very common ex...
If we're genuinely talking just five consecutive words: yes, that could happen by chance. But plagiarism is not just about five words in the middle of a 120-page thesis. It's lifting ideas, plots...
I'm answering this as a technical writer but I don't have translation experience so can't address any aspects specific to that. Many of the habits that (I hope) you already have as a software deve...
The best practice would be that all of the code has to be compiled and potentially verified against some code rules. The way we do this at my work is that all of the examples are tagged in docum...
I am not in academia, but I think if you would use the present tense for a book, then a letter — which presumably has to be published for you to have access to it — would fall under the same rule. ...
The problem is actually with "back and forth." That's because back is the return, but in the idiom it's placed before forth, which is the "going out" part. If you use take over and bring back, you'...
