Translate English to Spanish, whole files at once
Read the first chapter in Spanish before paying. Choose Spain or Latin America, tú or usted, and dialogue punctuated with em dashes the way Spanish publishers expect.
Source · English, detected
On the morning the ferries stopped, Mara Ellison walked the length of the Lantern Quay and counted the boats that would not leave. Eleven.
Preview
FreeLa mañana en que los transbordadores dejaron de zarpar, Mara Ellison recorrió el Muelle de las Linternas de punta a punta y contó los barcos que no saldrían. Once.
- 31 names and places in the glossary
- Layout kept
- 24 chapters
At a glance. English to Spanish
- $22.50 for a 90,000-word novel
- Chapter one is free
- Spain or Latin America
- Chapters, footnotes, images and styles
One glossary for the whole file. Names read the same in Spanish on every page.
Pick a name to find it in both versions.
On the morning the ferries stopped, Mara Ellison walked the length of the Lantern Quay and counted the boats that would not leave. Eleven. Somewhere behind the fog, the Tidewardens were counting too.
La mañana en que los transbordadores dejaron de zarpar, Mara Ellison recorrió el Muelle de las Linternas de punta a punta y contó los barcos que no saldrían. Once. En algún lugar tras la niebla, los Guardianes de la Marea también contaban.
Spanish takes 8% more characters than English. Measured on our sample.
| Measure | English | Spanish |
|---|---|---|
| Words | 84 | 95 |
| Characters, without spaces | 388 | 419 |
At the same ratio, a 92,400-word English book comes out at about 104,500 words in Spanish.
You pay for the words of the English original, not for the length of the translation.
What changes in Spanish. Handled for you, adjustable before you pay.
- Pick Spain or Latin America: vocabulary, ustedes versus vosotros and many everyday words change.
- Dialogue uses the em dash instead of quotation marks, as Spanish publishers expect.
- Tú and usted follow your style setting and stay consistent between the same two characters.
What a book costs. Pick an example or set your word count.
Free preview: chapter one. No account or card needed.
Questions. Short answers.
How much does it cost to translate a book from English to Spanish?
A one-off translation costs $0.25 per 1,000 words for reading or $0.60 with glossary, style guide and review. A 90,000-word novel is $54 in Publish mode. You see the exact price before paying.
Will names stay the same in the Spanish translation?
Yes. The whole file is read first and every person, place and invented word gets one Spanish form. You can change any of them before translation starts.
Should I choose Spain or Latin America?
Choose where most of your readers live. The variant decides vosotros or ustedes and many everyday words, so a book for Mexico and a book for Spain read differently.
How is dialogue punctuated in Spanish?
With the raya, the long dash Spanish publishers use for speech, including the dashes around speaker tags. Quotation marks stay only for quoted words inside a sentence.
More language pairs. Same file, other languages.
Every format you work with. Layout kept in each one.
English to Spanish: choosing a variant, a voice and a price
Spain or Latin America comes first
Before tone, before names, decide where your readers are. Spanish for Spain uses vosotros for a group of friends; Latin American Spanish uses ustedes for everyone. Everyday words split too: a car is a coche in Madrid and a carro in Bogotá, and a computer is an ordenador on one side of the Atlantic and a computadora on the other.
The variant is one setting on the names and style step. It applies to every chapter, so a book written for Spain will not suddenly use a Mexican word in chapter 12.
Read the full guideHide the guide
Dialogue with the raya, not quotation marks
Spanish publishers mark speech with the raya, a long dash at the start of each line of dialogue. Speaker tags are set off by the same dash inside the line. English quotation marks in a Spanish novel make it look like a rough draft.
Dialogue is converted to this style automatically. Quotation marks remain only for words quoted inside a sentence, which is also how Spanish books use them.
Tú or usted between the same two people
The choice between tú and usted works like German du and Sie. Once two characters have settled on one, it should stay that way until the story changes it. A translator working chapter by chapter loses track of this. Transleaf reads the whole book first, so the form chosen in chapter 3 is still there in chapter 19.
- Informal tú for friends, family and most young adult fiction
- Formal usted for strangers, elders and professional settings
- Per relationship, which follows each pair of characters separately
Names, places and the Tidewardens
Lantern Quay becomes el Muelle de las Linternas in our sample, and the Tidewardens become los Guardianes de la Marea. Spanish needs the article, and the glossary stores it with the term so every chapter uses it the same way. Character names stay untouched unless you switch a name to Translate.
Price of a full book
A one-off Spanish translation costs $0.25 per 1,000 English words in Read mode and $0.60 in Publish mode, with minimums of $3 and $9. A 90,000-word novel comes to $22.50 or $54. The exact total appears next to the free chapter, so you know it before you decide.
Reading the preview like a Spanish editor
Check the punctuation on the first page with speech. Check that the variant matches your market, which is easiest to spot in food, money and forms of address. If a joke fell flat, switch idioms from Adapt naturally to Stay close to the original, or the other way round, and run the chapter again.