A couple of weeks ago, I learned a bit about how an audio book gets made—the audio version of Regarding Ducks and Universes is being recorded by the lovely people at BrillianceAudio, with the talented Alexander Cendese narrating. Mainly I learned that there wasn’t much for me as the author to do, as my contribution consisted of supplying preferred pronunciations of names (Mrs. Noor, to rhyme with “sure”) and of words unique to the novel (macar tree, ma-CAR; yabput, YAAB-poot), all of which took about fifteen minutes. I’m very much looking forward to “hearing” the story — the audio book is available for pre-order and will be released on November 6, 2012.
Another bit of exciting news is that a German translation of Regarding Ducks is in the works, through Amazon Crossing (as translated by Peter Friedrich, author and translator). I don’t have many details yet, only the thought that being a translator is probably hard enough without having to deal with finding German language counterparts for made-up terms such as A-dweller, B-dweller, and yabput. (I speak from experience, being bilingual and needing occasionally to translate a phrase in one direction or the other for a family member. There is an art to it. I tend to flounder and say, “uh,” a lot.) But Peter sent me a nice note saying he had fun translating the book, so perhaps it’s all in a day’s work when you do it for a living….
Finally, the publication date for the novel I’ve been working on for the past year, The Far-Time Incident, has been set—March 26, 2013, which would seem like a long time away, except that I know there’s a lot to get done before the big day. This month the final edits are going in with the help of my editor extraordinaire, Angela Polidoro, after which there’ll be cover choices to make, the polishing of the back blurb, the proofreading of the ARC… All great fun.
Neve Maslakovic 
One reply on “A Publication Date and New Editions”
Great post.I really think that German was as hard as other languages.I might say that learning other languages such as German translation would be harder especially when it was not your native languages.We would always give emphasis on the importance of a technical translation being accurate and efficient can indeed not be overstated. Especially in the ever faster moving world of globalized business, successful information and technology transfer within multinational businesses can make the difference between win or lose.
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