Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Call for the Translation of Magma Books Into English

As of October 12 2009, ClustrMaps says there have been 6545 visits to the Kohntarkosz blog since it started on August 9, 2009. Here is the breakdown of the top ten countries:

France (FR)1,926
United States (US)1,182
United Kingdom (GB)838
Germany (DE)433
Japan (JP)341
Italy (IT)244
Finland (FI)183
Netherlands (NL)164
Canada (CA)105
Chile (CL)98

France has 29.4% of the total readership. Let's take the French part of Belgium and Quebec, and say that 30% of the readers are native French speakers.

This means that 70% of the readers are not native French speakers. Let's make a BIG assumption, and extrapolate these statistics to the number of Magma fans all over the world. This means that 70% of Magma fans might not understand French.

There are two major books coming out about Magma. There is Philippe Gonin's book, which is set to be release in January 2010. And, there is the definitive volume by Jean-Christophe Alluin, which is "almost finished", from what I understand.

These books must be translated into English so that Magma fans from all over the world can enjoy them.

How can we make this happen? We would need to contact the authors and the publishers of the book, and show them that there are a substantial number of potential readers to make the translation efforts worthwhile. And, every publisher and author would love to triple their sales, so I am sure that they would be receptive to the idea.

8 comments:

  1. Hi Marc,
    Yes, I quite agree! I would purchase English versions of both these books. I'd also love to see a translation of Antoine De Caunnes book from the late 70s. I'm a first time poster here, but a big fan of this blog, an invaluable resource for us non-French speaking Zeuhl lovers! Keep up the good work :)

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  2. I think it's a very good idea, but it would take time and efforts for them.

    In any ways if not, each one of us could translate some pages for our worldwide zeuhl companions in order to build the english version !! :)

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  3. Hi!

    I am a humble translator, and I'd be glad to help if I can. Keep me posted!

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  4. If need be, mail me at : alexis.bernaut@gmail.com

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  5. Thanks, Alexis. If these books ever come out, then you will be sure to hear from me.

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  6. Of course I'd be more than interested to buy any English written Magma book...

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