Hmm, should I say another language or my language?! 🙂
I’m a Romanian established at Toronto, Canada, since 2003. While I’m also fluent in English and French, I decided to write my first book in English Introverts: Leverage Your Strengths for an Effective Job Search. Why? Because this was the language I used more in coaching since I changed my career from engineering to coaching in 2006. And that’s a lot of coaching packed in that 336 pages book to help introverts shift from feeling victimized to empowered to use their strengths more effectively!
What followed was publishing the first book of the Photo-Coaching series on Amazon Meeting With My Self: Self-Coaching Questions that Invite Wisdom In. That was much easier: I already designed it as a self-coaching album back in 2009. All it needed was to be formatted for Kindle and uploaded on Amazon. Done! It’s a little book, but its power consists in the reader’s experience with it.
Noticing the impact this little book had on its readers, creating real mind shifts, I was not satisfied until I saw it published in Romanian as well. After all, why not help also those who speak the same native language as me?!
And that’s how this journey of writing in Romanian began!
A normal translation didn’t really work. The same coaching concepts and questions could lead to a different meaning if not formulated correctly in Romanian. Plus, the combination of images and this type of questions is quite new to some people.
Ok, so I did the best I could to formulate it in Romanian. Followed by adding the Romanian accents and get the file ready to be uploaded to Kindle. Then, surprise!!! Kindle doesn’t accept books in Romanian. Oooouch!
For Romanians, and any other readers, having a book properly edited is important … right?!
So I had two choices: either I don’t publish the book in Romanian (which would be quite disappointing) or I remove all accents and publish as is (risking to lose readers who care about reading Romanian wording with the proper accents). What would you do in this case?
I chose to go with the later: I took the accents off and published it as Intalnire cu mine insumi: intrebari ce deschid oaza intelepciunii (Romanian Edition)
After all, I want this book to reach as many Romanians as it can and Amazon is a way to do this—also the English speaking readers, with the English edition—because it has the potential to change people’s lives. It already did (if you check the reviews and praise of the English edition you’ll see what I’m talking about).
Today is the second of the three days free promotion of the Romanian edition published on Amazon.
And I’m happy to see it #1 in the Decision Making & Problem Solving category in the Free Kindle store. If you want to grab the Romanian edition while is free, you can find it here along with the English edition: https://amazon.com/author/gabrielacasineanu
Hmm, this experience makes me put aside the idea of having my book for introverts & job search in Romanian as well… at least for now.
Cheers,
Gabriela
