In this article, we're going to set out a method for setting up a book and its translations, and for managing reader feedback, using GitHub and our GitHub writing mode.
Note: This article is based on the method created by author Henrik Kniberg, who used our GlobalAuthor service to translate his book Generative AI in a Nutshell: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of AI into 31 languages. (Henrik's book is based on his viral video with the same title.)
Creating and Managing AI Book Translations with Leanpub
If you use one of Leanpub's AI book translation services:
...you can use our GitHub writing mode to do version control with Git, and to manage community feedback from your audiences around the world, using GitHub.
Frankly, from both a self-published author's and a book publisher's perspective, this is really amazing.
Traditionally, creating, editing, publishing, getting feedback about, and then re-editing and re-publishing dozens of translated book manuscripts would have been a job for dozens of people and taken a very long time. And of course, getting instant feedback on translations from readers around the world for translated books you could instantly update and publish a new version of, for a global audience of readers, was simply impossible.
Using Leanpub's AI book translation services, you can translate your book into up to 31 other languages, and (if you want to) get translated web pages to sell each book on Leanpub's website, with just the click of a button (and waiting a couple of days for us to do some human checking).
You'll also get 31 new manuscripts generated in plain text, one for each language, formatted using Markua.
Related Article: What is Markua?
Getting Reader Feedback About Book Translations
Typically, all books can benefit from reader feedback, and this is especially true for AI book translations.
Using our GitHub writing mode and setting up a public GitHub repo for your book manuscript, with unique branches for every language it has been translated into, allows you to receive and manage suggested improvements to a book, like the inevitable typos, as well as more detailed community improvements to the translation.
Readers love helping authors to improve their books, especially if you're open with your manuscript, invite their suggestions, and are as prompt as you can be in response to their pull requests.
Book Manuscript Repo Structure
For the original language, you want to set up two branches:
preview (this is the trunk branch, there's no main)
publish
You will then set up your Writing Mode page on Leanpub like this:
Related Article: Where is the Writing Mode page for my book?
With this setup, when you create a preview of you book, it will be generated from the preview branch. And when you publish a new version of your book, the new published version will be generated from your publish branch.
Setting Up Two Branches for Each Language
You will then want to create both a preview and a publish branch for each language the book has been translated into.
We recommend you do this using the same language codes we use for Leanpub landing pages.
For example, if you translated a book into German, you would use de for the branch names, like this:
preview-de
publish-de
You can then use these branches on the Writing Mode page for the corresponding translated book on Leanpub.
Here is a list of the languages and their codes:
Language (In English) | Language | Language Code |
Arabic | العربية | ar |
Bosnian | Bosanski | bs |
Chinese (Simplified) | 简体中文 | zh-Hans |
Chinese (Traditional) | 中文 (繁體) | zh-Hant |
Croatian | Hrvatski | hr |
Czech | Čeština | cs |
Danish | Dansk | da |
Dutch | Nederlands | nl |
English | English | en |
French | Français | fr |
German | Deutsch | de |
Greek | Ελληνικά | el |
Hebrew | עברית | he |
Hindi | हिंदी | hi |
Hungarian | Magyar | hu |
Indonesian | Indonesian | id |
Italian | Italiano | it |
Japanese | 日本語 | ja |
Korean | 한국어 | ko |
Norwegian (Bokmål) | Bokmål | nb |
Polish | Polski | pl |
Portuguese (Brazilian) | Português (Brazilian) | pt-BR |
Portuguese (European) | Português (European) | pt-PT |
Punjabi | ਪੰਜਾਬੀ | pa |
Romanian | Română | ro |
Serbian (Latin) | Srpski (latinica) | sr-Latn |
Spanish | Español | es |
Swedish | Svenska | sv |
Thai | ไทย | th |
Turkish | Türkçe | tr |
Ukrainian | Українська | uk |
Vietnamese | Việt Nam | vi |
A Great Example of Managing Leanpub Book Translations
For a great example of how to manage Leanpub book translations, we recommend you take a look at Henrik Kniberg's public book repository on GitHub here:
He has sections in the README for the repo that explain the following:
- Where to buy the book
- How to help improve a translation
- Translation improvement guidelines
- Questions / support
- Translation improvement status
Sharing Your Own Approach to Managing Book Translations and Plain Text Manuscripts
If you have created your own approach to managing translations and feedback, please share it with our author community on the Leanpub Authors Forum:
Questions or Feedback
If you have any questions or feedback for this article, please email the Leanpub Team at hello@leanpub.com.
To learn about amazing new books and authors, subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/leanpub.
If you have any feedback or questions about this article, please email the Leanpub team about it at hello@leanpub.com!
If you have any questions or thoughts on writing and self-publishing with Leanpub, please join our global community of authors in our Authors Forum here!
Are you interested in self-publishing, and creating your first Leanpub book? Here are some quick tutorials for our most popular writing modes: http://help.leanpub.com/en/articles/3088382-quick-walkthroughs-for-getting-started-on-a-leanpub-book
Are you looking for great deals on Leanpub ebooks, ebook bundles, and courses? Sign up for our Weekly and Monthly newsletter sales here!
You can also follow Leanpub in lots of other places!
