Global Reach - TODAY

Yes—absolutely. You retain full and exclusive rights to everything you upload and everything you receive. We make NO CLAIM over your translated content.

No. The act of translation, by any method, does not remove your copyright. The translation is based off of YOUR work which YOU own the copyright to. Translating it does NOT remove the copyright. (This is why you are forbidden from translating other people's copyrighted work, too. It's legally and morally wrong. If translating it removed the copyright, it would mean you could publish the works of any author in the world... but this is not the case!)

Bookshift is designed to work with long-form text content. It will work well with non-fiction genres like history, memoir, and anything else that is predominantly text. Bookshift does not translate or retain internal images, so any diagrams, charts etc. will be lost and will need to be manually re-inserted. In the future we intend to make a full non-fiction offering which will maintain all the original charts, diagrams, pictures and so on, as well as specially formatted beautiful .epubs... but for now, Bookshift only works with the text.

No :)

While it's good to have a well formatted document, we do our best to fix any formatting errors so that the output book has correctly marked chapters and subheadings, even if your original is slightly messed up.

We'll usually fix them... unless it is clearly authorial intent!

For example, a character who deliberately speaks with non-standard grammar will have their voice maintained and will speak in an equivalently ungrammatical manner in the destination language.

But if you simply made a minor grammatical error, a typo, a mistake with a homophone etc. in the original, it will be corrected and fixed in the translation. We'll fix your mistakes, but maintain your deliberate style decisions.

If you don't have access to a native speaker, one reasonable way to do this is to copy and paste some of the original, and some of the translation, into an LLM like Claude, Google Pro 2.5, ChatGPT etc. and ask it.

Tip 1: Don't paste a lot at once. If you do, it will do a poor job of assessing the quality.

Tip 2: If you are comparing different translations (for example if you want to compare a Bookshift chapter translation to one by Sonnet or ChatGPT etc.), don't tell the LLM the sources of the translations, as they have biases. Just call them 'translation 1' and 'translation 2' or similar.

For manuscripts, we support .epub and .docx. The output files are in a ready-to-use '.epub' and ready-to-edit or format .docx. Our output image files are in .jpg.

Our system uses a comprehensive iterative correction and improvement system. Every single chapter is examined multiple times for incorrect translations, mistakes, awkward phrasing etc. The output file should be a truly excellent quality translation. And if you had any typos or grammatical mistakes in the original... we've probably fixed them in the translation!

That being said, a talented human literary translator has a unique skillset that is not yet matched by machines. If you want a literary rewrite, then by all means go ahead and hire a human editor. But if you are worried about minor errors and inconsistencies, awkward translations etc. our system is designed to completely eliminate them, and to make the output book sound completely natural in the destination language.

We believe the quality of our translations is unsurpassed, and the quality of the translated book you receive will be ready to publish. For 95% of books, our translation will have fewer errors than the original manuscript :)

Our system is designed to handle all of these things with style and grace.

Most idioms cannot be translated directly, and so they are translated to the best approximation in the target language. If a joke translates well directly (slapstick, for example, may translate fairly universally), then that is what our system will do. If it doesn't (most wordplay for example), we try to find something equally amusing in its stead.

Slang is translated to whatever is most culturally and stylistically appropriate for your book.

Catchphrases, running jokes, nicknames etc. are all identified before the translation even begins so that they can be treated with consistency throughout the book.

Unique terms (such as an in-world fantasy term, a fictional business name etc.) are dealt with on a case-by-case and language-by-language basis. A decision is made on how to deal with them before the translation starts, and can vary language by language. For example in some languages it may make sense to retain words like 'Madame' or 'Herr' as that is what is standard in the target language, in other cases the terms will be translated... because that is what readers expect in the destination language.

Our system works intelligently based on the language being translated into, the genre, the authorial voice, and a myriad of other factors. Every translation project is unique, and treated as such by Bookshift.

Books will take 10-30 minutes depending on length. A novella may take less. An epic novel will take a little longer.

There isn't a limit as-such (except for the minimum of 3000 words), but for a long box-set it would be better to divide it book-by-book. Our system analyzes a book before it begins for its unique terms, voices, characters etc, and if you submit a whole bunch of books at once, some of this will probably get lost. A small box-set of five novellas will probably be fine. But if you're the author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series... we recommend you do it book-by-book!

Please only translate books which you hold the copyright to, or are in the public domain. If you want to create your personal translation of Pride and Prejudice into Urdu, and you have a public domain copy, then feel free to go ahead!

Sure! But do make sure the book you are translating is in the public domain. For example, you CAN NOT re-translate someone else's recent translation of a classic, you need to use the original public domain version.

You can not translate a modern version of a classic which includes a new introduction or literary analysis etc. as that will be copyrighted.

We are happy and eager for you to bring classics to new parts of the world, especially to underrepresented languages, or where existing translations are poor, incomplete, or dated... but please ensure that the actual text you are translating is in the public domain first!

Not yet! But if you are interested in Bookshift Publish, where we translate and publish your book in global marketplaces and send you the royalties, please drop an email to [email protected] and let us know that you are interested and we'll put you on the waitlist!

Yes! You can either upload an existing cover and translate the text on it, or generate a brand-new one with our new AI cover tool. Both options are optimized to give you an image file of the precise dimensions recommended by Amazon, and suitable for all other major platforms.

Note: Our book cover translator is VERY 'delicate' and will refuse racy covers. If your cover is 'rejected' by our system, we will automatically create a NEW cover instead, as close to the original as we can possibly make it.

We do a full analysis of the original, on everything from colors to mood to genre to fonts etc. in order to recreate as best we can with our cover generator.

And of course, you can just use our cover generator yourself if you'd like to make a new book cover!

Nope! You don't need any design experience. BookShift takes care of formatting, placement, fonts, and layout automatically.

No. We only work with 'uneditable' .jpg and .png files. That's our unique value proposition in fact!

No. You may only translate book covers that you own the copyright to, or have the permission of the copyright holder. DO NOT translate, for example Penguin's cover of Pride and Prejudice. Please use our cover generator to make a new cover.

We run internal checks multiple times on every chapter, and then on every complete file before delivery. But, if something slips through the cracks, or you're not satisfied, we'll fix the issue quickly.

You're always welcome to request a full refund, or a re-translation and bonus credits. We think our system is highly robust and reliable... but if somehow your book 'breaks' it, we'd love to get to the bottom of it and offer you further translation credits in compensation!

Your satisfaction is the most important thing!

BookShift currently supports more than 30+ languages, including:

• English
• Español (Spanish)
• Deutsch (German)
• Français (French)
• Italiano (Italian)
• Português (Portuguese)
• Русский (Russian)
• 中文 (简体 / 繁體 – Chinese Simplified & Traditional)
• 한국어 (Korean)
• हिन्दी (Hindi)
• বাংলা (Bengali)
• اردو (Urdu)
• ગુજરાતી (Gujarati)
  ...and more.
  We're adding new languages regularly.

No—our system is fully automated. However, BookShift uses a multi-stage iterative pipeline designed to preserve your voice, detect context-sensitive terms, and ensure natural, fluent output that doesn't sound like "translationese."

Self-checks are run multiple times on every chapter, and then on the entire file.

It should be of a very high standard when you receive it.

Yes. We translate all genres, from sweet rom-coms to steamy romance and graphic horror. We don't censor or water down your voice—what you write is what we translate.

Note: We do not translate content that is illegal in the US, or that is against the Amazon Terms of Service. (We are not affiliated with Amazon, but their ToS is a useful 'ballpark' for what is acceptable.)

In general, if you can publish it without breaking the rules of the major distributors, then you can translate it at Bookshift.

It's... complicated. But suffice to say, we use a multi-stage iterative process that improves the quality of the translation of each chapter multiple times. On top of that, we scan the entire book to get a good 'feel' for it before the process begins, and create a unique styleguide for your book before beginning translation.

You can reach us at [email protected] or join our friendly author community on Discord. We'll get back to you as soon as possible—usually quickly!