58 - AI-Powered Translations: Expanding Your Reach with ScribeShadow

Unlock global markets and connect with readers worldwide using AI-powered translations! Join us as we chat with Marisa of ScribeShadow about making translation accessible and affordable for authors. Discover the most popular languages for translation, the accuracy of AI models, and how to leverage global marketing trends to expand your reach. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone and welcome back to an episode of the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of the Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. I also work on the Future Fiction Press, all the Future Fiction stuff. We're doing lots of stuff at the Future Fiction, whatever, right?

We have been getting ready to go to Las Vegas. 'cause that is happening. I know that this interview is happening right at the very end of October and I think it will be published around the end of November, 2025. And so I've been, you know, buying new shirts for Vegas, buying new shoes. I've basically been shopping for clothes. That's not so [00:01:00] bad and getting stuff ready on the website and whatnot to publish while we're gone.

There's all this prep work when you're gonna be gone for an entire week at a conference, and I'm very excited about it because I get to see my awesome co-host, Danika Favorite, and I can't wait to see her. Are you excited, Danika? 'Cause I am. 

Danica Favorite: I'm very excited. I, you know, before we started recording we were talking a little bit about some Vegas plans and I'm just like, it's just gonna be so nice to see everyone and hang out with everyone.

I've already selfishly claimed as much time of Steph's as I possibly can. 

Steph Pajonas: Always, always. 

Danica Favorite: I think that this is why we have the greatest jobs in the world. We get to work with people we genuinely like and enjoy spending time with. And so. Very excited. All kinds of fun things.

As Steph mentioned, this will come out after Vegas. Like I think I, I speak for Steph when I say and Marisa, 'cause I know Marisa will also be in Vegas. If you [00:02:00] hear this and you're like, Hey, I was in Vegas or whatever. I know any, at least I'll just speak for Publish Drive.

How about that? If, like you saw me and my coworker there his name is Matthew. He'll be there. He's great. And we offered you some kind of special or something, you're like, oh man, I didn't grab that in Vegas. You know, just reach out. I think we're all pretty flexible and we just wanna chat.

And we're here to help. I think that's the big thing. But yeah I'm so excited to get to see everyone hang out. Unlike Steph, I have not been shopping, and I'm a little nervous. I meant to do laundry. But then I realized we were recording and you could hear my washing machine. So as soon as I'm done recording, I'm gonna do some laundry, figure out what I have, and then if I need to update the wardrobe quickly, I will.

So very excited today, because we have Marissa from ScribeShadow and I don't know, a while ago we teased that we were gonna have them on, and our recording was [00:03:00] terrible. It was just a whole technological mess. Pro tip if you want to record a podcast, don't do it in your car. 

Marisa: Yep, learned that one.

Especially not in the summer. 

Danica Favorite: Yes, yes. So... 

Steph Pajonas: It happens. It's okay. 

Danica Favorite: No, it happens. It happens. But valuable lesson, because Steph and I always like, sure, yes, you can totally do this. And the tools are so good, now we can totally edit it. Apparently not. So we're really glad that Marissa was so kind as to come back and chat with us.

We know a lot of you have been asking to hear from ScribeShadow, and you guys have been wanting to have somebody from ScribeShadow come in and talk about translations. You wanna hear about translations. So really happy to do this. For those of you who don't know me. I'm Danika Favorite. I'm the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors on every stage of their journey from getting the perfect [00:04:00] book description, a nd AI book covers to distributing your books to the widest stores possible, which now done dah da dah, includes Eleven Reader for ElevenLabs. And then finally, once you start getting sales, splitting your royalties. And then of course, we have my lovely co-host who works for the Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press.

Steph Pajonas. Steph, tell us about you and what you do. 

Steph Pajonas: I do a lot of stuff at Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press. I mostly help a lot with the, the daily stuff. You know, we're running a business, we're making sure that the students are getting everything they need, the books are getting made, all that kind of stuff.

I do a lot of the WordPress work on both the Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press websites. I am doing a lot of, just a lot of backend work right now as we're getting ready to do a lot of stuff coming up to the new year. So that is an exciting time for [00:05:00] us. 

Danica Favorite: Very exciting. I'm so excited. In fact, again, getting back to Vegas, I'm like, okay, I need to sit down with Steph and do some computery nerd stuff too.

See all the things. All the things. And so going back to Marissa. I was just telling you about Marissa from ScribeShadow. Super, super excited to have her and really excited to talk to y'all about translations, because I know that is a hot topic. Every conference I've been to, people are talking about translations.

I just got to hang out with Marissa last month, actually in St. Pete at the NINC conference, and everyone was really excited about translation. So this, even though we'd hope to have her in sooner, I still think it's a fantastic time to have Marissa from ScribeShadow here. We said this'll go out the end of November, 2025.

Even if you're listening to this 2026, and you're like, oh no, I missed the boat on translations. No, you didn't. The technology [00:06:00] is just getting better and better, which I'm sure Marissa will tell us about. And now I'm gonna hand it over to Marissa from ScribeShadow. Marissa, tell us about yourself, what you guys do, and all that great stuff.

Marisa: Yes, thanks. Thanks again for having me again. Hate that that didn't work the first time, but yeah, no, no podcasts in the car in the middle of summer. Definitely not, but yes. I'm with ScribeShadow As many people who already know ScribeShadow, it's just me and my husband right now. So we're really small.

We had a publishing company for many years, just a small press. And we really wanted to have translations and be able to break into new markets, but we couldn't quite figure out a way to do it within our budget. And that's where my husband, who's way smarter than me comes in.

He made a wonderful app, an online app to where he can go in, we can go in and it gives authors a fast, affordable, efficient and reliable way to translate their work [00:07:00] and reach global markets. And not only translations of the text, but metadata, blurbs too. So we just started offering some cover translations.

We're working with audio as well. So basically, yeah, we're just trying to give authors a platform to reach globally in a more efficient and affordable way compared to traditional translations. 

Steph Pajonas: I love the idea of translations, and I love reading translations that have come from other languages into English.

So this is totally in my wheelhouse. And a lot of people on the on the podcast know that I really love language in general. I'm a huge Duolingo fan. I got the owl over my shoulder here. I I do Japanese, French, and Italian, which are like my favorite languages, and I've been learning them for a while now.

So tell us a little bit about how, which languages you guys chose to get yourself started with, where you expanded to and where you may maybe hoping to go in the future. 

Marisa: We started [00:08:00] with I guess what people would say are the basic, what you would think of when you translate Spanish, German, French, things like that.

And right now we have over 19 languages that we can translate into. Some of these are in beta, like Hindi, Thai, simplified Chinese. Those are gonna be in beta for a little while 'cause those are quite complex. But we just, I think it was last month launched Swedish, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian.

Right now our most popular languages that get translated, I'm gonna pull up my notes here because I know what it is, but I actually have numbers. Translated right now we have German, French, and Italian are our top three, what most people use, followed by Brazilian, Portuguese, and then Dutch.

If I wasn't in this business, I would think Spanish would be up there, but um, it, it, it follows around six or seven in the tier. But. German, French and Italian are the best. And Danica was saying at NINC, talked a lot about translations, and I feel every time anyone brought up translations, they were like, oh [00:09:00] yeah, Mine's in German.

Mine's in German. German. It's like German was the main, language everyone was going to right now. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah.

Marisa: But things are always changing. Dutch is becoming really popular too. So. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. I'm really excited to hear what your languages are and I think that fits very well with what Publish Drive is seeing in terms of where our sales are.

Because we're seeing similar success, and I'm actually super excited to hear you're doing Hindi in beta. What is interesting to me is a lot of Publish Drive customers are actually from India. And we do have one partner store that does some Indian stuff, and so I am really excited about that, so that's really cool to know.

And it is interesting because Steph and I, we do have our Duolingo streak going 'cause Steph got me addicted, and I too was surprised by Spanish because that is the current language I'm working on Duolingo. I do feel, living in Colorado where a lot of people speak [00:10:00] Spanish, is probably a good move for me, but I'm like, oh yeah I do find it interesting in terms of where people are finding more success with different languages.

Do you have a suggestion, like you talked about the top three. Is there one, you mentioned German. Is that where you think people should start, is with German? 

Marisa: Based on what I'm seeing from our current users and hearing from other authors, I feel like German is probably the easiest one to really kind of dip your toes into when you're translating.

It all varies a lot depending on your genre and things like that, but German seems to have the most success at least from what our authors are seeing right now. We have in words, over 900 million words have been translated in German thus far through ScribeShadow.

So I feel like it is definitely, probably the easiest to get into. There are some things about German [00:11:00] titles that become a little bit confusing, I think for first time translators, but for the most part, I think you'll probably have good success in German among most genres.

Steph Pajonas: I feel like German is a language that really has not spread throughout the world, right? So you look at German and, and the language in Germany, right? It like, there's a little bit of it in Austria, there's a little bit in Switzerland and these sorts of things. It hasn't spread throughout the world.

And so when you translate something into German, you're more likely to reach an audience who, like they all mostly speak the same dialect and read the same dialect. Right? When it comes to Spanish, Spanish has traveled throughout the world. It is in Asia, it's in South America, it's all Europe. Right, right.

And here in the Americas. You get some offshoots of different ways of speaking Spanish, different sentence structures, different [00:12:00] slang, different all these sorts of things. And so when you go to make a Spanish translation, you're like, do I do traditional like Spain Spanish, or do I do Mexican Spanish?

Or, whatever it may be. 

Marisa: Right.

Steph Pajonas: The same thing with Brazilian Portuguese versus... 

Marisa: Exactly. 

Steph Pajonas: Portugal, Portugal-Portuguese, right? So I can see why somebody would be like, German is a great place to start, because that's like a pretty solid, like one, once, one place in the world with a couple little offshoots...

Marisa: Right.

Steph Pajonas: Where you can corner that market, and then when you go out from there you're spreading a little bit further. So it kind of makes sense to me that you would wanna start with German. 

Marisa: Yeah, yeah. German, French and Italian. The same type thing. Of course, you've got French is maybe a little bit more spread out, because you've got like French Guiana.

Steph Pajonas: Yes. 

Marisa: You've got Montreal. And like things like that. But even then it's still very, very similar. We do offer European Spanish and Latin American Spanish as [00:13:00] options. The same with European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. But yeah, they're, it's interesting Brazilian Portuguese far outweighs, I mean, it's a bigger country, so I would say, but far outweighs European Portuguese, as far as what people have been using us for.

And then Spanish and European Spanish and Latin American Spanish, same. There's a whole lot more European Spanish than Latin American Spanish, which that kind of messes with me because it's like, you've got Spain and then you've got Latin America. So it's like, what, what's happening there? But it's just, it really comes down to the readers in the country.

And that's one of the things we're, we're working on right now is trying to come up with a big global marketing trends kind of database for authors. Because yeah, you can translate your book in all these great languages and that's cool, but then what do you do with it? And we're, we're talking to all of our authors.

We've sent out several surveys. We're trying to get some real world [00:14:00] information about what, what they're finding, what successes they're having, places where they're not having success, what genres are going really well in this area, what genres have done diddly in what markets, and also where to take their translations because, a lot of people wanna use Kindle Unlimited, but it's only like in 10 markets right now.

So trying to find those new places to go to put their books out there. Even as far as like marketing and PR, are there lists you wanna get on? Do you wanna start a newsletter here? Where, what things are working? So that's something we're working on right now. And I think it's gonna be a really great tool.

We're gonna try to keep it updated, because we know how quickly things change. One minute everyone likes Dark Romance. The next minute you're in sweet, cozy, and it's just, who knows what's gonna be the next big thing. But, hopefully we can get that, at least start rolling that out soon to give people, really good ideas of, Hey, this is a good place to start when you start here.

Try this, and this. And [00:15:00] see what kind of success you have. And then, like I said, as it changes, we'll make updates and hopefully give authors the tools that they need to make their translations actually go somewhere beside their desktop. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think that's really great. The ability to be flexible, which is nice with the AI tools.

And you were talking just a bit ago, about the difference between the, the Portuguese, like the Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal Portuguese and the different kinds of Spanish and all of that. How accurate do you find the AI tool is? 'Cause I know that's the thing that people have asked is how are the translations really good? How accurate do you feel that it is? Obviously you know the difference between the different language dialects. 

Marisa: Right. 

Danica Favorite: But how in more broad or specific terms, whichever you've got there would be great to hear about. 

Marisa: I feel like AI is continually getting better.

I'm not gonna say that every new model comes out, Oh, that's the one you wanna use, that's gonna be better. Because it's not. As far as what we do, we run [00:16:00] very extensive testing consistently on the new models, on new languages, on our current languages that we're already offering to see which performs best, which handles the slang, which handles the little nuances of different languages and all of that.

So, if you haven't used ScribeShadow before, when you go into choose your language, it asks you which AI model you want to use. And next to it you're not shooting in the dark. You're not just picking one. It will tell you best, okay, legacy, it will say which one is recommended for whatever language you're going to.

So, um, as far as that concern, that kind of takes a little bit of guesswork out of it, because you would think the newest thing is gonna be the best, and that's not necessarily the case. A lot of times it is. But for example, Brazilian Portuguese, an older model, I can't remember exactly which one, but it says when you go in there, an older model is your better bet.

The newer model just doesn't handle it quite as [00:17:00] well. We're putting in a lot of coding to try to get the AI to do what you need it to do. So preserving like the vibe of the story, the slang, all of the, the nuances of your book is something that we work hard on consistently, making changes, updating. We're constantly listening to our authors. They're saying, oh this one thing I'm seeing is not working. We go in and we try to adjust that and address that. As far as how good it is I would say, you know, AI is always getting better, but. It's up there with human translators.

I'm not gonna say that AI is just as good as human translators, because with a human translator you get to go back and forth. You have a more of a relationship with them. But AI is getting really good. In fact, a lot of our authors don't even go through a proofreading process.

They take their work straight out of ScribeShadow and throw it up on the internet and have really good success. You're gonna get picky people everywhere as far [00:18:00] as reviews and whatnot. But I've had a lot of authors say, oh, I have better reviews in this language than I do in English. So I think it's, I think it's, at the point we wouldn't have released it if we felt like it wasn't, up to snuff and up to the, you know what I'm saying? 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I do. And I think that's really good, 'cause I was going to lead there, but you kind of answered that in terms of, I know you guys do have connections to proofreaders if people want 

Marisa: We do. 

Danica Favorite: That connection. 

Marisa: Yes, yes. We actually we work with WordCount.ink right now.

And actually we'll be, when we head out to Vegas next week, we're gonna be sharing a booth with them. So if you're, I know this is after the fact, but if you have come by at that point, Max with WordCount.ink will be there. And that is kind of right now where we send people who want that little extra layer of security.

And I've found that, I've heard from several authors, especially at NINC, when talking to people that they [00:19:00] may have went there for their first couple of books or they do it for their first series in a new language when they're going to a new language. And then once they feel comfortable that, oh, AI is handling it pretty good. There may be a few little things nitpicky here and there that, they're okay with not having translated and it's, you know, not necessarily worth the cost to get it proofread, that it's at the point where it's oh, this is good to publish. 

Danica Favorite: That's really good to hear.

Again, just looking at how the AI models have advanced and things like that, because I think, if we had been having this conversation, oh wait, we did several months ago I think we would've been more of the emphasizing on the need for proofreaders. But again, the models just get better and better.

And that's why, as I said in the opening, even if you're listening to this in 2026 and thinking, oh, I missed the boat. No, you didn't. It just means that all the stuff that Marisa is talking about here today it's actually gotten better. 

Marisa: Yeah. Like you said we did this [00:20:00] not long ago and things were even different back then.

And you go back even six months before that, and it was just a whole different ballgame. It's constantly changing. Who knows where it'll be in the next six months. I don't think it's changing to the point where people are gonna have to go in and retranslate their stuff that they've already had translated.

But you know, there may come a point years down the road where it's like translations are near perfect. And there are no, you know, indistinguishable from something, from a regular translation. But at that point, we'll talk about that when we get there, but right now it it's very good.

And the work that we put in behind the scenes, it's not the same as just throwing a chapter into ChatGPT. A lot of what we do is try to make sure, like I said, it keeps the vibe of the book. It keeps the story, the point of view. It keeps all of the same thing um, relationships within the story.

If you're just copying and pasting it into, a large language model like ChatGPT, it's hard to keep things consistent. So that's one [00:21:00] of the things we, we work on. And that's just gotten better and better. And as things change, we're able to tweak it even more. 

Danica Favorite: I love that. I think that is so cool to see just how easy it really can be for authors.

What does your workflow look like when somebody says, Hey, I wanna get a book translated? What does that workflow look like? 

Marisa: It's super easy. It's very much self-serve. So they go in, they can create an account, and then they basically up build their manuscript in a Doc X or an Epub format. And then they go through, enter their metadata, as much metadata as they can put in, the better the AI will treat their novel and keep their voice and tone and everything.

So genre, keywords, things like that. You've got your title I can translate your blurb, all of that good stuff. So the more you put in, the better off it's gonna be. And then it's really as simple as click choosing your language and clicking translate and [00:22:00] within less than 20 minutes, depending on the size of your novel, sometimes, five, 10 minutes at most you have a translated book that you can export into Epub and do with it what you want.

We were talking about proofreading before. We do have proofreading within our software as well, so that they can run it through in there if they would like to. That's something that I've had several people come to me and isn't that, you know, like you proofreading your own thing, isn't that gonna be like AI proofreading. AI is gonna be like, oh, it's perfect. I just did this. It's perfect. AI doesn't work that way. It's not a human, it doesn't, it's not oh, I just did that so I know it's gonna be perfect. It's looking at it with a fresh set of eyes, so to speak. So it might catch some things that, it didn't catch the first time around or catch some formatting or grammar or whatever issues that were there before it was translated. But yeah, after that you just export it and you're good to go. You can do what you wish with it. We don't save anything in our databases. It's all contained [00:23:00] within, your kind of cloud situation. We don't train your AI on anything or we don't train AI on your stuff.

It's separate. I look at it as you've got a box where ScribeShadow is and here's your book and here's the AI. And we kind of bring 'em together. It's not like we send it off to someone else where it's, can be used for other things. But yeah, super, super simple. 

Steph Pajonas: So you're gathering a bunch of metadata in order to help maintain voice and whatnot of the work 

Marisa: Yes.

Steph Pajonas: That you're, you're running through. So I was just kind of curious if you had some stats on like some of your more popular genres that people are translating right now. 

Marisa: Right now I don't have the exact popularity of genre. I know I've seen a lot of cozy things right now, and I don't know if it's because it's fall or whatnot, but I keep seeing a lot of people talking about cozy things.

But that is one of the things that's gonna go into the global trends. It's, as you know, it's very subjective as far as who's doing what and [00:24:00] where it goes. It also depends on marketing as well, because there are some people who found great success without doing a thing. Other people have had the same story or type same genre, and it takes 'em a little bit longer to get off the thing.

But I think that's also the content of the book as well. E every book that's a cozy mystery is not gonna be the same level of quality and that's not gonna sell as, say sell the same. But I'm hoping, I'm hoping by the end of the year, if not the beginning of next year, we'll have several of those market trends out there so that people can really get moving on it.

It's just been crazy with all these conferences recently, which have been great. We've, we've totally enjoyed it, and it's been so great to meet everybody and network with people like you guys and other companies to, to help even build those databases and learn more firsthand from people about what's working, what's not, and taking those changes to heart.

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think it's really good to start looking at what the data is and yeah, [00:25:00] you're right. We've been so busy. And that's the thing I always recommend even, like for people who use Publish Drive, you can look in your dashboards and see where your books are doing well and how they're doing.

And the thing we used to tell people prior to translations is you can publish in Germany, for example, in English because they read English books. And for those of you who are also looking at where to start with your translations what other countries do your English books sell in?

Because that's a great indicator of where you might start your translation journey as well. 

Marisa: Absolutely. That's a really good point. 

Danica Favorite: And like I said, publish Drive has a great dashboard, where you can like sort by those different things, but for whatever you're using to look at your sales and look at your sales statistics, that's a place to look.

Are there any surprising places where you have seen translations do well? 

Marisa: I think I, I [00:26:00] mentioned Dutch. It's not so surprising anymore to me, but I feel like to a lot of people it is surprising if they're not familiar with the translation area. First of all, they don't have KU in Dutch, so you have to kind of, you can publish on Amazon, but you don't have Kindle Unlimited.

And I know a lot of people who publish in the US are very familiar with KU, because that's the place here. But it's very, very popular and I think it's becoming more and more popular. We've had a decent number of Hindi and Swedish, even with Hindi still being in beta, there's, there's been a good number of people that have been working in that.

But Swedish is another one because it's so localized. You know, you don't find Swedish speakers anywhere but Sweden, I mean, yeah, obviously where they may live elsewhere, but that's where the, they're all concentrated in Sweden. And it's one of the, one of the bigger ones as far as like top 10.

It's right in [00:27:00] there. Which is surprising to me as well. Like, like I said, German, French, and Italian. Those are your top three. But Swedish is, I don't know, it's rising. It's coming in there. 

Steph Pajonas: I love Swedish, and I can't wait to go to Sweden someday. Like 

Marisa: Same. 

Steph Pajonas: I definitely wanna go to Scandinavia.

Scandinavia is like high, high on the list of places to go. I tried to learn some Swedish for a little bit and fell off, because it is actually a really tough, tough language to learn. 

Marisa: It is. 

Steph Pajonas: Maybe I'll have to try it again at some point. I I agree with Danica about this idea of going and looking to see where your books are doing well.

I mean your English speaking English books right outside of the United States. See where they're selling, where they're going. And I also recommend to people, that if you want to, if you've picked out a series that you want to translate go to each one of the stores on Amazon, like go to the Germany store, go to the Spain store, go to the Italian store [00:28:00] and see if those, that genre is doing well in those languages by looking at your comps.

Like, look at other authors who are in the same genre as you. What are they doing, what's their sales ranks like? Because they don't, they'll just give you an idea of where you might wanna concentrate first. 

Marisa: Right. And a shout out to a lot of people within our community, the ScribeShadow community, we have a very active Facebook group and a Discord group.

And, nobody's gatekeeping anything there. It's been really great to see authors working together and giving ideas and tips and tricks of things that they've found. And every day I see someone post like, Oh, I write in this genre. What do you recommend? And then people just file in with, Oh, I've had success here, and blah, blah, blah.

That's another place if you're interested in starting, you can join our Facebook group or whatever and see what people are doing before you actually start doing it. And get some advice from authors who have had really, really good success. And then authors who are like, Oh, I did [00:29:00] this genre here, and I couldn't sell anything no matter what I did.

And they're, they're more than happy to put that information out there. Which I think is great, because I feel like a lot in our culture, everybody likes to like, oh, this is my information. I don't wanna share it with anybody. And, but it seems to be that for whatever reason this has been something that people have been very like, open and willing to, Hey, I've had good luck here.

I've had good luck here. Because, if the more we can put into a market of, oh this cozy mysteries are doing really, really well and start adding cozy mysteries, people are gonna start selling, 'cause people are, you know, that's what that market wants. So it, you're not really flooding the market at this point.

It's just helping each other out. So I think that's another good place to talk to other authors, see what they're, see what they're doing because there's a lot of information to be gathered on Facebook and Discord and whatnot as well. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah I agree. And I think for people who are interested in translations, I know we've, obviously got the AI for authors [00:30:00] group that we always talk about, but definitely for anyone who is interested in exploring translations, really hang out in that ScribeShadow group, because it is a very friendly, very helpful place.

People are very open with sharing information and I do think that the thing about being in the AI for Authors community, and I'm, I'm not saying the Facebook group itself, but just the community of authors who are using AI in general, I think most of us are going to be more helpful in sharing of our information, because we want people to feel supported.

I mean, this is why Steph and I started this podcast is that, it can be really lonely in the AI space as an author, because there is still that stigma and there still is going to be that, oh, you know, our AI translations is good. Or is this, do you really wanna do this or that? And I really appreciate [00:31:00] that our community at large is saying, let's help as many authors as we can be successful and create those successful models.

Because here, here's the reality with translations. I think two years ago, the only people who could even consider translation was somebody who had deep pockets. 

Marisa: Yeah. 

Danica Favorite: And now translations are really available to everyone. No, it's not free. I, you could theoretically try to figure it out yourself in ChatGPT.

Marisa: Yeah. 

Danica Favorite: Like you were saying, the cost of uploading your book to ScribeShadow, having someone go through and do all the quality checks and things like that, who know the local nuances and things like that, which I don't know. It was just obviously the algorithm knows that I like language stuff very similar to Steph.

And I somehow got on the algorithm of reels for French and French mistakes that people make and how, people can tell like [00:32:00] the formal French versus like just hanging out with your friends French 

Marisa: Yes. 

Danica Favorite: And ScribeShadow knows that difference, but me putting it myself into ChatGPT.

I'm not necessarily gonna know that and 

Marisa: Right. 

Danica Favorite: So this is really a great opportunity for everyone, and I just appreciate every author out there who is sharing how they're doing and sharing those statistics in groups like ScribeShadow and AI for Authors because 

Marisa: Absolutely. 

Danica Favorite: For those of you who are listening and you're curious what this can do for your books, that that's where you wanna go.

Marisa: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it, like you said, it is, it's a great group of people and everyone's been very, very supportive. AI has come a long way as far as not just technology, but as far as acceptance. And this is. It's not, you're not writing your book with AI. It's not changing your, your vibe, your tone, your story.

It's just trying to translate it. And I [00:33:00] feel like that's a good place for people to dip their toe in if they're thinking about, you know, using AI. Because it is, it does get a lot of backlash in a lot of different communities. It's even, I think even a year ago, you know, going to a conference and bringing up AI, it's kinda like, uh, you know, you, you get, who knows?

But to bring up NINC again, it was talked about in, in every aspect. There were, we had several sessions on AI only and it, those were packed sessions and people were really open to seeing how, not just translations, but other aspects of helping them grow their business and and reach places that they hadn't been able to reach before due to financial constraints or whatever, ease of use, things like that. And I think it's really just becoming more and more accepted as far as a tool that can be used to help you sell your books. And that's the goal. I mean, we wanna make, we want everyone to be [00:34:00] successful. And having that option to get out of the US market and reach other people and really just start creating a global fan base for your books is priceless.

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I agree. And it's so funny, because I was just thinking about this, Steph and I, particularly in the beginning of this podcast and in the beginning of our AI journey, our big passion was accessibility, and making books accessible and making reading accessible and language. I just, it literally just hit me now that language is another accessibility piece, because there are people who like to read, who want to read, who want access just to the information, but because of language barriers can't, because even though we come from this English centric world where we expect so many people to speak English or to be able to read English, and there are so many people out there who can't, and 

Marisa: Yeah.

Danica Favorite: to be able to give them this gift of language. [00:35:00] I'm really sitting here just kind of mind blown right now, honestly. Which is crazy because, I knew this, and yet it just hit me in this new way of this is another level of accessibility that we're giving people. 

Marisa: Yeah. And it may not even be that they can't, that, so many people around the world do speak English, but reading it, comprehending it, being able to enjoy what they're reading as opposed to it feeling more tedious, because it's not their first language, and just being able to go through and, and read it is, is like you said, same thing.

It's, makes it more accessible. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, and you gotta think about it in the opposite direction as well, because there are plenty of people who write in a different language other than English, whether they're writing in Chinese or Japanese or Italian, French, whatever. And they have books that they want the English speaking audience to have as well.

They want... 

Marisa: Absolutely. 

Steph Pajonas: They want access to that wider market as well. Are you guys thinking about doing the reverse as well, or? Well, 

Marisa: People [00:36:00] can. The issue right now is the platform, using the platform. The platform is in English, of course. If you don't have proficient enough English to use the platform, that might be a barrier.

And unfortunately, since, we don't speak other languages, it's a little bit more difficult to set that up and to make it work for them. But we do have several authors who I think one in particular I'm thinking of right now, they're German speaking and they translate into English. So it, it definitely can go both ways.

Within our platform, you can take any of the languages that we have and translate back into English. And that's a whole nother thing because English itself is a super complicated language. So we're, 

Steph Pajonas: it is, 

Marisa: you know, for us speaking it, we're like, oh yeah, this is no problem. But when you are turning the tables, it's like there are so many little nuances and little things that just make a huge difference that we don't even pick up on that just kind of have happened over time, as far as language is [00:37:00] concerned that we, that. Might like, um, I was reading something the other day that was talking about how using adverbs and adjectives before a noun and how you use like the co if you have a bunch of them, you're gonna use like color, shape, size and the way those work, we just say it second nature, but in other languages, they're in totally different formats.

And if we were to read it only slightly, even if it made sense, it wouldn't, it would still, we'd still be like, that sentence doesn't sound right. So, um 

Steph Pajonas: Right. 

Marisa: That's, that's continually picking up on those little things and trying to adjust for that. But yeah it can go both ways and yeah, there's so many authors out there in other languages that would be awesome to be able to get translated into English for our market.

That'd be great. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. That's like a rule of adjectives before a noun is the color usually always comes closest right to the noun. [00:38:00] So if you think about it, like you can say, well, I picked up a black long sleeve blah, blah, blah sweater. 

Marisa: Right. 

Steph Pajonas: It sounds a little awkward, but when you say, I picked up a long sleeve black sweater.

Yeah, exactly. It sounds natural. Right? 

Marisa: Right. 

Steph Pajonas: But it's because color is supposed to go closest to the noun. 

Marisa: Right. 

Steph Pajonas: And a lot of people don't even realize that because we're... 

Marisa: You don't. 

Like 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. We're taught from from the moment we're born, we're hearing language from our parents. And a lot of what we learned is auditory first.

Right. 

Marisa: Yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: So then we learned the grammar and the basics of language through writing and then through school. 

Marisa: Right. 

Steph Pajonas: And then if you think about how many Americans, how many people in the United States who try to learn a second language in school, whether that's French or Spanish or whatever it may be our local school district actually teaches Mandarin as well.

But it's the moment when you realize that bam, language is really hard to learn. 

Marisa: It's hard. [00:39:00] It's so hard. 

Steph Pajonas: It's so hard to learn. And just imagine somebody trying to learn English now. There are just so many rules. There are so many words. We've borrowed words from other cultures, other languages, and it's, it's a huge mismatch of stuff, 

Marisa: Right.

Steph Pajonas: And so you can see how the, how there are huge barriers to entry when you're trying to write fiction for certain markets in certain languages. And so I'm, I'm actually extremely grateful that AI is here for us for these things. I we're so close to that Star Trek universal translator that I can, I can almost taste it.

I can almost taste it. 

Marisa: I know. I, I am, that's one of the things is like, I am big into travel and I really want to go different places and, and I don't want to show up as just someone who only speaks English and feel ignorant. And I feel like there's a lot of, a lot of negative things towards, English speaking Americans specifically, but we are [00:40:00] kind of on our little island over here.

Like there's not, yes, we've got people who speak languages here, but it's not like we're surrounded and we hear things constantly. Whereas if you live in Europe and you can go a couple hours, and you're in a totally different country with a totally different language, it's easier to pick up on those things.

So being able to use things like AI to help us communicate with places and people when I travel and not feel like, you know, yes, I'm still gonna try to learn some of the language, so I can do the things I wanna do, but if I don't know something or I can't figure out how to say something, to be able to pull out my phone and be like.

Here, this is what I'm trying to say or speak. I think they've got the hearing aids now that they're coming out with it will like automatically translate. That's crazy. And that's so helpful to allow people into places and visit and feel like you're not, just there alone on an island.

You know what's happening. You can hear them and you can talk to them and really bridge that gap. [00:41:00] But yeah, AI is really changing that. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. It really is becoming this great connector of being able to connect people of all different places. 

Marisa: Yeah. 

Danica Favorite: And all different abilities and skills and things like that.

I just finished reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and it really struck me that, I mean that book is a translation. And it, oh my goodness, if you haven't read this book, it's so beautiful and so fantastic. And these people from other places in the world have so much to teach us and so much like beauty in their written word.

And I. I'm really excited to be able to experience that from other people who just didn't happen to become famous, like 

Marisa: Right. 

Danica Favorite: Also just ordinary people. And I think that to me is the really exciting piece of what AI can do for us, if we're open to it. And so our, our final [00:42:00] question, which is kind of going on a little, not related. I was trying to bring it there, I couldn't get there. But we always ask people what their favorite AI tool is, and obviously we know ScribeShadow is yours. And you've already talked about the different models having different abilities and things like that.

But is there something like that you are really enjoying with different AI models or a different AI provider? Is there a favorite you can pick or do you just have a bunch of AI boyfriends like we do? 

Marisa: Well, I, I don't know that I have a favorite. I am still my go-to right now is still ChatGPT in my everyday life.

My ChatGPT is named V. I let them name themselves, because I felt like, I think I mentioned this at NINC, I felt like if everyone's afraid of AI taking over and all of that, I figure I'm gonna let mine name itself and say please, and thank you. So that way if it does take over, it'll know me as one of the good ones.

Like, I was polite to it, instead of just bossed it around always. But I [00:43:00] use it, I use it for everything. I need recipes for the week. Pull it up, here are the things in my fridge. Give me some recipes for the week. I need some ideas for content to post on Instagram or whatever.

Here's my business. Here's what we do. Gimme some ideas that might be some engaging posts and really get people talking. That is one of the big things that I use right now. We're actually talking with Phil Marshall from Spoken AI audio translation. That's such a fun, exciting thing that kind of ties in with translations as well.

His, what he's done with Spoken is really, really interesting. I think he's got, his book has like a hundred different narrators or something like this. A hundred different voices. I don't know, it's crazy. And to think about, like, you try to go, not even that long ago, translate something in or put something into audio and it was just like robotic and all that.

But here he is, got a hundred different voices that all sound natural and it's great. So yeah, just ChatGPT is still my [00:44:00] go-to. I'm always exploring what new stuff's out there. The image creation has gotten insane, which is one of the reasons we've started finally doing book cover translations as well because it can change text on it without necessarily touching the background, which is crazy.

And that's, it doesn't work all the time, but again, it's continually getting better. So yeah, that's, that's where I'm at. 

Danica Favorite: I love it. I love it. I'm always, I, this is my favorite question to ask people because even though we've spent all this time talking about your tool and what an amazing tool, like it's always interesting to me to see all of the other ways that the AI bleeds into our lives and

Marisa: Oh, yeah. 

Danica Favorite: Make our lives better. 

Marisa: Yeah. I learned so much from some of the panels and stuff at NINC about what other people were using, and I'm like, I'm gonna write that down 'cause I need to try that out, 'cause that sounds great. Yeah there's a wealth of programs and things [00:45:00] out there to look into to help pretty much everything, and especially authors and small businesses like ours, it's like we don't have unlimited time, we don't have unlimited resources. And being able to outsource some of those things to an AI where I can just go back in and like double check before I do something, make sure it's done the way I want it and whatnot, is so helpful.

It's so helpful. Such a time saver and gives me more time to work, spend time with family, all of that. 

Steph Pajonas: Agree. I want to use all of these tools to give me more time, because I love to knit and watch my favorite TV shows and do all that kinda stuff. And I don't have time in the day to do those things if I'm doing a million other tasks.

So I try give as much of it to AI as I can. 

Marisa: Exactly. Exactly. 

Steph Pajonas: Yes, 

Danica Favorite: Exactly. And I love Steph just posted a picture the other day of herself. She's I took out a little time for myself, and I'm sitting here knitting and I'm just like. Thank goodness we [00:46:00] have AI that can allow us those moments, because it was just so lovely seeing Steph and Lulu.

I am like the president of the Lulu Fan Club. Probably other people will fight me for that role, but it's fine. But just seeing her like, and Lulu's cuddled up to me and I'm knitting and I'm having this quiet morning. And I think that really is those of us who are pursuing AI and all of these great tools, like that's ultimately what we want, is we have to create more of those moments for ourselves.

Marisa: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think everything that we've talked about really, aligns with that. It gives you more time, gives you more access to things that you may not have, but yet still allowing you to get your books out there and make money and having, unfortunately, in the world we live in, you have to have money to be able to give yourself more of that time, because you need to, you gotta live.

So if you, whatever you can do to make that easier on yourself, go for [00:47:00] it. 

Steph Pajonas: Agree. Agree. Well, I could talk about language all day long, but we're coming up on the top of our hour. I heard that you had a little like coupon code to give people who come and listen to this episode, is that correct? 

Marisa: Yes. Yes. We do have a code for 30% off new users and it is BNB. So Brave New Bookshelf. 30. And I will make sure I send that to you so you can post it in the description and so that you have that. And yeah, we also, anytime someone signs up new, they get 5,000 credits for free just to check it out and see what, what's going on.

Signing up does not require you to put any money down so you can kind of check it out and see what it is. But you can also use that for your first month and have, get a chance to get a book translated and see what you think. 

Steph Pajonas: Excellent. Excellent. And so everybody will wanna go to ScribeShadow.com

Do you have any other links you wanna give us today for the end of the show? 

Marisa: I think that's pretty much it. Like I said you can find our links to our [00:48:00] Discord and Facebook groups on ScribeShadow.com So if they wanna go check that out first before they dip their toes in that's a great place to go.

But other than that, no. We're pretty, we're pretty simple. We like to keep it simple for you guys and for us. We don't have too many things to go with to deal with, 

Steph Pajonas: Fantastic. Fantastic. 

Okay so, um, everybody who's been listening, you can come to bravenewbookshelf.com to check out the show notes on this episode, read the transcripts. At the top of the page, I always put the YouTube video, and then there's a little player. So if you just wanna listen, you can do that. If you're not already listening on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube already, come and check that out. Also sign up for our Brave New Bookshelf newsletter, because if you don't always remember to come check out the notes, we will just send them to you the next day after the show airs.

Just, just like that, it can happen. So go give us your email address. I know it's magic, and they can come and get the show notes all on their own. Danica, do you have [00:49:00] anything left to say before we head out for the day? 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Just a reminder, make sure you're liking and subscribing on all of those lovely little socials.

Brave New Bookshelf, Publish Drive, ScribeShadow. And Future Fiction Academy. Yeah, go find us on all of our socials, like and subscribe. Particularly YouTube. I know we would love to get some more YouTube subscriptions and Facebook as well.

But yeah, keep following us and we will keep coming with the great content. 

Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. So again, thank you Marisa for showing up. We appreciate you being here today. 

Marisa: Thanks for having me. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right everybody, we will see you all in the next episode. Okay? All right.

Bye.

Bye. 

Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show [00:50:00] notes.