Series, editions & translations
Most novelists end up with more than one book, and sometimes more than one version of the same book. Galley keeps all of that organised without turning your dashboard into a mess: a series is an ordered group of works, and a translation or edition is its own book quietly linked back to the original.
Grouping books into a series
Writing a trilogy or a longer run? Open a book's Metadata (or its Book Settings from the dashboard), find Series, type the series name, and give the book its number. Type the name once and it autocompletes after that, so every book lands in the same series. On the dashboard, the books in a series gather into one ordered block, each showing its series name and number, so Book 2 always sits after Book 1.
Editions and translations
A translation or a new edition isn't a mode you switch on inside a book. It's a book of its own, linked back to the original, so everything that works for a normal book (export, trim, fonts, its own ISBN and cover) works for it too. Two ways to make one:
- From a book's Metadata page, under Editions & translations: Create translation or New edition .
- From the dashboard's New book window, on the From existing tab.
What a translation does
Pick a target language (there are 48 of them; it has to be different from the original's). Galley then:
- Copies the structure
- Every chapter and part, in order, so the translation has the same skeleton as the original.
- Copies the story bible
- Characters, locations, glossary, references, world-building, research, and the style sheet come across, so you have the cast and terms to localise. (The timeline is left out for now, because its links point back at the original's chapters.)
- Leaves the prose empty
- The chapters start blank, ready for you to translate, with the original text shown right beside them (see below).
- Sets the language
- So the translation exports correctly on its own terms: hyphenated and spellchecked in its language, and tagged that way in the EPUB.
If the original never had an author set, the translation takes your profile name so it isn't left authorless.
What a new edition does
An edition stays in the same language and copies the whole book, text and all, so you can revise this version without touching the original: a revised edition, a large-print version, whatever you need.
The side-by-side translation view
This is the part that makes translating in Galley pleasant. Open a chapter of a translation and the editor splits in two: the original on the left, read-only, under an "Original · language" header, and your translation on the right, where you type. No flipping between two windows, no lost place. You render the master paragraph by paragraph with it sitting right there.
Original · English (US)
CHAPTER ONE
The Station at Dusk
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them. She had come down to The Quiet Harbour before the neap.
At Weirwater Station the lamps were not yet lit. Someone had left before the end of their watch.
* * *
Whatever the tide left, it left at the keeper's door first, and the crossing was set down in the harbour ledger.
Translation · Français
CHAPITRE UN
La Gare au Crépuscule
À Weirwater, on allumait les lampes à la main, et c’était Mara Vale qui les allumait. Elle était descendue au Quiet Harbour avant la morte-eau.
À Weirwater Station les lampes n’étaient pas encore allumées. Quelqu’un était parti avant la fin de sa garde.
* * *
Ce que la marée laissait, elle le laissait d’abord à la porte du gardien, et la traversée était consignée dans le registre du port.
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, down at The Quiet Harbour before the neap.1
At Weirwater Station the lamps were not yet lit. Someone had left before the end of their watch.
* * *
The crossing that mattered was set down in the harbour ledger, in a level hand.
Translations
Français
The original beside you, read-only, while you write the translation — one book, its own design inherited.
Which languages Galley knows
Every book carries one language, set on its Metadata page or chosen when you create a translation. Galley knows 54 languages. The language does four jobs: it spellchecks your prose against your own browser's dictionary, it tags the EPUB so a reading device knows what it is holding, it hyphenates the print PDF when you justify the text, and it decides which quote marks your straight quotes turn into.
The full list, each one linking to what Galley does with that language: English (US and UK), French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk), Finnish, Icelandic, Irish, Welsh, Basque, Catalan, Galician, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean, Thai, Pashto, Sindhi, Kurdish (Sorani), Uyghur, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Malay.
Every language above has a page of its own except Hebrew: which faces it is offered, how its script is typeset, what the exports do with it, and where a book in it can be sold. Hebrew is the one still to be written.
Hyphenation
Galley hyphenates 35 of them automatically. That only matters if you justify your text, which is off by default: ragged right never needs it. The nineteen with no hyphenation patterns are Portuguese (Brazil), Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Kurdish (Sorani), Uyghur, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean and Thai.
What the print PDF sets
All of it. The PDF embeds one of Galley's book faces, and the face you are offered is chosen for your book's language: Amiri for Arabic, Frank Ruhl Libre for Hebrew, Shippori Mincho for Japanese, and so on down the list. A face that cannot render your script is never in the dropdown, so the trap of picking one and finding out at export time does not exist.
Two things before you start a translation. Urdu is set in Nastaliq, not in the Naskh faces Arabic uses, because they are not interchangeable to a reader. And there is no italic outside the Latin alphabet. Those scripts have no italic tradition, and emphasis in them is its own convention rather than a slant. The typeface page lists every face by language.
How they show up
Translations and editions don't clutter your dashboard. Each one tucks under its original as a small row you can click to open. The original is the master; its editions and translations are created and reached from there, and also listed on its Editions & translations panel. Because each is a real book, it carries its own metadata: a different ISBN, a different cover, its own blurb.