Introduction:
After Doorbraak (the sequel to Enclave) was released, many people asked me whether there would also be an English version. In this blog, I’d like to take you along on my journey: from the initial ideas, through AI translations, to the nearly finished English manuscript. It’s been a fun and educational process — with plenty of ups and downs.
As mentioned before: a full professional translation of Doorbraak was never going to happen. With a price tag of over €12.000 and only limited expected sales, it simply wouldn’t have been a smart move.
So I turned to AI for an alternative.
After extensive Googling for the best translation tool for manuscripts, I landed on DeepL. I quickly looked up where the company is based — Germany, like so many other solid companies 😀 — and that gave me confidence.
First step: uploading the entire Dutch manuscript to DeepL.
Very quickly, I received a neatly formatted Word document with a translation of all 107,000 words.
I was truly impressed: the speed, the recognisable nuances, even the references to real-world situations seemed to survive the translation. Piece of cake, I thought.
But soon, once I started reading more critically with my modest knowledge of UK English, the problems became clear. Many sentences were translated too literally — and that doesn’t work well in real English.
My Dutch manuscript was also full of expressions and idioms that DeepL didn’t know how to handle properly.
Here are a few random examples:
- Dutch sentence: “Opgeruimd kwam ze de redactievloer weer op en ze constateerde tot haar verbazing dat haar baas niet aanwezig was.”
→ Translated as: “Tidied up, she re-entered the newsroom floor and was surprised to find that her boss was not present.”
This gives quite a different tone in English than the intended meaning of “in good spirits” or “cheerful” - Dutch sentence: “De bedoeling is dat we haar voorlopig uit de wind houden.”
→ Translated as: “The idea is keep her out of the wind.”
Literal, but definitely not something a native English speaker would say.
Another funny example:
- Dutch sentence: “Toen deze (meeting) was afgelopen, liep Ules met een vertrokken gezicht naar de vergadertafel in zijn werkkamer.”
DeepL translated this as:
“When it was over, Ules walked with a departed face to the conference table in his study.”
The word departed can mean either deceased or having left. Once again: too literal, and neither meaning fits the intended tone.
What I did find amusing was how many Dutch expressions turn out to have rough equivalents in English. It’s often just the nuance that makes the difference. That’s what makes translation so tricky. Respect to the professional translators!
If I wanted to publish a serious English version, the entire text clearly had to be reviewed.
ChatGPT to the rescue…
At first, ChatGPT also did quite a decent job.
But the moment I uploaded multiple chapters at once, things went wrong:
• It started carrying over errors from previous chapters.
• It suggested mistakes that weren’t actually there.
• It began altering the storyline (despite my explicit instructions not to).
I’d read something back and think: “Wait, didn’t my main character not wear a hat?”
The solution turned out to be simple — but labour-intensive: handling one chapter at a time.
I uploaded each chapter individually and asked ChatGPT: “Is this correct British English?”
After a period of fine-tuning with specific instructions, that method began to work surprisingly well.
In the end, I went through and edited all 82 chapters this way.
I did notice, however, that as the interaction went on for longer, ChatGPT would start to lose focus more often. Starting a fresh project would then help tremendously.
Final stage: the punctuation challenge
The step that required the most patience (and still does) was the final check on punctuation.
DeepL had made many errors here. ChatGPT tried to correct them, but often made things worse.
So I decided to take full ownership of this final phase, knowing full well that it’s impossible to catch every single mistake in a 107,000-word book.
This last task is now nearly complete, with the wise words of a friend in mind:
“You’ll never catch the final mistake anyway.”
Very soon, the English version of Doorbraak will be available via https://slautis.nl/breakthrough/ for €11.50.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading it just as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it!