Looking for Oh God Please Help

[Error 420]

So I recently got a job as a ghostwriter. I'm 17 and saving for a place to stay after college so I'm thinking "yeah this is good". I sent in a badass essay about oscar wilde and a modest resume, and they were like "rad, when can you start? we'll give you 2 bucks every 100 words" and I'm like cool this will work. In the first interview they were asking what I was good at, what my areas of expertise were, and I didn't lie at all. They asked "hey what languages do you speak" and I said "English, German, Latin, a bit of Spanish, a bit of French-" "lol yeah you speak italian too?" "lol sure", I say, making a joke in response to their joke

My first job they gave me was writing an italian textbook
I don't speak italian at all
and it's my first job so they say if I can't complete it on time I'm out
but they're giving me like 500 bucks and giving me three weeks
and so I thought yeah I can bullshit this I can just look at other textbooks, change around the specifics, keep the curriculum and the lessons, I'm an education major, I'm good
but I don't speak
a word of Italian

Oh god what do I do

 

[Demonic cupcake]

Ya messed up thats what ya did
Duplingo
Other language learning sites.
The best way would to find a person who speakes italian and use them as a translator cuz they can get it all correct. You could also do a mix of learning italian and translators. The good thing is you already know spanish and french and theyre all pretty similar

 

[Demonic cupcake]

WHATEVER YOU DO. DONT USE GOOGLE TRANSLATE

 

[Demonic cupcake]

6 Great Italian Translator Apps for Understanding and Learning Italian

"Buongiorno," says the man in the shop.You're set to buy some biscotti (cookies) before heading out for your day of exploring Venice.You've been dreaming of this vacation for a long time, saving up the money for the plane ticket and studying as much Italian as possible. You've been reading I

www.fluentu.com

 

[Idea]

Jannah ariane3505 are the only people I could find who claim to be able to speak Italian.

That said, I’m not really seeing a real out here other than confessing there was a misunderstanding.

 

[Demonic cupcake]

Jannah ariane3505 are the only people I could find who claim to be able to speak Italian.

That said, I’m not really seeing a real out here other than confessing there was a misunderstanding.

True

 

[KokichiLove]

If it were me, I would go to whoever hired you and explain that when they asked if you speak Italian, you were just joking in response and there was a misunderstanding. If your boss is a good boss I'm sure they'll understand.

 

[The_Omega_Effect]

i mean this is obviously a lesson to hold your fucking tongue but the ways out I can see are:
A) Talk to the boss.
Not sure how long exactly the textbook is but the below options work if you're writing something short.
B) Get help from someone who DOES speak Italian. Maybe you can split the money 50% 50% or sth
C) Try to understand what kind of book they are going for and then just study the sentence structure from similar books. Its vital that you don't copy word for word as plaigarism can ruin all the future you have as a writer.
D) Try to study the sentence structure and write something while quadruple checking every sentence.

The fact that you have to write an entire fucking textbook does doom you however. I'd say just let your boos know asap so that he can find someone else to do it.

 

[Winter_Wolf]

Severe mistakes were made. But I think you have two options--find an Italian speaker and compensate them as heavily as possible (they would be doing you a massive favor), or admit that there was a misunderstanding. The sooner, the better, for both options. Although apparently not saying anything when they gave you the Italian book assignment does make it more tricky. They have a deadline for this job, and if they don't have someone else who can do Italian, then quite frankly you've put them in a really hard place.

But consider that even if you did finish this one job on time with the help of an Italian speaker, they might ask you to do other jobs involving Italian in the future, and so you'd have to perpetually depend on someone else to do your work. You'd have to keep splitting with them presumably, and hope they're always able to do you favors. A potential case of short term gain, long term pain.