The tenth anniversary of this site is coming up in May, prompting me to reflect on why I track and promote SF in translation (and love doing it). As you, dear Reader, must know, SFT is the height of “niche” (mostly because a lot of people know nothing about it). First, someone needs to actually be interested in picking up a book and reading it (understand, we’re in the 2020s). Then, they need to specifically look for something speculative. Only then do we come to the whole “translation” part. Browse your local Barnes & Noble and you’ll come upon perhaps a handful of works of SFT. Maybe your local independent bookstore(s) carry it; in that case, you’ll probably find a dozen works. Other than that, it’s all online, which is fine. I’m just old fashioned, since I’d rather walk in an actual store, run my fingers along the book spines, flip through the pages, and smell that new book smell.
Money is an issue when it comes to publishing translated work. Publishers in general simply don’t want to pay a writer and a translator for a book, and (generally), American readers aren’t that interested in reading translations. Americans don’t have to learn multiple languages to get through each day, and language instruction in the schools doesn’t bring students to fluency levels. And yet, the US is part of a larger world (of course), though you wouldn’t know it over the past few decades as our news media has become more and more focused on…ourselves. We learn very little about what’s going on in the rest of the world. One has to seek out actual news about, for instance, France or India or Kenya, and I’m not just talking about headlines that flash by. This, my friends, is just one of the reasons why we all need to read outside our boundaries.
News is one thing, literature another. By reading what someone raised in another culture and language thinks about, say, robots or AI or vampires, we add a little something to our store of knowledge about this planet we live on and the people we share it with. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but maybe you’ll share something from this site with a non-reader, or a family member, or someone who actually (my goodness) still thinks that SFF is only written in English. Reading and writing are actually really necessary for civilization to continue, so the more we read, the more tolerant we become of others, the more it remains possible that we can not only maintain our human civilization and its benefits but also, you know, improve upon it. What better way to learn about how people outside of our country think about certain important issues of our time? And did I mention that we’re all living on the same planet?
I’ve written before that speculative fiction is particularly suited to translation because the former often takes up problems and events that impact the entire planet. Generation ships, ancestral ghosts, environmental catastrophe: all of these are relevant to all of us. Translation is the act of bringing something from one mode into another: from one language into another, from one culture into another, etc. We’re sharing stories with each other, but because of various constraints, we need to modify and adjust them so that we’re all on the same page. Translations are works of art in and of themselves, which is why machine translation will never surpass the creativity and vitality of human translation. Translators are the bridges that connect us, and too many people take them for granted or don’t see them at all (think about all of those books that don’t have the translator’s name on the cover).
This is the first in an ongoing series (hopefully) about my thoughts on the world of SFT, so, yes, this post is a bit scattered. I have much that is knocking around in my head, and not a lot of time to sit and write it. I will try, however, to share my thoughts on this always-fascinating niche genre and I welcome your comments.
