Rachel Cordasco\u2019s essay<\/a> on *finding*<\/em> translated speculative fiction from February 2026 is a fascinating read, and consistent with my own observations of (and struggles with) finding speculative fiction in translation \u2014 because this is still<\/em> an uphill battle. I had a lot of reactions as I read her essay, but the first points that sprang to my mind as I read it were related to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database<\/a>, or ISFDB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wouldn\u2019t it be nice if there were a comprehensive site that cataloged metadata from all published speculative fiction translations? A place where you could go to search not only by author, but also by translator? The ISFDB is ostensibly a place where one might logically go to find such information. After all, it is \u201ca community effort to catalog works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror\u201d that links together bibliographic information, including author bibliographies and tables of contents for magazines and anthologies alike. I\u2019ve contributed to various ISFDB records myself \u2014 and this hands-on experience has also opened my eyes to how easily ISFDB could<\/em> dramatically help translated speculative fiction gain more visibility, and how doggedly the ISFDB admins refuse to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently (as of March 9, 2026), ISFDB automatically creates profiles for writers, editors, poets, artists, publishers, and magazines when a user enters details of a book or magazine \u2014 but inexplicably, it does not create profiles for translators. I wish I could pull up a translator’s profile in ISFDB to see all the works they\u2019ve translated, but the only way an SF translator gets a page in ISFDB is if they get published in some other capacity (as an author, artist, etc. \u2014 and there is no section for translations on those profile pages!). For example, several of my translations are documented in ISFDB, but none are visible on my ISFDB profile<\/a>. This also means that, if I discover a translator I like, I can’t go find all their other translations in ISFDB with just a couple of clicks. I have to dig<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How ISFDB Presents Translations<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n One might assume that this simply means ISFDB doesn\u2019t collect metadata about translations, but that would be incorrect because it does<\/em> collect translation metadata. When creating a new ISFDB entry for a story or novel, one can indicate in the \u201cNotes\u201d field that a work is translated (and if so, by whom). ISFDB contains information about thousands of speculative translations, who translated them, and where to find them \u2013 but none of that information is displayed in a user-friendly format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019d like to see an example of how ISFDB presents translators, take a look at the ISFDB entry for \u201cRat\u2019s Tongue\u201d by Xing Fan (translated by Judith Huang, published in 2022 by<\/u> Future Science Fiction Digest)<\/em><\/u><\/a> <\/em>or my own translation of \u201cLamia\u201d by Cristina Jurado (published in 2022 by <\/u>Apex Magazine)<\/em><\/u><\/a>.<\/em> You\u2019ll note that while these stories link back to their corresponding author pages, there are no hyperlinks to pages for the translators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take a look at these author pages for Stanislaw Lem<\/a> and Liu Cixin<\/a>. You\u2019ll notice that ISFDB clearly marks instances where these authors\u2019 works have been translated to other languages (including each language, when, and in which publications) \u2014 and yet, the translators remain anonymous. For some stories, you can click through and find the translators\u2019 names in that little \u201cnotes\u201d field, but some translators remain unidentified (which could be due to contributing users not taking the steps to name the translator, or simply because the original publisher never even credited the translator).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, just imagine how much easier it would be to find more translations by a specific translator if they were clearly identified on those author profile pages, and how much easier still it would be browse that translator\u2019s work if ISFDB allowed translators to have profile pages, too! And imagine how much more nuanced our discussions of translated speculative fiction could be if ISFDB allowed translations performed by authors to appear on those authors\u2019 pages!<\/p>\n\n\n\n ISFDB\u2019s Guidance for Submitting Translations<\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve mentioned ISFDB not \u201callowing\u201d translators to be properly indexed in the database \u2013 \u201callowing\u201d is indeed the correct word choice. I\u2019d like to call your attention to ISFDB\u2019s FAQ guidance users for entering translations<\/a> into the database \u2014 the guidance requires you to log in, so I will excerpt some key quotes for you in the paragraphs below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The general rules and information for entering translations are rather straightforward: all titles must have a language field, and translated titles are entered as variants of the title in its original language. Users are specifically required to identify the translation language AND use the original non-Latin characters for the author and\/or translator names when those names are written using systems like Chinese characters or the Cyrillic alphabet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ISFDB\u2019s translation guidance also directs users, \u201cIdeally, the Note to Moderator [field] should include the information that this is a translation and the Title of the original publication that it was originally translated from.\u201d Specifically naming the translator for a given translation is mandatory \u201cif it is a translation <\/em>and you know the name of the translator<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, these same FAQ and guiding rules explicitly state (and have stated for many years): \u201cThere is currently no support for a \u2018translated by\u2019 field in the [ISFDB] database. Translators should be recorded in each Title\u2019s Notes field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n No \u201cTranslated by\u201d Field?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Why doesn\u2019t ISFDB support a \u201ctranslated by\u201d field?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ISFDB site appears pretty straightforward, and it seems to me that the admins could make a few behind-the-scenes tweaks that would make these changes possible (particularly given how responsive admins of other sites, like The Submission Grinder<\/em><\/a>, are to user suggestions). I am not sure how complicated the back-end of ISFDB actually is, but I suspect that it can\u2019t be that<\/em> much more complicated than The Submission Grinder<\/em>\u2019s back-end, and The Submission Grinder<\/em> regularly adds new fields and filters based on user suggestions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps one of the things dissuading the ISFDB administrators from adding this field is the daunting task of having to go back through and help update records to ensure translator information is properly indexed and recorded. I would argue this logic does not hold up to scrutiny, because interest specifically in translated speculative fiction has grown astronomically over the past decade, and I think ISFDB will find no shortage of users interested in tackling this challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It kills<\/em> me that ISFDB doesn’t allow profiles for translators. Unfortunately, translators remain next-to-invisible in the database, and this seems very unlikely to change in the near future unless the ISFDB admins concede and add a \u201ctranslated by\u201d field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, I still hold out hope that there will someday be enough of us clamoring for change that ISFDB will finally add that \u201ctranslated by\u201d field \u2014 or that we\u2019ll be able to build our own ISFDB knock-off for #SFinTranslation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rachel Cordasco\u2019s essay on *finding* translated speculative fiction from February 2026 is a fascinating read, and consistent with my own observations of (and struggles with) finding speculative fiction in translation \u2014 because this is still an uphill battle. I had a lot of reactions as I read her essay, but the first points that sprang<\/p>\n