Abstract
Since the turn of the century, Anglophone readers have witnessed an explosion of speculative fiction in English translation (SFT). This growth suggests that non-Anglophone speculative fiction is being published at an ever-increasing rate and that English-language readers are demanding more texts that reflect different cultural beliefs about humanity, our planet, and our relationships to our linguistic traditions. Translation is the vehicle by which texts flow between and among languages, and speculative fiction is uniquely positioned as a genre interested in change and transformation. This chapter explores how speculative fiction and the act of translation both attempt to render the impossible possible by moving among languages and cultures in order to find the important similarities and fascinating differences among humans. Speculative fiction invokes creatures, experiences, and technologies that don’t (yet) exist; translation makes us believe, if only for a moment, that we all really do speak the same language. Both consistently gesture toward a universality that we may never achieve but will never stop pursuing. Through an exploration of speculative fiction “and,” “about,” and “in” translation, I show how important SFT is to a broader understanding of how and why we tell stories of the possible.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See also Forrester 2012, 17.
- 3.
See also François 2017.
- 4.
See, for example, Doudai 2001.
- 5.
See also Italiano 2020.
- 6.
OED: “zombie”: In the West Indies and southern states of America, a soulless corpse said to have been revived by witchcraft; formerly, the name of a snake-deity in voodoo cults of or deriving from West Africa and Haiti.
- 7.
- 8.
On a personal note, I recently read the 1970 Solaris translation, having purchased a copy at a used bookstore. Without knowing anything about the Johnston translation, other than that it existed, I read the 1970 edition without knowing what the specific problems were, and thus, even if/when I read the Johnston translation, I’ll likely compare it against the 1970 text, as if the latter were a kind of “original.”
- 9.
Wesleyan University Press has published several new Verne translations since 2007.
References
Apter, Emily. 2006. The Translation Zone. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 2000. The Translator’s Task. Trans. Steven Rendall. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti, 15–25. London: Routledge.
Borges, Jorge Luis. 1999. The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights. Trans. Esther Allen. In Selected Nonfictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger, 92–109. New York: Viking.
Braden, Allison. 2019. On Criticizing Translation: An Interview with Tim Parks. https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2019/05/06/on-criticizing-translation-an-interview-with-tim-parks/. Accessed 2 Jan 2021.
Cleary, Heather. 2015. Of Monsters and Parricides: The Politics of Textual Reproduction. Hispanic Review 83: 123–141.
Doudai, Naomi. 2001. Simplistic Translation Lets Down Lorca’s La Casa. The Jerusalem Post, July1.
Dyachenko, Marina and Sergey. 2018. Vita Nostra. Trans. Julia Meitov Hersey. New York: Harper Voyager.
Evans, Arthur B. 2005. Jules Verne’s English Translations. Science Fiction Studies 32: 80–104.
Everett, Caleb, Damián E. Blasi, and Seán G. Roberts. 2015. Climate, Vocal Folds, and Tonal Languages: Connecting the Physiological and Geographic Dots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417413112.
Flood, Alison. 2011. First Ever Direct English Translation of Solaris Published. The Guardian, June 15.
Forrester, Sibelan. 2012. Translation as Reincarnation: Preserving Difference in Textual Bodies. Translation Review 55 (1): 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/07374836.1998.10523717.
François, Anne Isabelle. 2017. Aliens & Translators: Translation as Common Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Centre d’Études et de Recherches Comparatistes – EA: 172. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01426611
Italiano, Federico. 2020. The Dark Side of Translation. London: Routledge.
Landolfi, Tommaso. 1986. Words in Commotion. In Words in Commotion and Other Stories, ed. Kathrine Jason, 263–268. New York: Viking Penguin.
Lem, Stanislaw. 1970. Solaris.Trans. Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. New York: Walker & Co.
Luckhurst, Roger. 2015. Zombies: A Cultural History. London: Reaktion.
Mori, Masahiro. 2012. The Uncanny Valley. Trans. Karl F. MacDorman and Norri Kageki. IEEERobotics & Automation Magazine: 98–100.
Restless Books. 2014. Translation Is Quixotic: A Conversation with Michael Kande. Restless Books Blog. https://restlessbooks.org/blog/2014/1/27/a-conversation-with-michael-kandel
Stewart, Steve. 2015. Through a Veil: Some Propositions Regarding Translations. Translation Review 91: 28–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2015.1052322.
Tidbeck, Karin. 2017. Amatka. Trans. Karin Tidbeck. New York: Vintage Books.
Uncredited Author. 2012. Interview: Translator John Curran Davis on Polish Writer Bruno Schulz. https://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/01/interview-translator-john-curran-davis-on-polish-writer-bruno-schulz/. Accessed 2 Jan 2021.
VanderMeer, Jeff. 2016. Translating Strange Science Fiction: An Interview with Marian and James Womack. Weird Fiction Review. https://weirdfictionreview.com/2016/08/translating-strange-science-fiction/. Accessed 2 Jan 2021.
Wilson, John. 2012. A Conversation with Translator Olena Bormashenko. https://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2012/may/roadsidepicnic.html. Accessed 2 Jan 2021.
Wolfe, Gary K. 1986. Critical Terms. New York: Greenwood Press.
Yeates, Robin. 2015. The Unshriven Dead, Zombies on the Loose: African and Caribbean Religious Heritage in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Modern Fiction Studies 61 (3): 515–537.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cordasco, R. (2021). Speculative Fiction, Translation, and Transformation. In: Campbell, I. (eds) Science Fiction in Translation. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84208-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84208-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-84207-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-84208-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)