Rachel Cordasco on Translated SF
Interviewed by James Machell
Rachel Cordasco has written a variety of entries for the SFE, most notably SF in Translation in which she places the first golden age of science fiction translation in the 1970s (see entry for more details). Her expertise in translation range from her time as translator of works from Italian, reviews for SF Signal, and founding of Speculative Fiction in Translation where she has continued to review translations from over a dozen languages. Small Planet, a magazine dedicated to further discussion, was published on Speculative Fiction in Translation last month. In this interview, she discusses her career so far, underrated works of translated SF, what distinguishes a great translation, and the direction of Small Planet #2.
JM: You transitioned from writing for SF Signal by launching your own Speculative Fiction in Translation in 2016. Here you’ve reviewed translations from Bengali, Dutch, Chinese, and numerous other languages.
What inspired you begin publishing Small Planet?
RC: I had wanted to start a magazine for a while, but so much else was going on in my life that I didn’t think too much about it. Finally, as the tenth anniversary of the SFT website was coming up, I realized that if I didn’t start the magazine, it might never happen. When I broached the idea on social media, I saw how much interest there was in a project of this kind. Thanks to the hard work of the volunteers who wrote for, edited, and designed the first issue, we were able to put out the first magazine focused on the SFT field just 2 days after the SFT site’s tenth anniversary.
JM: The Inaugural Issue of Small Planet features contributions from Cheryl Morgan on SF&F in Welsh, Monica Louzon on The Internet Speculative Fiction Database’s presentation of translated texts, and Alex Shvartsman discusses translating the slang in William Gibson’s Neuromancer. How did you go about finding contributors?
RC: I have known the fabulous Cheryl Morgan and Alex Shvartsman for many years, since they have been writing, publishing, and editing SFT longer than I have been on the SFT scene. I met so many of the excellent contributors online because either they’ve reached out to me or I’ve discovered their work. Once you know a few people, they introduce you to other people, and your network grows. I also met a lot of great authors, editors, and translators while working on Out of This World. This magazine wouldn’t exist without the internet, which is appropriate, since speculative fiction is, ultimately, a world-wide genre and translating it brings us all closer together. Even so, I dream one day of establishing an SFT conference and bringing everyone involved in the SFT scene to Madison so we can meet one another in person and talk about our favorite genre.
JM: At the end of the issue, you show the growth in translations of Spanish language novels since 1965. One might have assumed the spike to occur following the publication of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), but interest actually jumps in 2007. What do you think was special about this year and why has this trend continued?
RC: Yes, I’ve been really intrigued by some trends that I’ve found just in looking at the spreadsheet numbers. In terms of Spanish SFT, I think that it rode the wave of interest in SFT in general that happened just after the turn of the century. Cosmos Latinos, an excellent anthology of Spanish-language SFT, came out in 2003, and a wide variety of Anglophone publishers started moving beyond magical realism to bring us a much more varied and representative group of speculative fiction from a number of Spanish-speaking countries. Translators like Sue Burke, Will Vanderhyden, Lawrence Schimel, Megan McDowell, David Frye, and so many others made it possible for Anglophone readers to discover Yoss, Angelica Gorodischer, Rodrigo Fresan, Lola Robles, Samanta Schweblin, and many other excellent authors.
JM: Are there particular translated works which you feel deserve greater critical attention?
RC: There are so many worthy works of SFT that I’d like to highlight, but that would take up volumes because, in fact, so much SFT that comes to us is double-vetted. These texts have often already won awards in their native countries or become extremely popular with readers and Anglophone publishers only want to invest in what they think will be successful. The translators then use their talents to not only bring the text into English but also make it a beautiful and readable work. This is why so much SFT is of a very high quality. I will take this opportunity to say, as I complain often on social media, that it’s a shame we no longer have Kurodahan and Haikasoru to bring us some of the greatest Japanese SF written in the twentieth century. Another publisher needs to step into this void and continue the work that those two publishers did for a decade. I’m also always on the lookout for SFT from underrepresented languages: I would love to read more, for instance, Vietnamese SFT, Buglarian SFT, Norwegian SFT, Icelandic SFT, etc.
One more thing: I used to think that Stanislaw Lem and the Strugatskys were so well known in the Anglosphere that I didn’t have to recommend them because, you know, everybody has already read them, right? Well, I’m getting the terrible feeling that this isn’t the case. So for anyone who is just starting with SFT, go read Lem and the Strugatskys.
JM: What can we expect from Small Planet #2 and do you have any other projects we should be looking out for?
RC: I am so excited to bring everyone Small Planet #2 because it will include pieces on the SF scene in Bulgaria and Romania, an essay on Hungarian SF, a piece on translating from Swahili, plus interviews, reviews of older SFT, forthcoming books, a piece on books we want translated, stats, and so much more. I even intend to introduce a column called “Crossing Borders,” where I highlight two or three texts from different source-languages that have an unexpected connection. I just love finding, for instance, works of Japanese SFT and Spanish SFT that both interrogate motherhood, or stories from Hungarian and Korean that take up the theme of time travel. These connections underscore how alike we really are. I’m also going to include a mini-report on individual source languages with every issue, starting with French.
JM: In addition to covering SF in Translation, you’ve also covered Afrikaans SF and “Weird Al” Yankovic. How did you come to be involved with the SFE?
RC: I’ve used the SFE as a resource for years, and its wealth of information on SF in countries around the world proved invaluable while I was writing my books. It occurred to me a year or so ago that I might be able to contribute something of my own, and David was very gracious in accepting my proposals. After writing a few pieces about SFT, I thought about branching out and writing about some of the music my family and I enjoy, which is how I wrote about Tom Lehrer and Weird Al. I am thinking of writing one on the B-52s...
JM: In your essay, “A Short History of International SF Magazines,” for Speculative Fiction in Translation, you discuss the bumpy history of international speculative fiction magazines and their typically short runs. To what extent has the Anglophone SF scene reoriented itself toward the world scene since you began translating works of Italian speculative fiction?
RC: SFT seems to go through phases in which interest in it is high and publishers are bringing readers a lot of texts, but then there are decades in which much less is published and discussed. I started translating Italian SF in 2016 when I learned from editor and author Francesco Verso just how vibrant the Italian scene is and how far back it goes. I realized, though, that relatively little has been published in English translation, so I wanted to do my (very small) part in introducing more Anglophone readers to contemporary Italian SF. I have translated several stories, as well as a collection (with Jennifer Delare) and a novella, all by award-winning science fiction author Clelia Farris, as well as stories by a variety of other Italian authors. I am not, though, a professional translator, and I want to highlight the professional and excellent work of Anne Milano Appel, Sarah Jane Webb, Frederika Randall, and Sally McCorry, in particular, who have brought us a number of fascinating works of Italian SFT over recent decades.
JM: I can remember going through different translations of Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star (1977) and my enjoyment of the text varied hugely. What do you think separates an adequate translation from a great one?
RC: After reading hundreds of works of SFT over this past decade, I’ve realized that the best translations are eminently readable in the target language but also preserve the distinctiveness of the source language. I welcome footnotes/endnotes that offer cultural context that I wouldn’t otherwise have while reading, for instance, Swedish horror or Korean high fantasy. I recently wrote an essay for the website about what SFT criticism looks like, and I argued that, ultimately, a book in translation is its own work of art and should be treated as such. We should focus, first, on whether or not it is a high-quality work and then, second, discuss what it means that it is a translation. Most people in the Anglosphere have neither the time nor the ability to compare translated books to their originals, but we don’t have to unless we can. A great text, whether translated or not, transports us to other worlds and introduces us to interesting people and ideas.
Rachel Cordasco founded the website SFinTranslation.com in 2016 and regularly reviews SFT for World Literature Today and Strange Horizons. She also translates Italian speculative fiction, some of which has been published in magazines like Clarkesworld Magazine and Future Science Fiction Digest. Rachel’s book Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation From the Cold War to the New Millennium is out from the University of Illinois Press. Her second book, Speculative Fiction in Translation From Around the World, is forthcoming from the University of Wales Press.
Links
Speculative Fiction in Translation:
https://www.sfintranslation.com/
Small Planet #1: