July 26, 2010 | Posted by admin
The Finnish fiction magazine, Usva (The Mist), publishes occasional English-language issues. The latest one, Usva International 2010, was published at this year’s Finncon. It contains translations of stories by Katja Salminen, Marika Riikonen, Marketta Niemelä, Carita Forsgren, Marko Hautala, and Tomi Jänkälä. All of these are eligible for our short fiction award. The whole magazine is available online as a PDF. Congratulations to editor Anne Leinonen for promoting Finnish writers in this way.
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July 1, 2010 | Posted by admin
Haikasoru, the specialist in publishing translated Japanese SF, is about to release a novel that won Japan’s prestigious Seiun Award in 2009. Harmony, by Project Itoh, is a social satire about health care which is all the more poignant as its author was dying of cancer when he wrote it. The book also promises entertaining style. Haikasoru’s Nick Mamatas has this to say:
Harmony is an unapologetic example of “stained glass” writing, where the beauty of the prose comes out. At the same time, however, the book isn’t a lyrical excursion on to the far reaches of language—now that would have been murder to translate—but is actually cool and fun.
Examination of the cover picture suggests that the translator is Alexander O. Smith who has also worked on Final Fantasy games and the Full Metal Alchemist novels.
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June 28, 2010 | Posted by admin
Aliette de Bodard, a French woman who writes in English, talks about the difficulties of translation. Here’s an extract:
In Vietnamese, “to have a meal” is literally “to eat rice”. “French cuisine” is “French rice”, and so on for English cuisine or Japanese. This says a lot about the way the culture works, and could be used to inject a little “flavour” in the dialogue, but you can see that this would also create problems because it’s not a natural construction.
Read the whole thing here. (And our congratulations to Aliette on her wedding, which takes place today!)
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June 23, 2010 | Posted by admin
Last year the inaugural David Gemmell Awards caused something of a stir when the best novel price (the Legend Award) went to a translated book, Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski. This year saw the introduction of a new category for debut fantasy novels, and it was won by Pierre Pevel’s The Cardinal’s Blades, translated from the French by Tom Clegg. Full details here.
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June 15, 2010 | Posted by admin
Over at Wired, Bruce Sterling has run a press release from leading Finnish magazine editor, Toni Jerrman, about the fine Finnish science fiction available in English at the moment. We contacted Toni and asked for information about translations.
Hannu Rajaniemi is a very clever guy. There’s no mention of a translator for “Elegy for a Young Elk” so he probably did it himself, but the English publication is, we believe, new this year. We suspect that The Quantum Thief was written directly in English.
Johanna Sinisalo’s story, ”Bear’s Bride”, was translated by Liisa Rantalaiho.
Tiina Raevaara “My creator, my creation” was translated by Hildi Hawkins & Soila Lehtonen.
J. Pekka Mäkelä’s ”Thirty More Years” was translated by Owen F. Witesman.
We believe that all of these stories are eligible for our awards. (The Mäkelä was translated in 2009, but apparently not published until this year.)
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June 11, 2010 | Posted by admin
One of the first translated works of 2011 will be a novella by Spanish writer, Domingo Santos. “The First Day of Eternity” will appear in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Analog, and will be translated by the editor, Stanley Schmidt, himself. World SF News has more details.
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June 10, 2010 | Posted by admin
Carlos Ruiz Zafón is one of the most successful Spanish writers ever. His The Shadow of the Wind is second only to Don Quixote in sales of Spanish fiction. Last month his YA fantasy novel, The Prince of the Mist, was made available in English, translated by Lucia Graves. (It is actually his first novel, but it has only just been translated.) Ruiz Zafón knows his fantasy well, as evidenced by this article for The Guardian.
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May 27, 2010 | Posted by admin
The prestigious Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire have always been friendly to translation into French. This year they gave prizes for translated novels, short fiction and YA novels, and their Bande Dessinée (comic) and Manga winners were also translated. There is even a prize specifically for translators (into French). But they also went further, giving a special prize to Jean-Marc Lofficier and Brian Stableford for their work translating French language science fiction into English and publishing it through Black Coat Press.
The full list of winners is available (in English) via Science Fiction Awards Watch and (in French) via Noosfere.
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May 21, 2010 | Posted by admin
Over at Strange Horizons, John Clute reviews the translated novels of Czech writer, Michal Ajvaz. These are The Other City (published last year) and The Golden Age, which hit the bookstores in April and is therefore definitely eligible for our awards.
The Golden Age is translated by Andrew Oakland and published by Dalkey Archive Press. It is described as “a fantastical travelogue in which a modern-day Gulliver writes a book about a civilization he once encountered on a tiny island in the Atlantic.”
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May 19, 2010 | Posted by admin
There’s some big news from Amazon today. They are launching a new imprint, AmazonCrossing, that is dedicated to publishing works translated into English. According to the press release, Amazon is planning to make use of knowledge gained from its international business. Vice President of Books, Jeff Belle, said:
Our international customers have made us aware of exciting established and emerging voices from other cultures and countries that have not been translated for English-language readers. These great voices and great books deserve a wider audience, and that’s why we created AmazonCrossing.
Thus far only one title has been announced, and it does not appear to be genre. We look forward to hearing about more titles in future.
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