Some Translation Links

Here are a few interesting stories that have turned up in the blogosphere in recent weeks.

The Independent reviews Best European Fiction 2010, which includes a ghost story by Portugal’s Valter Hugo Mae and a “futuristic tale” by Georgi Gospodinov from Bulgaria.

– Chad W. Post ponders the value of automated translation tools.

– K.E. Semmel reviews Olga Slavnikova’s novel, 2017 (translation by Marian Schwartz) which is set in a near future Russia facing an environmental catastrophe.

– Haikasoru editor Pancha Diaz talks about the Tiptree-winning graphic novel, Ôoku.

– And Nick Mamatas discusses “The anarchy of translation”.

The Swedes Are Coming!

And they are bringing their comics with them. Top Shelf Productions have recently announced that they will be publishing several top Swedish comics in English translation in the USA this year. Probably not all of them will be speculative fiction, but there’s not much doubt about The Troll King by Kolbeinn Karlsson. The Top Shelf web site has more details.

Translation Links

There is a lot of talk about translation around the blogosphere at the moment. Here are a few items we noticed in recent days.

– Fábio Fernandes talks about working in two languages at Tor.com.

– Charles Tan interviews Nick Mamatas about Haikasoru at World SF News. All of those 2010 publications Nick mentions should be eligible for our award.

– Ekaterina Sedia wonders whether translated works should sound foreign and exotic.

– Anna Tambour reviews a collection of Tamil pulp fiction (with a fabulous cover).

– Chad W. Post reviews a prize-winning Arabic novel about an infertility curse.

– The anthology series, Best American Fantasy, is looking for works from Latin America.

Another Russian Author Due in 2010

Last week we noted that Gollancz will be issuing a translation of Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033 in 2010. But Glukhovsky is not the only Russian SF&F author due to be made available to English-language readers. In February 2010 Tor is issuing Shadow Prowler, the first book in a fantasy trilogy called the Chronicles of Siala. The author is Alexey Pehov and you can read more about him on his English-language web site. A UK paperback will be available from Simon & Schuster in April.

Pehov’s works are being translated by Andrew Bromfield, who was also the translator for Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch series.

Forthcoming in Translation

With 2010 almost upon us we are starting to get news of works that are likely to be eligible for the first year’s awards. One possibility is Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky which is due out in the UK from Gollancz in February. See World SF News for more details. It isn’t clear whether this is the first English language publication, but it is the first from a major English language publisher.

You may also have seen the announcement that Pyr will be producing a US edition of Pierre Pevel’s novel, The Cardinal’s Blades. This isn’t a first English language publication, because the book was published by Gollancz in the UK this year. However, the award rules do allow the jury to look back up to two years if they are short of potential candidates, provided that works in question have not been considered by a previous jury. As 2010 will be our first year, the jury effectively has three years to look at if it wishes to do so.

On the subject of eligibility, it has been brought to our attention that some authors (for example Zoran Živković) self-publish English language editions of their work in order to have something to send to English language publishers. These publications tend to be very short print runs, and it is not our intention that they should disqualify a work from consideration should it later be picked up later by a major publisher.