Culture Question

[sartorias]

A lot of people have expressed a wish to be reading sf and f (in addition to other genres) in other settings besides western civ

Comments

[pompe]

Here's an idea. Why not translate foreign SF instead of having English writers doing almost certainly flawed imitations of cultures they don't know?

After all, I know that Swedish crime novels are translated into English...

[sartorias]

GREAT idea! Great idea! Yes, yes!

I'd love to see Bernhard Hennen translated into English, just for one.

[kwynnsar]

There's not a huge market for it. German fantasy is translated more often than other languages, but even that is barely represented. Spanish-language magical realism is sometimes translated. The rest goes untranslated because there is not much of a market for it in the US. Maybe in the UK where literary translation is more respected, sure. However, there are too many English-language authors already for there to be much room for translated ones--is how the feeling goes. Also, translation, instead of being an art form, is regarded more as something lost and the something lost is big enough to interfere with the story and language (Voice, for example) itself. Why have something translated when you can have something just as good in the original

[sartorias]

I think everyone's rights and pay gets trampled, other than the rare but famed few.

I'm hoping that the next publishing method--whatever it is--will have fewer, or at least different, gatekeepers.

[pompe]

"Why have something translated when you can have something just as good in the original?"

Because it isn't just as good?