One way to absorb, at an elemental level, the nuances of a foreign culture: study its language. Learn to speak it, if only to feel the way the sounds roll across the tongue. Notice how it's structured--culture comes out in so many ways in language.
Or authors writing in an English that is for them a second language -- they may be exquisitely fluent in it, but there's always this delightful otherness, this different way of seeing ways to form words and sentences and rhythms around sights and experiences and emotions. I've been reading a lot of Eva Ibbotson's adult novels lately (delicious comfort reading!), and am struck by her English is not quite English but something of its own (she grew up in Vienna and later moved to the UK): there are no grammatical mistakes or misunderstandings of words, but her use of the language has its own peculiar shape, and I love it.
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
( ... )
Not so much 'around', as extendeded_rexMay 6 2009, 20:30:54 UTC
(I'm not sure I've commented here before, but I've been lurking for a while.)
I think it's unreasonable to expect (many - people like Mike Resnick serve to test the rule) westerners to write SF/F set in cultures other than their own; it's hard enough to get the made up cultures right, let alone real ones.
I don't know a way around it, except immersion, but we really need several lifetimes for that.
In anglo North America at least, one solution would be a greater openness on the part of both readers and publishers to literature in translation. Sadly, those few lines with which I've been familiar (and the only one I can think of of hand was an attempt to bring Soviet writing to the US in the 1970s, which I don't think did very well) haven't been succesful.
Re: Not so much 'around', as extendedsartoriasMay 6 2009, 20:33:38 UTC
You are most welcome.
pompe brought up a similar point about literature in translation. I emphatically agree--a good translation is such a joy--but I wish I knew how that could be fixed.
Re: Not so much 'around', as extendeded_rexMay 6 2009, 20:52:43 UTC
Thank you.
Naturally, I noticed pompe's reply right after I posted my own. Well, missing it allowed me to de-lurk in any case, so I'll not curse the fates (this time).
I wish I knew how that could be fixed.
Print-on-demand? A self-sacrificing small press? One of the problematic effects of being part of the dominant world culture is that English-speaking people more or less expect everyone else to "get with the program" and come to us, rather than feeling the need to go to them.
As a Canadian, I could bore you silly with the difficulties we've had in simply creating a viable indigenous television industry; the economies of scale of the US networks mean it is much cheaper for our private broadcasters to buy US programs than to create their own. (This doesn't apply so much in French Canada, where the linguistic divide has permitted Quebec the space to build its own programming. But I think I'm really digressing here.)
Re: Not so much 'around', as extendedsartoriasMay 6 2009, 21:30:02 UTC
I suspect there's less of expecting others to get with the program than of sheer ignorance.
Publishers are timid-that is a big investment, to pay a translator and also pay for the book--and it's difficult to call who is going to make that worthwhile.
Well, I hope the next evolution in publishing will make access easier.
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If I could do back forty years, I would study Linguistics.
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After all, I know that Swedish crime novels are translated into English...
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I'd love to see Bernhard Hennen translated into English, just for one.
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I'm hoping that the next publishing method--whatever it is--will have fewer, or at least different, gatekeepers.
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I think it's unreasonable to expect (many - people like Mike Resnick serve to test the rule) westerners to write SF/F set in cultures other than their own; it's hard enough to get the made up cultures right, let alone real ones.
I don't know a way around it, except immersion, but we really need several lifetimes for that.
In anglo North America at least, one solution would be a greater openness on the part of both readers and publishers to literature in translation. Sadly, those few lines with which I've been familiar (and the only one I can think of of hand was an attempt to bring Soviet writing to the US in the 1970s, which I don't think did very well) haven't been succesful.
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pompe brought up a similar point about literature in translation. I emphatically agree--a good translation is such a joy--but I wish I knew how that could be fixed.
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Naturally, I noticed pompe's reply right after I posted my own. Well, missing it allowed me to de-lurk in any case, so I'll not curse the fates (this time).
I wish I knew how that could be fixed.
Print-on-demand? A self-sacrificing small press? One of the problematic effects of being part of the dominant world culture is that English-speaking people more or less expect everyone else to "get with the program" and come to us, rather than feeling the need to go to them.
As a Canadian, I could bore you silly with the difficulties we've had in simply creating a viable indigenous television industry; the economies of scale of the US networks mean it is much cheaper for our private broadcasters to buy US programs than to create their own. (This doesn't apply so much in French Canada, where the linguistic divide has permitted Quebec the space to build its own programming. But I think I'm really digressing here.)
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Publishers are timid-that is a big investment, to pay a translator and also pay for the book--and it's difficult to call who is going to make that worthwhile.
Well, I hope the next evolution in publishing will make access easier.
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