2022 - 09/2022 Meeting

Page Created: 09/10/22. Last Updated: 10/02/22.

ALEX SHVARTSMAN

Novels:

.....The Middling Affliction

......Eridani's Crown

Anthologies Edited

.....The Rosetta Archive (with Tarryn Thomas)

.....The Cackle of Cthulhu

.....Coffee: Caffinated Tales of the Fantastic

.....Funny Fantasy

.....Funny Horror

.....Funny Science Fiction

.....Humanity 2.0

.....Dark Expanse: Surviving the Collapse

.....Unidentified Funny Objects Volumes 1 - 8

Meeting Date: September 10, 2022.

Meeting Site: Barnes & Noble. Paramus, New Jersey.

Attendance: 19.

Meeting Program: Talk, Q & A with SF Translator / Editor / Author.

Notes:

Topics at the Ice Nine pre-meeting discussion included The Black Adder, Galaxy Quest, The Orville, Star Trek, Isaac Asimov, defunct clothing stores, and politics.

Nine people went to the Suburban Diner in Paramus after the meeting.

Newsletter Account:

The Saturday, September 10, 2022 meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at Barnes & Noble in Paramus, New Jersey. Author / editor / translator Alex Shvartsman spoke about international science fiction and translation,

Alex is a Ukrainian expatriate who edits FUTURE SF DIGEST, a periodical devoted to publishing international speculative works into English. Our speak has translated Russian and Ukrainian stories for a number of science fiction magazines and anthologies.

He talked about the rewards and difficulties of translation, markets, and related matters. More information appears in the meeting account on the club website.

Additional Meeting Notes:

Source language / Target language.

Italian phrase translates as "To translate is too betray." It was used to describe the translation of Dante's Inferno into French.

Translators work for the reader to give them a similar experience to what they would enjoy if they were fluent in the source language.

There are relatively few English-speaking translators. This is true in the UK as well as America.

Different languages employ different literary formats. Dialogue in 20th Century Chinese is handled through omniscient narration.

19th Century China and Japan utilized Heroic Translation. The source material served as the translator's inspiration to tell the story.

The USSR did unauthorized translations without paying the author or the publisher.

Translations of the The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers appeared in the USSR in rapid succession, but it was decades before someone translated The Return of the King.

Netflix is very interested in foreign series because the rights are very cheap,

Alex translated his first story on a lark. He did not even have permission to do so.

Translating engages a different part of his brain than does writing original fiction.

Alex has translated stories as scripts on spec.

We don't see much translated foreign fiction because translators can make much more money in screenplays.

Translators of novels get paid .10 - .15 / word which is higher than they can make on fiction.

Alex chose a particular editor for his indie fantasy novel, Eridani's Crown, because he knew the editor knew her medieval history well.

There are about a dozen very good translators of work from China. This is far more than any other language.

You have to know the culture to properly translate. There is a beverage in Russia which could literally be translated as either apricot juice or apricot soda. But someone from Russia would know that it should be translated as apricot soda.

There was a Russian word which could mean either lobby or porch. It turned out that in slang for the author's region, staircase was the correct translation.

Sometimes a foreign word or idiom is so perfect that it is imported into a new language. Flea Market is a literal translation of a French idiom that stuck. The translator of a Polish work kept the phrase, "Not my circus, not my monkeys."

Different languages utilize different sentence structures. Except in rare cases translators restructure the work into the language of the market country.

We are at the start of an exciting new age of translated science fiction.

Neil Clarke at Clarkesworld was the trailblazer for short genre translations. He made it known that he was very interested in publishing these works. Ken Liu became his first regular. Translators pitch one-paragraph story synopses and work on whatever stories Neil approves. Many other magazines followed Neil's lead.

Different nations have different approaches to publishing fiction. China's story.com pays its house writers a good salary, but the company holds the copyright and all derivative rights. The writers are effectively doing work for hire or working in a licensed property. Another parallel is a corporate research scientist who does not own what he creates or discovers.

Translators & writers split the fee for magazine sales, usually 50/50. This typically comes to .04 / word, much less than a translator is normally paid.

The translator owns the copyright on the translation.

Alex uses translations as a marketing tool. Translating works by famous foreign writers gives him an entree to places like Netflix.

K A Teryna is the best contemporary writer he has translated.