This is the English translation of the article in two parts originally in Catalan, which I published in the web El Biblionauta (https://elbiblionauta.com/ca/, November 2021).
It is common to celebrate from time to time the novelty of the publication in Catalan of foreign works of science fiction or fantasy, but it is not so common to reflect on the dynamics that make it possible for these works to reach our language. And on the contrary: although not so often, we are happy when we receive news of the translation of a work of the fantastic in Catalan into a foreign language, despite not even knowing how these little miracles happen. I therefore open a reflection on this topic that will lead, as will be seen, to two bold proposals described in two different articles, one of which is sure to create controversy (see part 2).
So far, things work as follows: publishers decide independently which authors and books they want to translate into Catalan, buy the rights, commission a translation, have it corrected, publish it, and sell it to the reading public with more or less success. However, there is no committee that carries a list of works which would be interesting to translate into Catalan (or from Catalan to other languages), so that in the set of translated works there are always important shortcomings of both classics and novelties. Some works were translated a long time ago but are out of print, others were not translated at the time of their highest popularity and it seems that they will never be translated, and current authors do not find anyone to publish them in Catalan even when they are known. in their language and, why not say it, in Spanish.
The first proposal I make, then, is to make El Biblionauta the headquarters of a committee of science fiction, fantasy and horror readers in Catalan that can advise local publishers and turn the market for books translated into Catalan into an environment. much more consistent than it is now. I’m well aware that readers are volatile and that we don’t always buy the books we want to read (which is why there are libraries, friends, and various illegal resources). I would say, however, that if between 100 and 300 people express the opinion that it would be desirable to translate certain foreign titles, Catalan publishers would so do more confidently than simply relying on their own intuition, or sales in the original language.
The committee’s idea is also applicable to the translation of Catalan into other languages. When I translated Mecanoscrit del segon origen into English, a novel that had already been translated into fourteen other languages but incredibly not into English, I realized that neither the publishers nor the institutions (whether the Institut Ramon Llull or directly the Conselleria de Cultura) monitor which Catalan books are translated into other languages. To be fair, the IRL does offer a database of books in Catalan that could be of interest to translate (https://www.llull.cat/catala/literatura/books_catalan.cfm ) but this is not specific enough in relation in science fiction, fantasy and horror. I don’t see why the readers of El Biblionauta shouldn’t be in charge of managing a list of Catalan works in these genres that would be desirable to publish in other languages. Obviously, it would be easier for Catalan publishers to look at the list of foreign works recommended by readers than for foreign publishers to look at a list of Catalan works, but it’s all about getting started.
In the middle of writing this article I had the pleasure of being a spectator at the new Festival 42 (https://www.barcelona.cat/festival42/ca) of the round table ‘New genre classics in Catalan: A boom with Adams, Dick, Le Guin, Butler, Matheson, King, Poe, Bradbury, Lovecraft and those who will soon follow…’, moderated by Miquel Codony and with the participation of Jordi Casals, Jordi Llavoré, Antoni Munné-Jordà, Martí Sales and Isabel del Río. The table was a celebration of the work that publishers such as Males Herbes, Mai Més Llibres, Chronos, Laertes, Raig Verd, L’Altra, Periscopi, Pagès, Kalandraka and Edicions SECC, among others, have been doing for about ten years in two ways: expanding the list of Catalan translations of foreign science fiction, fantasy and horror classics and recovering out-of-print editions, updating them. This is a very laudable job, without a doubt, but I myself was in charge of questioning a very important point in a brief intervention, when I protested, as an English philologist, that English is too important in this boom. The word ‘classic’ can’t be limited to English-language science fiction, I insisted, but that’s what’s happening right now.
This is not a new opinion in my thinking but it’s true that a conversation during the festival with Italian publisher and novelist Francesco Verso opened my eyes a little bit more. Verso commented to me that, as the University of Rochester’s Three Percent website warns (http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/about/), only 3% of all books published in the United States is a translation, including books of all genres. Rachel Cordasco, a friend of Verso, has an impressive database of speculative fiction works translated into English on her website SF in Translation (https://www.sfintranslation.com/) and has just published Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium (2021), described as a guide. Verso himself is pursuing a truly international language policy as a publisher, looking for translators of all possible languages, as he told me, and remunerating them in the same way as English translators to encourage them to do more work. The website of his publishing project (https://www.futurefiction.org/) includes a world map where many authors can be found outside the Anglo-American sphere.
A very important problem, then, is that neither readers nor publishers of genre fiction in Catalan know enough about other languages. To be better informed you can use resources such as Francesco Verso’s map, Rachel Cordasco’s website and guide, or academic books such as Dale Knickerbocker’s, Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction from around the World (2018). This book is part of the growing wave of interest in the Anglo-American academic world for speculative fiction in other languages, of which the new book Science Fiction in Translation: Perspectives on the Global Theory and Practice of Translation, edited by Ian Campbell and in which I myself participate, is also part. In my review of Knickerbocker’s volume (https://www.revistahelice.com/revista_textos/n_27/Helice 2019 Fall-Winter MARTIN ALEGRE BABEL FISH URGENTLY NEEDED.pdf) I complained about how frustrating it is to read a book of this kind full of very attractive reading suggestions lacking translations. The editor, on the other hand, complained about the lack of academic specialists in speculative fiction written in languages other than English or in non-Anglo-American territories (there is, for example, African science fiction in English).
It is easy to understand why the current translation boom is basically linked to the Anglo-American classics since they are the ones we all know, but I think there is an important contradiction between the status of Catalan as a small language among those spoken in world, and the little attention we pay to science fiction in languages similar to ours. This leads me to think that the committee of wise readers I was talking about should be polyglot, if not individually at least as a whole. Both Francesco Verso and my co-editor at Hélice magazine, Mariano Martín, are admirable polyglots, and their mastery of diverse languages gives them a comparative knowledge of the space of international science fiction that is simply incomparable. Hearing them engage in a conversation about Bulgarian science fiction a few days ago was a pleasure but, again, a frustration because no text is translated into Catalan.
So I get to the point where I have to express a very strange feeling: I miss the Catalan translation of genre books (science fiction, fantasy, horror) from other languages whose existence I am unaware of. As Francesco Verso told me, we have reached a situation in which not only first-class classics but also second- and third-rate works in English are being translated because they reach us through the powerful Anglo-American distribution machinery. Meanwhile, first-rank works in other languages –both classics and novelties, in large or small languages– go unnoticed, just as Catalan works go unnoticed among international readers. I understand that it is too much to ask that Catalan readers and publishers suddenly become polyglots aware of the current state of the science fiction published abroad, beyond the English language, but that is what we need. Either we do this or we look for bilingual or polyglot people who can inform us and, above all, who can translate into Catalan other traditions yet to be discovered.
In the second part of this article, I explain the role that artificial intelligence could play in this process. Keep reading …
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