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SF in Translation

Entry updated 17 March 2025. Tagged: Theme.

Speculative fiction is a global enterprise, and translation is the vehicle by which it becomes intelligible to readers around the world. This has been the case since Jules Verne began publishing in France, soon after which his texts were translated (often badly) into English for American and British consumption. Since then, the number of translated works of sf has risen and fallen based upon the interest (or lack thereof) of editors and anthologists in the Anglophone world. Since this encyclopedia is part of that Anglophone sf world, the present entry focuses on translation into English.

The first golden age of science fiction translation (henceforth SFT) occurred during the 1970s, ironically at the height of the Cold War. Japan organized the first International Symposium on Science Fiction in 1970, which brought together US, UK, Japanese, and Soviet speculative fiction writers for the first time. Six years later, several major Anglophone authors founded the international association World SF (which see) at the First World Science Fiction Writers' Conference in Dublin. Its stated aim was "the general dissemination of creative sf, the furthering of scholarship, the interchange of ideas ... the fostering of closer bonds between those who already hold such deep interests in common around the globe." The association even established the Karel Award for sf in translation.

This group's formation led to the publication of two Anthologies dedicated to sf in translation: The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (anth 1986), edited by Brian W Aldiss and Sam J Lundwall (1986); and Tales from the Planet Earth, edited by Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull, though these were not the first of their kind. That achievement goes to Franz Rottensteiner's View from Another Shore: European Science Fiction (anth 1973) – the first anthology to feature only translated speculative stories from multiple languages. There followed Donald A Wollheim's The Best From the Rest of the World (anth 1976) and Maxim Jakubowski's Twenty Houses of the Zodiac: An Anthology of International Science Fiction (anth 1979). Richard D Nolane published Terra SF: The Year's Best European SF (anth 1981) with a sequel in 1983, David G Hartwell brought out The World Treasury of Science Fiction (anth 1989) and The Science Fiction Century (anth 1997). A decade later, James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow published The SFWA European Hall of Fame (anth 2007), kicking off a surge of interest in SFT that would carry through to the end of the second decade of the new millennium – a period that could be thought of as the second golden age of SFT.

This renewed interest in translated sf was spearheaded by Lavie Tidhar in the form of five anthologies of sf in translation brought out by Apex Publications (anth 2009-2018 5vols). A subsequent series appeared in 2021 with The Best of World SF (anth 2021-2023 3vols). Tidhar's work on the anthologies and The World SF Blog both reflected and encouraged the renewed interest in SFT that began in at the end of the first decade of the millennium. It is during these years that both short- and long-form SFT broke new records. In 2006, the number of novel-length works of SFT broke 20 for the first time ever, while 2010 witnessed the highest number of short works of SFT to date: 80, reaching 245 in 2021 (likely because of the democratization of the internet and proliferation of ezines). The start of the third decade, however, has brought a surprising and precipitous drop in short- and long-form SFT, though given the cyclical nature of the world of sf publishing, the numbers will likely pick up in a couple of decades.

In Italy, author and editor Francesco Verso has been promoting SFT simultaneously with Tidhar, launching his Future Fiction publishing house and bringing out anthologies that include Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction (anth 2018) and World Science Fiction #1 (anth 2019). Verso has forged links with China, in particular, and established a network of translators bringing Italian and Chinese science fiction into conversation. Another major figure in SFT around this time is Cheryl Morgan, who established the Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards (2009-2014) and promoted SFT around the world.

Geopolitics has always had a major influence on what is translated and how quickly it enters the Anglophone world. Russian-language SFT dominated the market during the Cold War, with American authors such as Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon writing introductions for major anthologies of Soviet sf in the 1960s and 1970s, and C G Bearne in the UK editing Vortex: New Soviet Science Fiction (anth 1970). French science fiction was both translated and anthologized by Damon Knight in 13 French Science-Fiction Stories (anth 1965) and became a major staple in the 1970s, thanks in large part to the cinematic success in the US of the Pierre Boulle adaptation Planet of the Apes (1968); much later, in the twenty-first century, Brian M Stableford was a highly prolific translator of older French sf until his death in 2024. Japanese-language SFT surged following the post-war US occupation and economic expansion, while Arabic-language SFT entered the Anglophone consciousness at the start of the 2000s with the US-led invasion of Iraq and war in Afghanistan. The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up the floodgates of SFT from former satellite countries, resulting in a number of works translated from the Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and other languages.

In the tradition of Frederik Pohl's International Science Fiction (1967-1968) and William H Wheeler's SF International (1987) – both unfortunately short-lived – a number of SF Magazines dedicated to SFT have been launched since the start of the new millennium, though most have since folded. Neil Clarke's Clarkesworld has consistently published SFT (mostly Chinese and Spanish) beginning in 2011, while its offshoot Samovar (2017-current) has introduced Anglophone readers to everything from Pashto to Italian to Bengali SFT. Alex Shvartsman's Future Science Fiction Digest (2018-2022) featured speculative fiction from a wide range of world authors. The Brazilian Eita! (2020-2023) was bilingual, presenting fiction in both Brazilian Portuguese and English. Non-genre-specific international literature magazines such as World Literature Today, Words Without Borders and Asymptote Journal have published SFT for decades, though in small quantities.

Despite its name, the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) has done very little to promote or publicize global sf in the twenty-first century. Though the Hugo Awards are supposedly "world awards" non-English speculative fiction very rarely wins anything. Several efforts to establish a "translation" category have failed, likely related to the general (and unfortunate) disinterest in world sf during the third decade of this millennium.

Though the history of SFT is one of periods of interest followed by long decades of apathy, one can expect that this one small corner of the genre will once again capture the imaginations of the global sf audience. Unsurprisingly, a close look at SFT reveals that authors from vastly different areas of the globe do indeed write about those issues that affect us all: our place in the universe, the environment, new discoveries in Physics and Technology, the future of humanity, etc. SFT is the literature of the planet, as it has been since the genre was first named. [RSCo]

see also: Wendayne Ackerman; Gilbert Adair; Aphra Behn; Anthea Bell; John Brunner; Sue Burke; Angela Carter; C J Cherryh; I O Evans; Brian Evenson; Ellen Elizabeth Frewer; Henry Frith; David Garnett; Mirra Ginsburg; Alasdair Gray; Douglas Hofstadter; Michael Kandel; Ursula K Le Guin; Ken Liu; Hugh MacDiarmid; George Slusser; George Szirtes; George Makepeace Towle; William Weaver.

further reading

multi-language anthologies

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