Professional Development Reflections
Science Fiction in Translation: the Works of Anne McCaffrey - Dragon*Con, Atlanta, GA
September 2009
In this panel we read and discussed excerpts from Anne McCaffrey’s 1986 novel Dragonflight in English, French, Spanish, German, and Danish.
Translating science fiction has a special set of circumstances. Character and place names, for example, are unlikely to be translatable, since they are often made up by the author. In some cases, they are even unpronounceable! For example, one of the main characters in the excerpt we read was named “Jora.” In most of the languages we read in, there is no way to spell the English phoneme /dʒ/. Instead, the Spanish reader, for example, changed the sound to /h/, and the German reader to /j/. In French, I read it as /ʒ/, and accented the last syllable, as is common in French words.
In addition, science fiction often includes many coined words, which share the problem of the names, but have added complications. The translator can either use the same word the author coined in English, and try to include a parenthetical explanation of its meaning, or—more difficult—try to find an equivalent set of morphemes in the target language that will evoke the same associations in the mind of the reader as the original coinage would for an English reader. An example of this in the McCaffrey novel was “watchwher,” a semi-intelligent reptilian species. The word “wher” is a coinage, and thus cannot be translated, but the first part of the compound, “watch,” is important in letting the reader know that whatever the wher is, it’s a creature that guards, like a watchdog. A translator must decide how to combine the translated concept of “watch” or “guard” with the coined morpheme “wher,” and possibly whether or not to attempt to create a target-language permissible set of phonemes to replace the English-permissible coinage. In the German translation, for example, the entire term “watchwher” was lifted wholesale into the translation, but the French translator decided to use the French word for “watch,” and called it a “wher de guard,” in the same manner as a “chien de guard” (watchdog).
The passage we were examining opened with a short poem. In German and Danish, this poem had been translated for meaning, but lost its poetic quality and rhyme scheme. In French and Spanish, the translators had made an effort to preserve the rhyme scheme, but had changed some of the meanings slightly. We agreed that this choice was not in itself good or bad, but depended on how well the translator understood the story, and how true the translation remained to the poem’s purpose therein.
We also discussed whether we felt it was necessary to be a native speaker to be a translator. Of our panelists, only one was a native speaker of the language they were reading in, and he felt that native proficiency was key to translating both accurately and in such a way as to maintain the “feel” of the text. I was the only one who had actually done professional translation work, and I pointed out that, although my translations from English to French were correct, it was nevertheless easy for native speakers to tell that they had been written by a foreigner. This wasn’t even for fiction, but rather for the more mundane task of writing software instructions—imagine, then, the jarring difference it would make for readers of fiction to encounter translations that, while correct, still sound—not quite right.
We also agreed that translating science fiction would be a different task from translating mainstream fiction or non-fiction. There are certain conventions of the genre that it would be necessary for a translator to be familiar with, such as the above-mentioned coinages. A translator unfamiliar with science fiction would be unlikely to understand what to do with those coinages, or with the themes and images common to the genre.
In this panel we read and discussed excerpts from Anne McCaffrey’s 1986 novel Dragonflight in English, French, Spanish, German, and Danish.
Translating science fiction has a special set of circumstances. Character and place names, for example, are unlikely to be translatable, since they are often made up by the author. In some cases, they are even unpronounceable! For example, one of the main characters in the excerpt we read was named “Jora.” In most of the languages we read in, there is no way to spell the English phoneme /dʒ/. Instead, the Spanish reader, for example, changed the sound to /h/, and the German reader to /j/. In French, I read it as /ʒ/, and accented the last syllable, as is common in French words.
In addition, science fiction often includes many coined words, which share the problem of the names, but have added complications. The translator can either use the same word the author coined in English, and try to include a parenthetical explanation of its meaning, or—more difficult—try to find an equivalent set of morphemes in the target language that will evoke the same associations in the mind of the reader as the original coinage would for an English reader. An example of this in the McCaffrey novel was “watchwher,” a semi-intelligent reptilian species. The word “wher” is a coinage, and thus cannot be translated, but the first part of the compound, “watch,” is important in letting the reader know that whatever the wher is, it’s a creature that guards, like a watchdog. A translator must decide how to combine the translated concept of “watch” or “guard” with the coined morpheme “wher,” and possibly whether or not to attempt to create a target-language permissible set of phonemes to replace the English-permissible coinage. In the German translation, for example, the entire term “watchwher” was lifted wholesale into the translation, but the French translator decided to use the French word for “watch,” and called it a “wher de guard,” in the same manner as a “chien de guard” (watchdog).
The passage we were examining opened with a short poem. In German and Danish, this poem had been translated for meaning, but lost its poetic quality and rhyme scheme. In French and Spanish, the translators had made an effort to preserve the rhyme scheme, but had changed some of the meanings slightly. We agreed that this choice was not in itself good or bad, but depended on how well the translator understood the story, and how true the translation remained to the poem’s purpose therein.
We also discussed whether we felt it was necessary to be a native speaker to be a translator. Of our panelists, only one was a native speaker of the language they were reading in, and he felt that native proficiency was key to translating both accurately and in such a way as to maintain the “feel” of the text. I was the only one who had actually done professional translation work, and I pointed out that, although my translations from English to French were correct, it was nevertheless easy for native speakers to tell that they had been written by a foreigner. This wasn’t even for fiction, but rather for the more mundane task of writing software instructions—imagine, then, the jarring difference it would make for readers of fiction to encounter translations that, while correct, still sound—not quite right.
We also agreed that translating science fiction would be a different task from translating mainstream fiction or non-fiction. There are certain conventions of the genre that it would be necessary for a translator to be familiar with, such as the above-mentioned coinages. A translator unfamiliar with science fiction would be unlikely to understand what to do with those coinages, or with the themes and images common to the genre.