Science Fiction / Fantasy magazine SF Signal recently won the Hugo Award for best fanzine. Many congratulations to editor John DeNardo and his team!
Hence, the subject of SF Signal’s most recent round table discussion, the Mind Meld, is the Hugo Awards.
Mind Melder Fabio Fernandes asked Chris Galvin Nguyen, Romeu Martins, Samit Basu and me the interesting question whether a work by a non-Anglophone writer could ever win this prize-by-popular-vote.
It’s an interesting question, because while many countries translate large amounts of titles from English, translations from other languages to English, happen much less frequently.
Here’s what the four of us had to say about it.
Thank you so much to Fabio for the nice Mind Meld and for John to provide the meeting place!
It was a pleasure to take part in the panel, and to discuss this important issue. The more we talk about non-Anglo writers and translated works, the more of a chance they have of getting onto the ballots. As you pointed out, “a whole world of fiction with long traditions in the imaginary and fantastic … (is) largely inaccessible to English-speaking readers.” I hope we’ll be seeing more and more translations, and thanks to translators of SF like Fabio, perhaps we will.
Have you come across imaginary literature in Vietnamese?
What are your experiences as a translator? Do publishers or editors shy away from translations?