Nick Mamatas on translating Japanese SF

Seems to be translation discussion week! We’ll be posting links, starting with Nick Mamatas over at the Haikasoru blog in Set the Dial for… 1972!

I was impressed at how even today little has changed. Over the course of my life, translated science fiction remained a challenge nearly insurmountable despite the quality of the original work. Luckily I have a great pool of translators to chose from thanks to the rise of manga and video games. However, at the risk of comparing myself to the immortal Judith Merril, I still must do a fair amount of heavy lifting in the editorial stage. Translating Japanese SF certainly seems to me to still take two: an excellent translator of Japanese and someone well-versed in science fictional concepts. – read the rest of the post.

And it looks like yesterday’s editorial was picked up by io9 – with a resultant comment thread that puts ours to shame. Check it out.

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