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.