Kalin’s Comments (group member since Aug 16, 2019)

Kalin’s comments from the Speculative Fiction in Translation group.

I'll join in next week.

Ooooh I *love* time loop stories, I'm in.

Yeah for me they are literally my only novelette and short story respectively so far for 2024, I have a few other collections but haven't cracked them open yet.

I added "Nowhere in Liverion" and "Beyond the Terminator" to the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom, since I'm planning to nominate them in novelette/short story respectively.

Are there any stories you folks would nominate for awards?

Ed wrote: "Now, some of what confused me about "The Liberator"...."

(view spoiler)[

3. Is the alien a parasitic infection that leaves through slashed necks? Or if the aliens are shape-shifters, then why the slashed necks with the cat sniffing them?

This is the only one I think I can speak to based on my reading. The others I have absolutely no idea, (and didn't much care to figure out what was going on with Scheherazade and Dina.) Most of the answers are left intentionally opaque, I think, but the protagonist's hypothesis is that the alien life form is some kind of microbe that CAN and DID infect the original humans who came, but were unable to make that stick as a strategy because of the human body's immune response. The life form was also hypothetically able to engage in bio-mimicry, so as a plan B took on human(oid) form and built the facade of a society as some sort of weird long-term con that would result in them being integrated into the galactic civilization and then relocated as refugees to escape their dying star.

Pretty byzantine, and a lot of conjecture on the part of the protagonist.

I don't think slashed necks were particularly relevant, but the protagonist made a note at some point (paraphrasing, I've returned my copy to the library) that the humanoid form must be painful and for the aliens and must require periodic decorporealization through mass death. So they murder each other en masse. The slashed neck part with the cat, was, I think, him finding Scheherazade's body, which is why it was such a focal point for him, but wasn't necessarily meaningful beyond that.

(hide spoiler)]

So my whole fam got sick last week which stopped all my reading in its tracks. But I just finished this anthology this morning, and as a whole I thought it was really great. I liked the range of publication dates, themes, and styles, and it worked very well as an introduction to a lot of authors to check out more. I'm particularly interested in checking out Serge Lehman since that was my favourite story of the bunch, though that could be attributable to Jean-Louis Trudel's fantastic translation (I do really feel like it makes a difference when a translator is also a writer-author in their own right).

Thanks for the link to "The Terminator" I'll check that out when I have a chance.

I loved her last anthology, one of the best anthologies I've ever read, but I wasn't sure about this one because I'm not as into horror.

Yeah it can be hard. I'm reading one story every couple days, will be finished by the end of the month. I just finished "Nowhere in Liverion", loved it, very Borgesian.

Ed wrote: "True. I apologize."

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Ed wrote: "What I should have said: Can you elaborate on what you meant by "I thought "The Liberator" was an absolute mess... the translation was absurdly under-edited. "

Was it a mess due to translation issues? or a mess in general? Either way, why?"

The story was fine I guess, although the pedophilia was totally unnecessary, I could not see any reason why it was important to the narrative. It reminded me of the much more recent Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky in the (view spoiler)[sense of featuring a shapeshifting alien micro-organism masquerading as human (hide spoiler)]. The latter has much more visceral horror and I liked it better -- it also had a lot more space to work with than this short story.

The absolute mess was the translation, and I don't like to be too constantly negative about translator work, which is why I didn't give details earlier. There is a saying in translation studies that to most readers, the only time a translator becomes "visible" is when there are problems with the translation. A good translation is "invisible" and people just consider the story's voice authorial, rather than translatorial.

But this translation barely read as English prose to me. The syntax was French(1), the fixed expressions were literally translated(2), the narrative voice bounced between informal/colloquial & high register(3), the story was hard to follow in the worst of ways. It felt like reading a machine translation, which is weird since the same translator (Annabelle Dolidon) did the previous story as well and it had none of these issues.

(1) p. 138: "Lined up, the coffins of the grandpa, the parents, and in a decreasing pattern, that of the children."

(2) top of p. 130: "Then again." (not really a meaningful fixed expression in English on its own)

bottom of p. 136: "This being said..." (not a phrase in English! It's "that being said"! This story has multiple instances of ce being translated as "this" when it should be "that", because French and English have these demonstrative pronouns reversed.)

(3) p. 130 same spot as before: "Of course, when you're on a mission, the problem doesn't arise the same way." (I thought "arise sounded awkward here, like the whole preceeding paragraph or two were conversational and then "arise" is suddenly so formal.)

Ed, being a dick is not going to end in enthusiastic discussion; it certainly isn't motivating me.

Ed wrote: "As far as I can tell, the narrator is not supposed to be incognito on the foreign planet. While I understand the basic idea of this story, I also find there are some confusing aspects. Maybe I'll discuss more after more people have read it."

Hereby inviting you to discuss more, having just read it myself. TBH I thought "The Liberator" was an absolute mess... the translation was absurdly under-edited. I'm curious to know what confused you.

Yeah it wasn't really "for" those of us who finished either.

I did make it through the second story, but yeah that was depressing AF. Just a perfect encapsulation of midcentury French existential angst, obsessed with ennui and alienation.

Ed wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "I would have predicted that you, Cheryl, would not like it because it is depressing. Guess I don't know you so well."

Well I, for one, am struggling to get through this one. I'm finding it super depressing, maybe because I'm reading it in November, but it's also just so focused on the negative aspects of the human condition, and a narrow subset thereof. I could use more light.

So, I actually knocked off a majority of the translated SF on my TBR, and now I mostly have osbcure stuff no one else can find or access (eg. The Best from the Rest of the World: European Science Fiction), or things that already got read by the group but I ran out of time for (Time Shelter).

One I will definitely propose because I went back to the TBR thread from last winter and saw that Leticia and I both want to read The Glass Bead Game. So that's one.

Some new releases I would go out and get if we agreed to read them:
Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang (China)
Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim (Korea)
I camminatori: Vol. 2 - No/Mad/Land by Francesco Verso (Italy)
Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías (Uruguay)

Ed wrote: "One suggestion: add a general "chat" or "what are you reading/watching now" thread."

Just added both. I hope they get used!

This is an open space for any chat or discussion group members want to start, can be SFT related but doesn't have to be. Have at it!

By request, creating this thread for any group members to share updates about what they're reading currently.

I've started now, going to be reading one story every couple days probably. Will comment as I go.

Cheryl wrote: "And I've read *Bubbles* and am feeling ambivalent about it. I think the translation may be less than ideal; it feels soulless...."

I don't want to be too negative, since I enjoyed the story and it really didn't feel dated, but there several places where the prose read as a literal translation from French, rather than a stylistic adaptation, which we are used to as readers, even when reading in translation. The construction "me, I didn't do that" for example -- in particular the "me, I..." (moi, je...) is a feature of French writing that caaan be done in English but isn't that natural-sounding. Even less natural is the "Oh! Father!" or the various other interjections of "Oh!" I encountered while reading the story. Very French, not very English.

Sometimes translators retain the style or syntax of the original language because they're not careful enough to match the flow of prose in the target language, but sometimes a skilled translator does it for effect, to emphasize the original language even in translation. Can't say which one this is an example of because there's no translator commentary, but a generous reading would indicate she wanted to retain some of the story's "Frenchness", even if the result is a bit stilted.

I'm interested in the historical overview provided by this book. I actually know very little about French SF, which is weird considering I can read the language. But it makes such little splash in Anglo North America that none of it has crossed my radar before, except for the recent The Anomaly which we read together. So anyway, it'll be nice to get a little introduction to authors from across the decades.