Tag: translation

Nueva Madre now available from Editorial Cerbero

It’s out! You can now buy a copy of Nueva Madre of your very own to enjoy en español, translated by the inimitable Arrate Hidalgo. It’s listed as a novela corta, or “short novel,” which I suppose makes me a short novelist. Seems accurate.

I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these beauties. The publisher describes the work thusly:

Partenogénesis Humana Contagiosa. Síndrome del Gameto Diploide. Lleva, al menos, cinco años sucediendo, sea cual sea el nombre que se le dé. Mujeres en edad fértil que corren el riesgo de quedar embarazadas de manera espontánea cada vez que ovulan. Mujeres que tienen hijas que, técnicamente, son clones de sí mismas. Algunos lo llaman epidemia, otros milagro, y hay quien se lleva las manos a la cabeza arguyendo que significará la extinción de los hombres. Tess Mendoza, periodista independiente, lleva mucho tiempo siguiendo la noticia, entrevistando a todos los que parecen tener algo que decir al respecto. ¿Es una enfermedad? ¿Es lícito considerar seres humanos a estas mujeres y a sus hijas? ¿Existe algún riesgo para su propio embarazo, fruto de un donante anónimo?

Which I think translates to something like:

Contagious Human Parthenogenesis. Diploid Gamete Syndrome. Whatever you call it, it’s been happening for at least five years.Women of childbearing age who run the risk of becoming pregnant spontaneously each time they ovulate. Women who have daughters who, technically, are clones of themselves. Some call it an epidemic, others a miracle, and some people put their hands to their heads, arguing that it means the extinction of men. Tess Mendoza, an independent journalist, has been following the story for a long time, interviewing all those who seem to have something to say about it. It is a disease? Is it permissible to consider these women and their daughters as human beings? Is there any risk to her own pregnancy, the result of an anonymous donor?

Purchase it from Editorial Cerbero here.

“The New Mother” in Science Fiction World

2016-09yiwen“The New Mother” was translated and published back in September by China’s (and the world’s) largest circulation science fiction magazine, Science Fiction World. In fact, given the circulation, it’s entirely possible that more people will have read this version of “The New Mother” than the one I originally wrote.

Now the contributor’s copies have made their way across the ocean to me.  Looking through it, though I can’t read the text, I notice a lot of interesting things.

  • My name, when translated into Chinese, is 尤金 费雪. I’m told this contains characters for both “gold” and “snow.”
  • There are many translation footnotes, most commonly for elements of the story dealing with acronyms and initials. All acronyms and initials are rendered in English characters in the text, then contextualized below. There is one footnote that, from context, is clearly explaining why, in English, a group with a condition called HCP might name their news magazine “The Hiccup.” More common acronyms, like DNA, are still printed in English, but not footnoted.
  • In the English version of the story, the journalistic passages that made up every other section were distinguished from the narrative passages by italics. In the Chinese version there is clearly a typeface distinction going on, but I don’t know how to characterize it. I want to say that the parts that were italicized in English are here rendered in sketchier, less blocky looking characters. I don’t know if that’s just same typeface’s equivalent of italics, or something more like a different font.
  • There’s a fantastic, manga-style illustration to open the story; a double page splash of angry people shouting across a hospital as young girls are pulled away from their mother, while in the center a religious figure with hooded eyes reads from a book while standing beneath a sign that says “KEEP QUIET.” Here’s the best scan I was able to get:

SFW Illustration