Imaginary Worlds - Fantasy in Translation

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

Since we can’t pick up universal translators on The Enterprise or through the TARDIS, we have to rely on human translators to bring fantasy stories across cultures. We all know that something is always lost in translation, but what is gained when a story transitions from one language and culture to another? Chen Malul tells the story of Israeli pilots who translated The Hobbit while in captivity. Olga Zilberbourg remembers the Soviet version of The Wizard of Oz – which was very different from the original story. Emily Jin discusses the nuances of translating Chinese science fiction at a time when everyday life in China feels like sci-fi. And translators Gord Sellar and Jihyun Park explain how feminism revitalized SF literature in South Korea. Stories mentioned in this episode: National Center for the Preservation of Human Dignity The Flowering Today's episode is brought to you by ConvertKit and BetterHelp. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email [e-mail] or click the link below to get started. Imaginary Worlds AdvertiseCast Listing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing Tim's new Infuser Energy Beverages, made with natural caffeine. They come in two refreshing flavours, Blackberry Yuzu and Mango Starfruit. Try them today, only at Tim's. At participating Tim's restaurants in Canada for a limited time. It's time for Tim's. What's it like to trade crypto on Kraken? Let's say I'm in a state-of-the-art gym surrounded by powerful looking machines. Do I head straight for the squat rack? I could, but this gym has options like trainers, fitness pros, spotters to back me

up. That's Crypto on Kraken. Powerful crypto tools backed by 24-7 support and multi-layered security. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. Science fiction has long imagined a universal translator, from Star Trek to Doctor Who to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since none of that technology exists, we have to rely on human beings. And human beings have a big challenge when translating fantasy literature,

because fantasy and sci-fi are already creating worlds that are foreign to the reader, even if it's in your own language. People tend to focus on what gets lost in translation, but I've been wondering, is anything gained? Because I think of a story as a living organism. If it's going to survive in a new language or culture, it needs to adapt. And at that point, it may not be the same story anymore, but it will keep growing and thriving. In today's episode, we are going to go around the world to look at four different ways that fantasy literature changed when it was translated from one language to another. This is the story of The Hobbit. You can read along with me in your book.

You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear the chimes ring like this. the page when you hear the chimes ring like this. Chapter 1. The Hebrew Hobbit. Chen Malul is an editor at the National Library of Israel. When he was a teenager, the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, and he was excited to find a copy of The Hobbit in Hebrew at his local bookstore. And there was a blurb on the back of the book that said it was translated by Israeli fighter pilots, which sounded strange to him. But at the time, he just wanted to dive into the novel. I remember that I really loved the book, but the story of the pilots that translated it in prison

wasn't a story that I really researched until much, much later. The pilots flew during the War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel in the late 60s and early 70s. It was a bombing campaign, carried out on both sides. Six Israeli pilots were captured and brought to a prison in Cairo. They did have contact with their families, and during their three years as POWs, one of the pilots, Rami Harpaz, was sent a copy of The Hobbit in English.

At that point, there were no Hebrew translations of The Hobbit, and Harpaz was one of the few pilots that understood English. So he came up with a project for them to do. First of all, they started translating sentences or expressions from the book, but then they discovered that it's a fun activity that helps them forget about their stay in prison. So they decided to translate the whole book. It took them four months, and they did it in pairs. And they did it in very cramped living conditions.

It wasn't really an idyllic time for everyone. I mean, they got on each other's nerve all the time, and they were pretty much most of the time bored out of their minds. They try not to bother each other, but as you can read from the interviews, they did bother each other. I mean, you're always with the same people for three years. Yeah, I read they had shouting matches about some of the translations. They're shouting at each other.

They're bickering about the way to translate this or that or the way to translate poems about dwarves trying to steal treasure from a dragon. I mean, it's almost a fantasy story in itself. I mean, if someone were to write it, you wouldn't believe it. I find it interesting how national identity can be fused onto a fantasy story. The Hobbits have been described by scholars as quintessential English country folk. And J.R.R. Tolkien said that he modeled the dwarves after Jews,

or what he thought of Jews as a strange and bellicose people who are good with money. He even based the dwarvish language off what he thought Hebrew sounded like. But that is not how the characters come across in Hebrew. In fact, in the Pilate's translation, the character of Bilbo reminds Chen of a classic archetype from Yiddish folklore. angry old men. So some of it, I think, rubs off in the translation, even though it's in Hebrew. But there is an Yiddish translation,

a much later one. After the pilots were freed in the early 70s, they became heroes in Israel. Books were written about them. There was even a play about them, which was being performed up until the pandemic.

I think one of the reasons why their story is so appealing is that these tough guys held on to their dignity in prison and they passed the time doing the nerdiest thing possible. And now that he knows the story of the pilots, Chen says that he can't help but read their version of The Hobbit without thinking of their situation. The whole story about the fighting in the

Hobbits and the battles they get a further meaning, I don't know, an enhanced meaning. Now there are two professional translations of the Hobbit into Hebrew. And the finance translation is actually considered the worst one.

Because there weren't any official or professional translator then, but this is the one I read as a teenager, and this still is my most, the one I love the most, and I read all of them. Tell me, why is it the one you love the most? Because it's not a professional translation. There's something, I don't know, even childish about it. And obviously the story enhanced the backstory, which now I know. I think it really enhances the

story. And it's a lovely translation even if they didn't get everything right. The Hobbit went through a subtle adjustment as it moved from one language to another. But other fantasy books have gone through bigger changes. Chapter two, The Russian Oz. Olga Zilberberg grew up in the Soviet Union.

When she was a kid, her favorite book was The Magician of Emerald City, or as we know it, The Wizard of Oz. And she loved the book because of the main character. We know it, The Wizard of Oz. And she loved the book because of the main character. This had a girl protagonist. Soviet books did not have girls as protagonists. And that was really exciting. As we all know, the protagonist of the story is Ellie Smith, who lived in Kansas with her parents until a hurricane

took Ellie and her talking dog, Tatoshka, to the magic land where they met the wizard, Goodwin. Yeah, the guy that translated The Wizard of Oz took a lot of liberties with the story. And the publishers intentionally misled people to think that the translator, Alexander Volkov, had written the book. led people to think that the translator, Alexander Volkov, had written the book. And then Volkov went on to write sequels to his version of the story, which had nothing to do with the sequels that L. Frank Baum wrote. In fact, if someone had told Olga that an American named L. Frank Baum was the real author of The Magician of Emerald City, and that this was merely a translation, she would have thought, that's American propaganda.

It would have been very strange. I don't think I would have believed it. Yeah, I don't think I would have believed that Volkov didn't create it. Alexander Volkov grew up quite poor, and he was a self-taught scholar. In 1939, when The Wizard of Oz movie came out, a friend lent him the original book. Volkov loved it so much, he didn't want to return it. So he made a project to translate it into Russian. He also had young kids and he wanted them to read it. Olga says in the USSR, authors of children's books often saw themselves as being on a mission

to invent a new type of literature for Soviet children. And as far as the government was concerned, international copyright laws had no jurisdiction behind the Iron Curtain. This was not unprecedented for an author to take an old story and to change it in a way that would feel more suitable for Soviet children. But with Volkov, I think there's more to it than that. I think he's genuinely adapting it to his audience. You know, he's writing this as somebody who is a big fan.

It's maybe a little bit like a fan fiction. So the cornfields of Kansas were changed to wheat, which was a big crop in the USSR. The Wicked Witch of the West became more like Baba Yaga, who was a witch-type figure from Russian folklore. And the Wicked Witch of the East created the hurricane, not tornado, which brought Ellie to the magic land, because the witch was angry that humanity was destroying the environment. The Soviet Union was all about trying to change the environment, trying to modify the environment in which we lived to make it serve people. And that was not the only subtle critique of the government in Volkov's version of the story.

in Volkov's version of the story. Some of the fears of the 1930s are reflected in his retelling. Goodwin represents a Stalin-type figure, and Oz in this version is Goodwin, somebody by the name Goodwin. He's somebody who is a feared person by everyone in the kingdom, in this land.

Nobody who mentions his name is happy about him or wants Ellie to go there. What's interesting, too, is that when Scarecrow ascends to Oz's position, he all of a sudden starts to think of himself as somebody who must be obeyed and who can give orders. He becomes quite a nasty person all of a sudden. There's awareness of the position of power that instills fear in people and that it must do so. But the biggest change was Volkoff's depiction of Kansas. In the original book, Baum described Kansas as very drab and gray, and that language actually inspired the black and white sequence in the movie.

But Volkoff made the farmers into a glorious proletariat. They looked out for each other. And while Ellie had fun in the decadent bourgeois Emerald City, there's no place like the homeland. And as a kid, Olga didn't dream of going to the magic land. She wanted to see this place called Kansas. Oh, absolutely. Kansas was the dream.

Yeah, I remember when I was older, like or 11 a friend my friend and i who had read the books and we had like the whole sixth set of volkov's books we we dug a hole that went to um kansas we dug a hole in in our sandbox and there was a pretty massive hole, actually. Wow. Have you been to Kansas? I have, actually. I have. My husband and I drove cross-country once from Boston to San Francisco, and we absolutely went through Kansas because I had to go there. I mean, obviously, you didn't go in with the mind of a child, but what did you think compared to your image of Kansas? It was actually it was a pretty emotional experience.

I remember it was it was very, very windy. It was probably the strongest wind I've seen. I mean, it was a striking place. The flatness of it or the flatness of the highway we drove on was striking. of it or the flatness of the highway we drove on was striking. And I remember, I forget what they called those plants that roll around. Oh, tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds, yeah.

I picked up a tumbleweed and I kept it for years and years until it disintegrated into dust. Oh my God, wow. Today, Olga is reading the Russian version of the book to her son, even though they live in California. Something about it, like, for instance, the dog, Toto, he can talk. He's cute and funny, and he has some of the best lines, and he's very helpful. And then, I mean, it's inevitable that growing up in the U.S., I think it is inevitable that he'll come across The Wizard of Oz, the real story, on his own. But I do think that there is room for this book.

Olga says she still sees the world through the lens of having grown up in the Soviet Union. And Volkov's version of the story reminds her of home, even if she knows that her homeland was no Kansas. This book is my culture. It's a part of the culture that I have to give, which is, you know, Soviet culture. And I'm really grateful for Volkov for adapting it in the ways that he did that made it acceptable, you know, to the censors, to the editors, to the whole publishing structure. After the break, we will switch into the challenge of translating fantasy literature into English, especially in the hottest market for translated sci-fi right now, China. with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle.

We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret Deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't.

Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. Chapter 3. Chinese Science Fiction. If you've heard of any Chinese science fiction, it is probably the three-body problem. It was a novel from 2008 about an alien invasion that was translated by the Chinese-American writer Ken Liu. In fact, Ken Liu has translated so many works, he has sparked a demand for Chinese sci-fi from American readers and publishers. I reached out to Ken and he told me that he's not available to talk about translations right now because he's focusing on his own original fiction. But he recommended that I talk with Emily Jin, who is

one of the young translators that he's trained to carry on the work. Emily was studying in the U.S. until the pandemic. Now she's back home in Beijing and she's busy as ever translating Chinese sci-fi. I guess to me, because I've also been just thinking about translation as an art in general, but to me, it's sort of like this cognitive mapping, in the sense that a story is made of big and small concepts, and it's all kind of up in the air in the realm of the abstract, and language is the interface in which these stories are communicated. And this is also kind of tapping

into Ken's advice to me, which is as long as you kind of capture the aura of the original writer, there are many ways that you can deal with the translation. So you don't really have to make it literal when the literal doesn't work that way. To give you some historical background, science fiction was actually banned in China during the Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s. But today, the Chinese government is encouraging sci-fi because they believe it will help stimulate the imaginations of Chinese tech developers. And the government has been supporting movies with big special effects to compete with Hollywood, although these films still have to fit the party's official content guidelines. But Emily says what's going on in literary circles is much more ad hoc.

It's just like a small group of hardcore fans, I guess, like, to put it frankly, a bunch of nerds just having fun with reading each other's stories. One of the most common questions that she gets is what defines Chinese science fiction. But she says, Chinese science fiction writers are just as diverse as writers from anywhere else in the world. And they come from very different geographic and educational backgrounds. They have different fields of interest. One might write about the near future.

Another might write about space and going to Mars. And they're just very different. She thinks that a lot of Anglophone readers, meaning readers who come from predominantly English-speaking countries, are drawn to Chinese sci-fi because they want to get a glimpse into modern China beyond the headlines. And she says if there is a common theme in Chinese sci-fi, it tends to be about day-to-day life because the pace of change has been so rapid that living in China over the last two decades has felt like living in a science fiction novel for a lot of people. So there's one, I guess, sub-genre of science

fiction that we've coined here called science fiction realism, which portrays specifically a near future instead of like kind of outer space or a far future or alternative history. It's just about the near future. And I think specifically in China, this is a way to deal with people's future anxiety or future shock, however you want to put it. In fact, she thinks that some Chinese readers rely on science fiction too much to give them a glimpse of what's to come. rely on science fiction too much to give them a glimpse of what's to come. I think they consider science fiction as this genre that carries a prophetic weight on its shoulders and people turn it to even for like, I guess, spiritual needs in a way, to have science fiction stand in the place of religion. They're just all kind of rushing

towards this genre and kind of demanding a certain kind of future emerge from the text that they're reading. Another common question she gets is whether it's particularly challenging to translate sci-fi because of all the pseudoscientific terms. She says that's not hard. The bigger challenge is explaining the cultural context in which the stories take place. And she's cautious about translating towards what she calls the anglophone gaze. If you care too much about the gaze, sometimes the translator would fall into the trap of this self-butchering Americanization,

where you would deliberately kind of try to wipe out the cultural nuances in the original to make it especially suitable for an anglophone or really just a lot of times American reader. Or on the other hand, when some translators want to feed into that curiosity of the anglophone reader, there's a danger of this self-orientalization. You would kind of heighten what's strange about this story and make it sound even kind of stranger than it should be in the English version. Orientalism has been rampant in Western fantasy, from Flash Gordon with its villain Emperor Ming the Merciless

to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And Emily says even traditional folklore characters, like a dragon or a phoenix, are actually very different from the way that they've been portrayed in Western pop culture. So when she's translating a story that incorporates one of those creatures... It's hard for both the writer and the translator to figure out a way to not let this story in English

fall into the predetermined kind of structures or ideas already set down by Western writers through their exotification. For instance, unlike in the Disney movie Milan, the quote-unquote phoenix in Chinese culture, which its name is Feng, it actually doesn't carry that whole fire rebirth property at all. So similarly, when I come across the feng in Chinese and when I'm trying to translate it, I also avoid using the word phoenix to avoid pinning these kind of unbelonging characteristics onto this creature. After talking to the original writer, we would oftentimes add in extra descriptions talking about what this creature is really like in Chinese culture,

and to try to establish it as its own thing. Or to use more recent history, she once translated a time travel story that took place during the author's childhood, when it was common for teachers to hit students with rulers. But it's very hard to kind of deliver that in English that would not sound like child abuse. But also the plot is just so needed because that explains why the protagonist hates his teacher so much, which caused a whole misunderstanding and kind of led him to do his whole time traveling. So she worked with a writer to restructure that section. And the way we end up doing it is still kind of keeping the idea

of like the teacher tapping the student's palm with the ruler, but we added more of the kind of psychological humiliation of how that act made the practice feel instead of focusing on

the quote-unquote more graphic details of how the ruler is like how he's being kind of literally hit. Chinese sci-fi is not the only East Asian speculative fiction getting attention in the West, which brings me to chapter four, Korean sci-fi literature. The Korean branch of Netflix recently announced that they were adapting several Korean sci-fi novels, which is unusual because Korean sci-fi literature is still a fairly new genre. Most Korean sci-fi movies or TV shows originate from the filmmakers themselves.

I talked with two translators in Seoul who are very busy right now translating Korean sci-fi literature into English, and they are a married couple. who are very busy right now translating Korean sci-fi literature into English. And they are a married couple, Ji-Hun Park and her husband, Gord Seller, who's originally from Canada. Actually, you should speak first because you're the one who starts the process. Right. So at the beginning, we need to choose the story. And I'm a very fast reader, so I can go like, and then it's done. And then Gord takes a shot at translating it. Then I email

it to her and she reads it and tears out her hair going, that's not what I meant. And then we sit down together and kind of go through it and refine like a lot of the nuance. They look for stories that don't need a lot of cultural context, but they still have challenges like translating stories about corporal punishment in schools.

I think it's been five years. It's been banned to hit the students. This is the funny thing about when you go to another culture, genre actually can exist that you've never imagined. In Korean horror, there's a very specific Korean horror genre of like high school, just because high school is so hellish for so many kids. But not because of bullies. It's because of the pressure that adults put on kids. But there is a bigger cultural misunderstanding that they have to watch out for. And it has to do with literary structure. When I used to take writing classes in college, I was always taught that the protagonist needs to be active. Their decisions must drive every plot point in the story,

or else I was criticized for having a, quote, passive protagonist. But Gord says passive protagonists are common in Korean literature. For instance, Gord was once giving editorial feedback on a story about an old woman who checks into a retirement home where the residents are pampered for 24 hours before they're put to death. The story was a social satire. And they were concerned that Anglophone readers might think the protagonist accepted her fate way too easily. So they worked with a writer to reshape the story, to give the character more agency, even if it was just in her mind. For me, it's been a learning experience because, you know,

I also was like, you know, trained or brought up or whatever in that environment of like, protagonists must be active, right? And there's a certain sort of degree to which that's fantasy, right? Like, most of us are not completely active about in every area of our lives. Most of us are not constantly fighting for our values or liberty or whatever. And so like, it's kind of interesting to see a literature where sometimes the systems are just much bigger than you and more powerful than you and you can't really fight them. For me, that can be interesting stories that sort of examine, so how do people who have no way of resisting or fighting back survive or deal with living in those conditions? Korean sci-fi is also shaped by its history.

When Ji-hun was young, the government heavily promoted Western sci-fi that was rooted in science and engineering. Before, it was mainly about how to introduce, how to make our citizens more stronger in science, to make the world, make the country more prosper. That was the main idea at the beginning, yeah. She says today a lot of writers in Korea rebel against that by writing more fantastical fiction. And in the 1990s, Korean translators had more freedom to choose the novels they wanted to translate. And many of the translators were women who were drawn towards American writers like Ursula K. Le Guin. She is one of the voices that became part of the canon in a very prominent way and hasn't been so crowded out by, you know, all like by the oodles and oodles of male writers.

That's not an unconscious thing. I remember, you know what, I will not name her in case there's a backlash on this, but I remember one prominent translator that said, you know, all of those, those like, you know, sexist male writers. I just, why translate that? And those translations inspired a lot of Korean women to write science fiction. And also I went to a bookstore recently and I've never seen a science fiction book in a bestseller shelf, but I saw like three of them there and it's all woman writer. So, and their characters are women too. Are they drawn to sci-fi because they find that it's easier for them to express these ideas in science fiction than it would be in non-fantasy literature? If I see a mainstream fiction that has a woman active protagonist trying to like kick ass and then I'll think is the science fiction because it's so

different from the reality huh I mean the one example is the story we translated the flowers yeah I was thinking about that um and it's an interesting story because yeah it was uh yeah go ahead no no you go ahead okay so I mean it's an interesting story it was really interesting for me to watch Jihyun talk about that story because the trick with that story is that, so there's the idea that there's these flowers you can plant that then become sort of like, they become

the routers for like a secondary internet where you're not being surveilled and you're not being like controlled and that. So it's sort of like a second subsidiary internet. And so there's this woman who's like a rebel who's going around the country and planting these things but the story is not told from the point of view of the rebel it's told by from the point of view of her sister who is visiting her in prison and who's like oh i

don't know why she's such a troublemaker and And like, oh, she's so annoying and like kind of really down on what her sister did. Like, I don't know why she was making so much trouble for our family and that kind of thing. So it's a really interesting story because you have a really active character, but it's not the protagonist. As I was talking with them, I kept wondering if there was a toxic backlash to all this feminist sci-fi. Ji-Hun says not so much in literature because that's far enough outside mainstream culture, although that could change when some of these novels get adapted into movies. For now, most of the backlash is in web comics, which are really popular. There are lots of science fiction webcomics.

If anyone is, like, any artist is writing a comic about, like, a feminism idea in it, and then they get attacked so severely on the comments, it's pretty bad. And Emily Jin says, when it comes to Chinese sci-fi, she's noticed a backlash in the U.S. from people who see it as a threat. And I've noticed that in articles about Chinese sci-fi. She's noticed a backlash in the U.S. from people who see it as a threat. And I've noticed that in articles about Chinese sci-fi, the headlines often use

words like China's soft power or China's secret weapon. Just even now, I've heard kind of more people on the radical side saying that we should boycott Chinese science fiction because it's a poison to our mind, that it carries somehow the magical propaganda of God knows what. And I'm just like, that's nonsense. Emily and other translators have warned Anglophone readers, don't try to understand an entire culture or country through the work of a single writer. But it's so tempting to do that. I mean, whenever you encounter something foreign, it's human nature to make assumptions and interpret the differences through your own cultural lens. Reading with an open mind is more challenging work.

And the deeper I go into other cultures through science fiction and fantasy, the more I realize how little I truly know about them. And as we've seen, there can be schisms within a society where people look at the same stories in the same language, but see very different things, even when we try to understand each other. I keep thinking about the Chinese proverb that we're sleeping in the same bed, dreaming different dreams. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Special thanks to Chen Malul, Olga Zilberberg, Emily Jin, Gord Seller, and Jihan Park. And by the way, I put a list of some of the stories they mentioned in the show notes.

Now this episode was inspired by suggestions for topics to explore. So thank you to everybody who chimed in on social media. You can like Imaginary Worlds on Facebook. I tweet at emalinski and Imagine Worlds pod. And if you really like the show, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or do a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover Imaginary Worlds.

The best way to support Imaginary Worlds is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free Imaginary Worlds stickers, a mug, a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has the full length interviews of every guest in every episode.

You can learn more at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.