by Elena Kovalenko

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a series called Perspectives in Translation, where creators discuss the many facets and challenges of translating fiction. The terms “source language” and “target language” will be used throughout this series.

If you’re a writer, translating your work into a different language may seem straightforward. After all, writing the thing was the hardest part, so now all you need is someone with good command of the language, a reasonable deadline, and that’s that! And it may just work that way, especially if you’re aiming for a market that’s linguistically and culturally close to yours. If not, well, as a translator, let me invite you to consider your work from a different perspective.

Names

This one is easy—just transliterate them and be done with it! But wait: Have you, the writer, given your protagonist or some other characters a name that, shall we say, speaks for itself? Or perhaps it sounds funny in English, lends itself well to puns, and is a perpetual source of in-universe jokes? Then it can become much trickier, because it’s increasingly strange for a foreign reader to see conversations that clearly hint at something or look like a set-up for a joke, only to have the hint never crystallize and the punchline never come.

In short, if the name is the backbone of your story, some parts may require significant adaptation and perhaps even creative rewriting. In other cases, best practice would be to just leave it as is—trust me, I’ve seen enough variations of poor Bilbo and Frodo’s last name based on different possible translations of the word “bag” than I ever cared to. To give another example, transforming Severus Snape’s name into what was essentially “Evillus Evull” (true story) didn’t exactly pan out in the end, did it?

In-Universe Terminology

Needless to say, its consistency and coherence are crucial for SFF—fantasy probably even more so than science fiction—as the terminology is one of the main things that make your universe come to life. Usually, the in-universe magic/science/combination thereof has a key concept that, once translated, makes it easier to weave that semantic web in a different language. But if, say, the prophecy you mentioned in book one of your series will turn out to be completely misunderstood in book three, the wording used in translation really needs to be ambiguous enough and yet fitting from the very beginning for the plot twist to work.

Another possible snag a translator might hit is if your in-universe terminology is actually based on another language, perhaps even the target language. With the former, what becomes lost in translation will likely be a case-by-case thing, depending on whether you just used the existing foreign words or got creative with meanings and word formation. In the latter case, the magic system will inevitably lose some of its original air of mystery. I mean, “We call this mark in the shape of a lightning bolt a molnija” just hits differently from “We call this mark in the shape of a lightning bolt a lightning bolt.” Usually, though, minor rewording will be enough to keep everything clear and consistent.

Cultural and/or Religious References

These kinds of references could become a problem for your narrative if they are both too subtle and too alien for your new target audience. To be fair, the opposite has also been known to happen. The funniest example of such a disconnect is probably Christian symbolism in Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime mecha series that originally borrowed some references…for the aesthetic. And sure enough, the Japanese audience appreciated the aesthetic for what it was, but among European viewers, it inspired a hot debate about hidden meanings and connections to actual religious concepts.

As for cultural aspects, think Taco Bell being the only restaurant chain in the movie Demolition Man. While immediately recognizable to an American, for someone from a different country “Taco Bell” might at best be “an American fast food chain” or actually mean nothing at all. It might be clear from the context—and your reader can google this stuff, of course—but it might not quite land regardless. Worse still is when a plot point hinges on such a detail: for instance, a book series where teenage protagonists arrive too late to stop an evil scheme because the plans they had stolen had “military time” on them, and it turned out that none of the leads really knew what “normal time” it corresponded to. For someone like me, in whose culture you use “7 p.m.” and “19” interchangeably, this was beyond baffling. I remember going back and rereading that part of the book several times, trying to figure out what I was missing. Similar comprehension challenges tend to occur when there is a lot of focus on popular culture. Sometimes a work just turns out to be too local for an international reader.

Footnotes and Long-Winded Explanations

After reading all this, you might feel that it’s absolutely necessary to provide your foreign reader with ALL the context by adding footnotes, explanations in parentheses, or tediously long prefaces. As commendable as that is, please consider that overloading your text with comments and notes to make sure the audience gets the full picture could turn reading your book into something not unlike continuously consulting a dictionary—useful and informative, but maybe not exactly enjoyable. While it might make sense to add some explanations here and there or outline some crucial aspects in a preface, it would probably be best to keep it reasonable. You and your reader both want your story to flow, not trip over the building blocks of the narrative.

In Conclusion

This little overview cannot possibly cover all the aspects that go into translating something as complex as a story. Every story is unique, and so every translation experience is unique. You may find that none of these things are relevant to your manuscript, or maybe all of them are. Ultimately, translation is just another tool for you to do what you’ve always wanted: reach your audience and show them your world. And a tool it may be, but it’s a sophisticated one, and there is definitely more to it than just taking the words you’ve written and replacing them with the same words in a different language, hoping to create the same impact. Writing stories is magic, and coupled with considerate and well-researched translation, it’s magic that can reach far and wide.

Elena Kovalenko has been a translator/interpreter for 15 years, working on a range of topics from current events to thriller movie scripts, and an avid SFF reader for most of her life. When not holed up somewhere with a book or trying to bridge the gap between cultures via relaying ideas into a different language in speaking or writing, she enjoys long walks, baking, and learning random new skills.