Roundtable: Spec in Translation

Bonjour mes amies, comment allez-vous? Die Sommer geht weiter. 暑いですね。Gobeithio eich bod yn iach. Isn’t language a marvelous thing? Today we’re taking a look at works of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror from around the world that have been translated for a variety of audiences (at Speculative Chic, we’re focusing on English translations). International works are having a moment, with streaming sites like Netflix introducing films and TV series from other countries, all subbed and dubbed for your enjoyment. Then there are events like World Book Day in April, where Amazon and other booksellers provide translated works for free or at a discount. It’s all about enriching our perspectives and expanding our worldview, and we encourage you to give translated works a try. Here are some of our favorites.

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J.L. Gribble: I love speculative fiction. With one major exception.

It takes a lot to get me to enjoy anything horror-related, because I consume media (whether on the page or on screen) in order to relax. While I completely understand the appeal for some people, tensing up and getting anxious is not my idea of a good time. So why would I spend a few days clutching a book, crying, and literally shaking while I read?

Because sometimes the book is just that damned good, no matter how distressing it is. In this case, I highly recommend the novel Battle Royale by Koushun Takami and translated by Yuji Oniki. It’s got plenty of horrific elements that can create a story all on their own: a dystopic future, detailed violence, and teenage drama. Together, well, it’s no wonder I didn’t rush out to immediately read The Hunger Games when it first burst onto the scene. I’d already experienced Battle Royale and come out the other side.

I have had no urge to seek out the film or graphic novel versions of Battle Royale, because that is not a journey I feel the need to undertake a second time. Yet despite my dislike of horror, I have no regret experiencing it the first time.

As a person with limited understanding of Japanese culture, I’m sure that there are certain cultural and societal elements and layers to this dystopic novel that I missed in my reading. I do not feel that the book lacked anything in that regard, though I’m sure more knowledgeable readers probably got more out of the experience. The translation itself flowed well and was not difficult to read. My only hang-up was that I often got confused by which characters I was reading about in each scene, but that again goes back to my lack of familiarity with the Japanese language.

I’m not sure whether a sequel to this book exists, and it certainly doesn’t need one. But I occasionally still think of the few surviving characters and wonder how they fared after the events of the story ended. Considering I read the book over 15 years ago, I feel that speaks volumes of the quality of the story.

P.S. You should also watch Dark. You won’t regret it.

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Kelly McCarty: I studied Spanish for many years and I feel like I would be letting Profesora Ridley down if I chose a speculative fiction work that wasn’t originally written in Spanish. Fortunately, I enjoyed the magical realism of Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies by Laura Esquivel (translated by Carol and Thomas Christensen). Set during the time period of the Mexican Revolution, the novel opens with the premature birth of the main character, Tita, and the untimely death of her father. Mama Elena’s milk dries up from the shock and so the cook, Nacha, raises Tita in the kitchen. At the age of fifteen, Tita falls in love at first sight with Pedro. The domineering Mama Elena refuses to allow Tita to marry because family tradition dictates that the youngest daughter must care for her mother until she dies. Mama Elena offers Rosura, Tita’s sister, instead. Pedro accepts in order to stay close to Tita. Heartbroken, Tita weeps into the batter of the wedding cake. The guests who eat the cake become violently ill and struck by an intense longing for lost love.

I love baking and cooking and my favorite part of the book is the importance of food. I only regret that the recipes aren’t written to be recreated in a modern kitchen. Cooking isn’t just a metaphorical way for Tita to rebel against her cruel mother and seduce her secret love; her feelings are part of the food. After Tita pours her lust into a meal of quail in rose petal sauce, her eldest sister, Gertrudis, runs off with a revolutionary soldier—in the nude. In Spanish, the phrase “como agua para chocolate” (“like water for chocolate”) means that one’s emotions are on the verge of boiling over. Tita’s repressed sexuality and anger mean that she can only express herself through the kitchen.

Like Water for Chocolate is a dramatic novel that may be too reminiscent of telenovelas (Latin American soap operas) for some readers, but I think the magical realism and passion enhance the story. At the end of the book, a character talks about how people live on as long as someone keeps cooking their recipes. It hit me right in the heart, because I started an elaborate Christmas cookie baking tradition because I miss the baking that my late grandmother used to do during the holidays.

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Lane Robins: Recently, I’ve been watching Black Spot (Zone Blanche in the original French), created by Mathieu Missoffe. This is a show which seems pretty much geared to my particular tastes: an isolated town with a corrupt heart surrounded by thousands of acres of dark forest. And there’s something strange in those woods…

There are several sets of mysteries unspooling at once. The current crime that needs solving. The past crimes that inform the present. And the big fantasy question of what the hell is living in the woods.

Our protagonist is Laurène Weiss, head of police, and her support staff consisting of Teddy Bear/Baloo, Hermann, and Camille. Laurène has a mysterious past — as a young woman, she partook of the town ritual of spending a night alone in the forest, but she ended up held captive by an unknown person until she escaped. Even while solving the other crimes plaguing Villefranche, she is still attempting to find out who kidnapped her and why.

She has a complex, occasionally adversarial relationship with the city prosecutor, Siriani, who has been sent to find out why Villefranche has more violent crimes, disappearances, and deaths than any other in France. He’s got his own axe to grind with the local powerful family, the Steiners.

The first season is a missing-person mystery with tinges of the weird until the very end, where it becomes very weird all at once. The second season is weird right off the bat. I love it. If you like Tana French, give this a try.

I normally watch foreign language shows subtitled; of late, I’ve been watching television while doing other things. So I was missing too many of the subtitles. I gave in and turned on the dub since it was an option! The subtitles were done by Thomas Isackson, and the dub by Roundabout Studio.

Having both the subtitles and the dub on shows me how much leeway there is in translation. Even in the tiniest details. It’s created a fascinating experience.

As an example, there’s an interaction over the police radio where the dub says:

“Chief officer?”

“Yeah, speaking.”

While the subtitles read:

“Chief adjutant?”

“I’m listening.”

It’s interesting to try to figure out why the different translators made the choices they did. In the subtitles, Laurène is Major Weiss. In the dub, she’s Captain. In the subtitles, her second gets called “Teddy Bear,” but for the dub, it’s “Baloo,” which I find weirdly charming.

But there are also bigger, weirder divergences between the sub and dub which leave me at a loss. In season 2, episode 4, Hermann (in the subtitles) admits to forcing a confession out of a murder suspect. In the dubs, he admits to beating him up because he wouldn’t let go. Forging a confession vs. beating on the suspect = big difference!

Either way, a great show!

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Nancy O’Toole Meservier: Asking me for my favorite speculative work in translation is pretty much a no-brainer, as my favorite movie of all time is Kiki’s Delivery Service. This Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli creation tells the story of a young witch named Kiki. According to custom, when a witch turns thirteen, she spends a year away from home, making a living out in the world. At the beginning of this film, Kiki, alongside her loyal talking cat Jiji, flies away on her mother’s broomstick and settles into a bustling city. Here, she begins a flying delivery service, where she transports everything from stuffed toys to freshly cooked food and connects with the people of her new home.

I originally discovered Kiki’s Delivery Service when I was nineteen years old and recovering from getting my wisdom teeth removed. I stumbled across the movie somehow (on television? Rented from Blockbuster?) and decided to sit down and give it a try. I immediately became swept up in Kiki’s journey. Over the past fifteen years, I have revisited it multiple times, and am constantly finding something new to enjoy about it.

When I was young woman, away at college, it was Kiki’s coming-of-age story that appealed to me. I admired her boldness and resourcefulness (not to mention the talking cat!) and hoped that I would find similar success in my future. Also, as an introvert, I could relate to Kiki’s struggles to communicate and fit in with kids her own age.

As I’ve grown up, other aspects of Kiki’s story have resonated with me, especially the subplot where she finds herself losing her powers and must recover her love for flight. Much like this video essay, which recasts Kiki as a struggling millennial artist, I connected to this at a time in my life when I was facing creative failure and unable to write. During the film, Kiki finds strength by accepting help from others. And the fact that she can do this without losing her independence was an important lesson for me.

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a gorgeous film, with lush, hand-drawn animation, and a soothing, memorable soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi. It’s true that I do prefer the English dub, which I know many will find sacrilegious. While I have nothing against a Japanese language track (in fact, it’s how I usually prefer to consume my anime), I find it difficult to accept anyone else but the late, great Phil Hartman as Jiji the cat.

Even though Kiki’s Delivery Service was made many years ago (it just passed its 30^th anniversary) and for a Japanese audience, there is something about it that has always resonated with me. It’s my perfect comfort food; a movie to watch when I am sad, sick, or worn out, and I know that I will continue to return to it, again and again, in future years.

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Nicole Taft: With all the various foreign goodies I’ve seen, one might think I’d go elsewhere for my favorite speculative non-English delight. But I can’t deny it: I love Hayao Miyazaki, and in particular Howl’s Moving Castle and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

I love them both for very different reasons. Howl’s Moving Castle is such a beautiful fantasy film, both in its story and, surprise, its animation. Every time I watch it, I want to eat the bacon and eggs that Howl cooks up. I love Howl’s room with its vibrant colors and the myriad number of trinkets that sparkle and dangle. The story between Sophie, our heroine, and the magician Howl is one of discovery and also a very subtle love story. The music is a delight, and the places Sophie visits are drawn with such detail I want to visit them in reality. I much prefer the original Japanese version to the English dubbed one (which is true in pretty much all cases of foreign films for me), especially since the little fire demon, Calcifer, is so much cuter than Billy Crystal ever will be.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, I would argue, is more science fiction since the setting is post-apocalyptic. Granted, the main character Nausicaä isn’t living in the kind of conditions most of us think of when it comes to post-apocalyptic (Mad Max style or empty, rotting cities), but instead in a lush valley with her fellow villagers. I do have a weird fascination with post-apocalyptic things, which may attribute to my love of this movie. There’s a toxic jungle guarded by massive insects, but the discovery of what this jungle actually is was a unique surprise, and yet something I can imagine the earth doing. Nausicaä is brave and strong. I love her attitude towards, well, everything. Again, I prefer the Japanese language version over the English dub. I did take 3 years of Japanese in college, so I can pick out words here and there, but sadly I still have to read all of the subtitles to understand. While Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was made much earlier (1984) and the animation isn’t as crisp as it is in Howl’s Moving Castle, it’s still fantastic and well worth a watch because the story isn’t something you’ll find anywhere else.

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Shara White: The television show Dark has been on my radar for a while. I’d discovered it on Netflix and added it to my queue, but held off because other shows grabbed my attention and truthfully, I wasn’t excited when I realized the trailer had English dubbing. I’m not scared of subtitles, and if the words don’t match the lips in even an English-speaking show, I get distracted.

But too many people have been gushing over Dark of late, so my husband and I figured out how to ensure we’d hear the original German and read the English subtitles, and we started watching.

Y’all. We finished season one in like 3 days. We wouldn’t have even taken that long if we hadn’t had to do grown-up things like go to work.

Naturally, we promptly devoured season two, and I have to say how in absolute awe I am of this German science fiction story. Yes, you heard that right, science fiction. The trailers make the show seem like a procedural thriller (which it is) with a creepy horror vibe (also true), but it doesn’t take long before you realize just how truly rooted this show is in science fiction, and when you learn it, it’s AMAZING.

It’s smart. It’s well-acted. It keeps you on the edge of your seat with guessing and theories and TENSION, and it is so incredibly written. I can see why people re-watched season one before jumping into season two. It’s so good that I feel so sorry for people who think the best science fiction was the stuff they read/watched when they were kids.

I can’t recommend this show enough, and to talk any more about it means I’m going to get into spoiler territory, so I want to pivot and share my favorite film that’s not in English.

The Orphanage is a Spanish horror film that gives me chills every time I watch it, even though I now know all the twists, all the scares, and all the gut-wrenching horror. It’s a film I’ll immediately foist on people once I get a sense of their tastes in film and their patience when it comes to subtitles. And it’s the kind of horror film that tickles my favorite part of the genre: the kind where you don’t know if what’s happening is REAL, in our protagonist’s head, or some version of both.

The story, which centers on Laura, who’s returning to her childhood home (spoiler alert, not really, it’s an orphanage!) to reopen said home for disabled children. The story that unfolds with her husband, her son, and her memories is relatively simple, but it’s incredibly well-acted and packs a helluva punch.

So if you love horror, and you want horror without cheap scares, give The Orphanage a shot. You won’t regret it.

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The world is so much bigger than what we’ve presented here. What are your experiences with sci-fi, fantasy, and horror in translation? What did we miss? What should we try? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll see you next time! またね!