The feast day of St. Jerome, a famous ancient translator, is September 30, so today is celebrated as International Translation Day.
FIT, the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs/International Federation of Translators, has created this poster and explanation to celebrate this year’s theme: Finding the words for a world in crisis.
FIT explains: “Our profession has been pivoting rapidly to keep up with changing realities and expectations, and the importance of our work to ensuring clear information reaches everyone and overcoming language barriers — both global and local — has been highlighted in unprecedented ways this year.”
Here are two more ways that you can celebrate translation, especially science fiction in translation:
FutureconSF, an online international science fiction convention with the slogan “The future happens everywhere,” was held September 17 to 20. Sixteen panels explored topics as varied as “Future Science Fiction in Translation: A Hidden Treasure to Innovate the Genre,” “Future East Asia: Techno-Traditions in Japan and Korea,” and “Anthropocene and Capitalocene: Threats and Hopes to the Future of Mankind.”
The sessions were recorded and are available on YouTube.
A new bilingual speculative fiction magazine is coming to the internet. Constelación will publish stories in both Spanish and English with four issues each year. Writers can submit their stories in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in either language. Fifty percent of the stories in every issue will be from authors from the Caribbean, Latin America, and their diaspora.
I hope to do some of the translation. A Kickstarter campaign will launch tomorrow, October 1. Submissions will be open from October 15 to November 1, 2020, for the first issue with the theme: The Bonds That Unite Us / Los lazos que nos unen.
Semiosis 