The first Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards (SFFTA) were presented this past weekend at the 2011 Eurocon in Stockholm, Sweden. The juried awards are given in two categories: Long Form and Short Form. In this, the inaugural year, the jury named two winners, as well as two honorable mentions, and one Special Award.
The winners are:
Long Form: A Life on Paper: Stories by George-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin, published by Small Beer Press. The stories in this collection were originally published in French between 1976 and 2005.
Long Form Honorable Mention: The Golden Age by Michael Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive Press). Originally published in Czech as Zlaty Vek in 2001.
Short Form: “Elegy for a Young Elk” by Hannu Rajaniemi, translated by the author, published by Subterranean Online in Spring 2010. The story was originally published in Finnish, in Portti in 2007.
Short Form Honorable Mention: “Wagtail” by Marketta Niemelä, translated by Liisa Rantalaiho, published in Usva International, 2010. Originally published in Finnish as “Västäräkki” in Usva in 2008.
Special Award: British author and translator Brian Stableford, “in recognition of the excellence of his translation work.”
Each winning author and translator receives a cash prize of US$350.
The jury for the awards consisted of Chairman Terry Harpold (University of Florida, USA), Abhijit Gupta (Jadavpur University, India), and Dale Knickerbocker (East Carolina University, USA).
The jury offered descriptions of the prize winners:
A Life on Paper: Stories: The stories in this collection—the first-ever English translations of Châteaureynaud’s work—are written with such delicacy and economy of prose that the reader may be unprepared for the marvelous—and often disquieting—irruptions of unreality that break into experiences of the narrators and characters. This is unapologetically fantastic fiction, but so subtly-crafted that even outrageous violations of reason—a man sprouts tiny wings, a siren swims ashore, a guillotined head complains of its decomposition, a mummy in a double-bass case sings beautifully in Breton—seem manifestly verisimilar; it all just fits together with cunning perfection. Edward Gauvin’s translations are models of the discipline, masterfully attuned to Châteaureynaud’s stylstic shifts, scrupulous ambiguity, and dark humor.
The Golden Age: A brilliant, ambitious work of utopian fiction and an extraordinary shaggy dog story, complexly and confidently told. The peculiar architecture of the unnamed island, the islanders’s strange language-games and mutable writing system, knowing manipulations of would-be colonizers, and the method of the island’s sole, paradoxically hypertextual, historical novel—called simply the Book—are realized on so many registers and with such care that Ajvaz’s novel seems as much a shorthand encyclopedia of modern thought on language, mind, and fiction-making, as an entertaining, Swiftian travelogue. Andrew Oakland’s translation deftly crosses all of these fictional and nonfictional orders without a misstep, capturing the novelist’s wry humor and philosophical rigor.
“Elegy for a Young Elk”: A brilliant crossing of multiple sf and fantasy genres, marked by canny humor, melancholy, and a looming sense of menace, and shot through with beautiful and memorable images and exchanges. Rajaniemi’s evocative prose hints at a richly conceived backstory of a technological apotheosis that has refashioned real and virtual worlds—many of the details of which are only hinted at but never seem underimagined. A rare work of short fiction that grows more complex on successive readings.
“Wagtail”: An intensely told, unsettling parable of the family in an age of hyperreality and affective alienation. Rantalaiho’s precise translation of Niemelä’s spare, detached prose admirably captures the narrator’s anxiety and imperfect understanding of the bonds that join her to the daughters—and kinds of motherhood—between which she must choose.
Brian Stableford: Brian Stableford’s contributions to science fiction and fantasy in the roles of author, editor, and historian-scholar may well be unequaled; certainly, no other living writer has matched the variety and scope of his prodigious output of original fiction and scholarship. For the last decade, Stableford has devoted much of his considerable talents and energy to an unprecedented project of literary resurrection, translating more than sixty books of proto- and classic sf, horror, and fantasy by French authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of the authors and titles are unknown to English-speaking readers; only a handful had been previously translated; many of these texts are now almost impossible to find in the original French. Yet they include among them more than a few of the most historically significant and influential works of modern imaginative fiction in that language. They are invaluable to our understanding of the sources and development of world science fiction and fantasy.
Despite their sheer, daunting number fully seventeen of the texts nominated for this year’s long form award were translated by Stableford; his translations are complete and faithful. His critical introductions and annotations are models of discernment, and invaluable to the scholar and enthusiast alike. The intellectual sweep and literary success of this translation project are, in a word, astonishing; there is nothing comparable to it in the history of sf and fantasy translation, and it stands as a benchmark for the labor that these Awards aim to honor. Thus it is appropriate that with this Special Award in recognition of the excellence of his translation work, we congratulate and celebrate Brian Stableford’s ongoing service in support of world science fiction and fantasy.
The SFFTA are for works of speculative fiction translated into English from other languages. They are administered by the Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF&F Translation, a California-based 501(c)(3) non-profit.