Speculative Fiction and Translation

First, I want to define speculative fiction. In general, I would call it the combined genres of science fiction and fantasy, but most horror falls under the category, as does quite a bit of romance, but not really in the same way. Really, what makes speculative fiction special is that it does not portray life as it is, but as it could be. The world doesn’t really have space colonies, unicorns or ghosts, but that doesn’t stop us from writing about them. (As a little aside, this problem has actually been tying philosophers up in knots for quite a while, with the question “How can we write about Pegasus if Pegasus does not exist?” but that’s not really important). This distinction between the real and the possible, has a profound impact on the language we use to tell stories, which often goes unrecognized by writers in these genres.

This connection is rooted in Tolkien, and LOTR. Tolkien was, as some know, a philologist, a now largely defunct area of study, which can be bluntly described as a collision between literary theory and linguistics. It is natural that linguistics and language should have played a key role in his work, and one untrustworthy source says that he composed the Elvish languages first, and then wrote the story as they grew out of it. One of the consequences of this work is that LOTR is actually a translation from Elvish into English! Not that he wrote the entire book in Elvish first, but the world Tolkien constructed was so intricate that he actually intended LOTR to be read as a translation, not as an original work in English. This actually created some interesting anachronisms throughout, like a metaphorical reference to a train in the first chapter (obviously elves would have no concept of trains).

Literature–Mainstream vs. Genre

This is going to be another continuing topic, although I don’t know how frequent it will be. The focus here is not “literature” in general, but “Literature”. It may not seem like a large difference, but in academic circles especially, trying to decide what books possess a certain kind of quality which makes them deserve that capital “L” is a fairly hot topic. In these posts, I will look at attempts I have seen people have made to separate out Literature from other writing, and I want to start with one of the more widespread divisions, the distinction between mainstream literature and genre literature.

Some people might disagree with me on this, but I think that this distinction is based on content and setting more than anything else. Mainstream works are those which take place in the real world that we inhabit. They contain characters that we could conceivably meet, and who abide by the same basic rules of existence that we do. Genre fiction, in many of its forms, breaks this rule by creating characters and worlds which do not abide by the rules of our world. This content might break physical or technological laws (like magic, advanced artificial intelligence and faster than light travel) as well as social rules, (like the sexual stereotypes in romance novels). Not all genres break all of these rules, but they do break some rule. The result is characters that could not exist in our world, by the very nature of their existence.