Although the roots of science fiction are various, in the twentieth century it became the quintessential American genre and was one of the major cultural products ¡§exported¡¨ to other countries in various media, including fiction, comics, and films. Yet the past five years have seen a precipitous rise in the translation of Chinese science fiction into English. Hao Jingfang (¡§Folding Beijing¡¨, 2016) and Liu Cixin (The Three Body Problem 2015; Death¡¦s End, 2017) have both won Hugo Awards, one of the most prestigious awards in the science fiction community, on the basis of Ken Liu¡¦s translations (who himself won a Hugo in 2012 for a short story), which has also contributed to the sudden prominence of Chinese science fiction in Europe and America.
At the same time, linguistic communication and the problem of translation has also become prominent within the genre of science fiction, most notably in the film Arrival, based on a short story by the Chinese-American writer Ted Chiang (which also won a Hugo for best film in 2017). This film follows in the wake of a series of science fiction works that consider the problem of translation stretching back to the 1960s, especially Samuel Delany¡¦s Babel-17.
Finally, science and technology play a large role in the solution to translation problems in many works of science fiction. In some cases machines perform translation (Star Trek, Dr Who), in some cases there are implants that meld human and machine, and in some cases there are biological enhancements, but all of these depend on technology.
Since Darko Suvin¡¦s preliminary theorization of SF as a genre rooted upon a dialectic of ¡§estrangement and cognition¡¨ triggered by the introduction of scientific/technological novelty (or ¡§novum¡¨), and Csicsery-Ronay¡¦s elaboration of Suvin¡¦s ¡§novum¡¨ as signum novi (that is, a chiefly linguistic novelty), the intertwining of science and language (and of science as a language to be translated) has emerged as the key directive for our understanding of the genre.
The Centre for Translation Technologies at CUHK will thus convene a workshop to investigate a set of intertwined questions regarding science, science fiction, translation, and the relationship between Chinese and English science fiction. What are the problems and challenges facing the translation of Chinese science fiction into English? How is the act of translation portrayed in science fiction, especially (but not limited to) Chinese? What role do Chinese play in English-language science fiction, and what role do Americans play in Chinese science-fiction? Are there differences in the role that technology plays in the different traditions?