Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction

If you sell a book to a Russian publisher today, odds are it will be censored to remove any LGBTQ content and anything that can be perceived as anti-regime. The publisher has little choice in the matter; they won’t be allowed to sell the book or–best case scenario–will have to put all sorts of warnings onto the cover otherwise.

I was checking a friend’s translated book this week to see if it was censored (spoiler: it was.) But in this case it was censoring by omission, they removed a few lines of text. In other cases, the “translation” is far more malicious. Nikolai Karayev recently posted excerpts from the translation of King Sorrow by Joe Hill. Here are a few of the highlights, original text followed by how it appears in the Russian book:

* a pair of Russian oligarchs who vacationed in Italy with Vladimir Putin
* a pair of Russian oligarchs who vacationed in Italy (паре русских олигархов, отдыхавших в Италии)

* I have reliable information that the Russians are farming them. They grow trolls like potatoes in the permafrost of Siberia.
* I have reliable information that the Ukrainians are growing trolls. They breed them like guinea pigs. (У меня есть надежные сведения, что троллей разводят украинцы. Выращивают троллей, будто свинок.)

* while they were crossing Westminster Bridge in the damp, chilly night, Russia invaded Ukraine.
* …war began in Europe. (ночью началась война в Европе.)

* On the ninth of March, something hit a maternity ward in Mariupol
* On the ninth of March, something hit one of the maternity wards in Donetsk (Девятого марта что-то этакое угодило в один из донецких роддомов.)

I am not advocating for authors to cease publishing their books in Russia because I’d rather the Russian readers were exposed to some version of Western literature than not at all. But authors should be aware of what sort of changes might creep into their work when they do.