RusTrans Grant

June 19, 2020

I’m pleased as punch to announce that I’m one of the winners of the RusTrans translation grant from the University of Exeter. Here are the details, in their own words:

EARLY IN 2020, RUSTRANS RAN A COMPETITION FOR TRANSLATORS OF CONTEMPORARY LITERARY FICTION FROM RUSSIAN TO ENGLISH. WE OFFERED SUPPORT (UP TO THE VALUE OF £1,000 PER PROJECT) TO A TOTAL OF 12 PROJECTS IN ORDER TO HELP THE TRANSLATOR PRODUCE UP TO 10,000 WORDS OF A NEW TRANSLATION. IN RETURN, WE ASKED SUCCESSFUL TRANSLATORS TO UPDATE US OVER THE NEXT TWO YEARS OR SO (UNTIL JUNE 2022) ON THEIR PUBLICATION JOURNEY – THEIR SUCCESSES AND REJECTIONS, READER RESPONSES, EDITORIAL DECISIONS AND SO ON. WELL, WE HAVE OUR WINNERS!

The complete list of winners is posted here, and the description of the winning projects is available here. There are some serious heavy hitters, including Viktor Pelevin and Dmitry Bykov.

As to my project, it will be with the long-time translation collaborator K. A. Teryna. I’ll be translating her novella The Factrory (see book cover, above) which can be best described as an M. C. Escher painting in words and will be seriously difficult to translate. But, that’s how I like ’em! Challenging translations are fun translations.

We’re both thrilled to have our science fiction project included alongside all these other works.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Copy Cat at Podcastle

December 4, 2019

“Copy Cat” co-written by K. A. Teryna and myself is live at Podcastle, narrated by Yaroslav Barsukov. Enjoy!

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Translations!

July 2, 2019

If you enjoy reading Russian SF in translations, and particularly Russian SF translated by Yours Truly, boy have I got a bunch of treats for you!

This week the latest issue of F&SF releases and it contains my translation of “The Slave” by Andrej Kokoulin. It should just be hitting the shelves. The story is dark and cuts deep psychologically as you would expect from a good Russian tale.

My latest translation of one of K. A. Teryna’s stories is also currently live at Samovar. They published the translation of “Morpheus” alongside the original Russian text. There’s also a translator interview with me live now, and an interview with K. A. Teryna will be forthcoming as well.

Tatiana Ivanova’s “The Scheduled War” is in the current issue of Amazing Stories. And finally, my translation of Oleg Divov’s “Americans on the Moon” is in the current issue of Future SF, which you can buy now or read the story for free on the website in a few weeks.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Reprint: Untilted at Samovar

September 24, 2018

My translation of “Untilted” by K. A. Teryna has been reprinted at Samovar today. Samovar publishes translation and international fiction, and although the English text of the story has previously appeared (originally at Apex magazine), Samovar provides a Russian language text as well, and also a podcasted version.

You can read and/or listen by clicking here.

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Health Update and a Collection of Links

August 17, 2018

This past Tuesday I had a thyroidectomy performed at Mt. Sinai hospital. They removed half my thyroid and a large goiter that grew from it into the chest under the sternum. This is an outpatient procedure and I was able to go home the same evening, but I’ve been pretty useless and staying off the internet for a few days as I recovered from the surgery The good news is that the procedure went well, and even better news is that the growth they removed was benign. I’m still going to take it easy for a few more days, but at least I feel capable of doing some work on the computer. Which is good timing as I have a number of cool links to share today:

 

1. Rick Liebling interviewed me at his Medium blog, The Adjacent Possible, about Future SF, translation, and international SF/F. There’s some great content there and I wholeheartedly recommend checking the blog out for more than just my interview. I especially enjoyed this Q&A with Nick Farmer, a linguist for The Expanse TV show.

2. On the Analog blog today there’s an interview with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and me where we delve a little deeper into our story “The People v Craig Morrison” — this is the second and different post from the one I shared about a month ago, and I truly appreciate Analog giving us so much bandwidth to talk about our writing as well as other stuff we really like!

3. Quick Sips by Charles Payseur has a wonderful and in-depth review of “Copy Cat.” If you haven’t read this quirky story co-written by K. A. Teryna and me, it’s free to read online at Strange Horizons.

4. The kickstarter campaign for Unidentified Funny Objects 7 is ongoing, but we’re falling a bit behind, and even more so due to my lack of promotion and activity this week. Please consider supporting this project and/or sharing it with other interested readers!

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

New Publication: Copy Cat in Strange Horizons

August 7, 2018

“Copy Cat,” a collaboration between K. A. Teryna and me, is now live at Strange Horizons. You can read the text or listen to the podcast.

I have previously translated several stories by K. A. Teryna from Russian (you can read two of them at Apex) but this one is a collaboration, with K. A. writing in Russian and me writing in English, then translating her text and both of us working on smoothing out the language. It was a really fun story to work on, and I hope you will enjoy reading it nearly as much!

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Publication: “Untilted” by K. A. Teryna

November 14, 2017

My translation of “Untilted” by K. A. Teryna is live and free to read at Apex magazine today.

This is the most challenging translation I ever undertook. The story relies on intentional misspellings and linguistic cues to work. Even the title is a pun! In Russian the title is “Бес Названия” which literally means “The Demon of the Name” but is also one letter off from “Untitled.” My friend, himself a translator of considerable skill, declared this story “untranslatable.” So I’m extremely proud of having not only translated it, but helped it find a home at such a wonderful market.

Please, go read it!

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman