Coming this Wednesday, December 17th, Amazing Stories will offer up what we believe to be a unique occurrence in the annals of the science fiction magazine: an interview with Ken Liu, award winning author and translator, presented in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Regina Kanyu Wang, Amazing Stories’ own Chinese blogger, conducted the original interview and wrote the Chinese translation. The English version was then supplied to Fabien Lyraud (French), Diane Severson (German), Stephen Bianchini (Italian) and Tanya Tynjala (Spanish), for translation into their respective languages.
The idea was originally conceived when Regina had an opportunity to interview Ken, who is himself a translator of no small renown; he’s responsible for the English translation of The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (no relation), a novel that has won several awards and is among the vanguard of Chinese SF in translation.
Our purpose here is to elevate the importance of works in translation, to highlight the depth of the team supporting Amazing Stories, to illustrate one of the many benefits of engaging with diversity and to offer our community something unique that we hope will not remain unique for long.
Please bear in mind that none of the contributors is a professional translator and none of them labored under anything close to ideal conditions: they should be roundly applauded for their efforts, as should Ken Liu for making himself available and for his patience in waiting to see the final product.