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Science fiction
The first volume of the Amel Confederation saga sets out on two new courses: English and Spanish. Two twin editions, the same ship — and a shipwreck that goes on being reborn, one language at a time.
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There comes a moment, for anyone who writes, when a story stops belonging to you alone and begins to travel. Il Naufragio di Shan is doing it twice at once: from today Shan d'Or lifts her eyes to the burning sky of Asper in English too — The Shipwreck of Shan — and in Spanish — El Naufragio de Shan. Two doors opening on the same world.
Not summaries, not adaptations: two complete translations. All twenty chapters, the author's note, and the appendix with the glossary. The English edition opens the story to the widest readership there is; the Spanish one carries it to hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers. I wanted them to be true twins of the Italian original: the same 14×21 cm format, the same twenty-one illustrations in the same places, the same family of covers — Shan looking up, hair in the wind, the planet at her back.
Translating an interstellar epic into English means handing it to the language this genre was born in and still speaks. It is a dry register, edgy where it needs to be, able to make a space battle run and then stop dead on a single detail. English has also become the saga's bridge language: it was from the English edition that the Korean one grew in turn. One translation begetting another — the story getting further and further from home, and putting down roots wherever it lands.
Translators have long known a secret: nobody reads a text as carefully as the person who has to rewrite it word by word. Along the way small inconsistencies surfaced that had lain hidden for years — a "Daniel" who should have been "Mat", a peace treaty called by two different names, a temple that was "hexagonal" in one chapter and "octagonal" in another, even a planet "Nahmah" that was really "Qmaho". I corrected them all, and not only in the new languages: in the Italian original as well. Translated, the shipwreck came out sounder than it went in.
Spanish has a music of its own, and above all a punctuation of its own. Dialogue no longer lives between quotation marks but behind the raya — that long dash, "—", which opens a character's voice. And then the marks that open before they close: ¿ and ¡, announcing a question or a shout from the very first word. I kept the proper names untouched — Shan d'Or, the Zeyadas, Amel — because they are half the flavour of a science fiction novel; but the ranks and the military terms I let speak Spanish: Coronel, Teniente Piloto, Confederación, Mando, the terminales Grav. And one detail I am fond of: Mat Wan Steel — Steel, as in the metal, not Steal.
The two editions: The Shipwreck of Shan · El Naufragio de Shan — Volume I of the Amel Confederation Saga. Twenty chapters plus glossary, 21 illustrations, 14×21 cm, complete translations. English edition: ISBN paperback 9798867232740 · hardback 9798868005862. Both are also, from today, on sale directly from this site, delivered signed by the author.
"We will meet again — in one of our future lives."
«Volveremos a encontrarnos — en una de nuestras vidas futuras.»
The Shipwreck of Shan ends on a promise and a rebirth — and I will say no more, for anyone who has not read it yet. But watching it cross into English and Spanish confirmed exactly that: a story does not get lost when it changes language. It is reborn. As somebody in these pages knows rather well how to do.