ContactZone

Peer-reviewed International E-Journal 

Call for Papers

Science Fiction in Translation: Accommodation and Creativity

Edited by Oriana Palusci and Mirko Casagranda

In 2024, the New York Public Library’s World Literature Festival devoted a panel to the “Realm of Spec Fic in Translation, a Contemporary Thoroughfare of Creative Language”, whose complimentary booklist included science fiction works translated into English from several European and East Asian languages. As that panel title suggested, when it comes to speculative fiction, especially to science fiction, linguistic creativity plays a fundamental role not only in the construction of alternative worlds but also in their translation. Borrowing the metaphor of translation as a mirror reflecting but also deforming the source text and bearing in mind the etymology of the term speculative, i.e. the Latin word for ‘looking glass’, spĕcŭlum, science fiction can be indeed considered as a ‘mirroring’ genre stemming from the very concept of translation as transmutation and transformation through which new wor(l)ds are created. As pointed out in Science Fiction in Translation: Perspectives on the Global Theory and Practice of Translation, edited by Ian Campbell in 2021, not only does translating science fiction entail shifting from one language system to the other but also transferring science fiction tropes and conveying concepts of science fiction theory. Such processes may be affected by domesticating and foreignising tendencies à la Venuti and result in instances of accommodation and creativity permeating the translated text. Even though the tension between these two poles is what informs every translation practice, in the case of science fiction and its defining linguistic experimentations accommodation must be creatively performed, and vice versa, in order to allow the ‘transmutation’ of the text into its refracted new linguistic self. This special issue of ContactZone aims to peruse these trajectories and explore the theories and practices of translating science fiction from/to different languages and cultures.

We welcome proposals pertaining but not limited to:

• Translation as transcreation in science fiction
• Domesticating and foreignising approaches to translating science fiction
• The untranslatable in science fiction
• Translating invented languages in science fiction
• Translating multilingualism in science fiction
• Translating alien/non-human pragmatics in science fiction
• Translating science fiction across different genres and media
• Multimodal translation and science fiction 
• (Inter)epistemic translation and science fiction
• Intersemiotic translation and science fiction
• Translation as adaptation in science fiction 
• Translating science fiction and/as rewriting
• Translating non-western science fiction 
• Translating non-conforming gendered, racialised and/or sexualised bodies in science fiction
• Translating the cyborg in science fiction
• Translating new (interplanetary) ecosystems in science fiction
• Translating the discursive construction of science fiction identities
• Translating digital textualities and science fiction
• The voice of the science fiction translator 
• Translating science fiction and its paratexts
• Translating science fiction theory 
• Translation, science fiction and AI

Abstract submission: 

Please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio-note to aisff.starfiction@gmail.com and mirko.casagranda@unical.it

Language: English  

Important dates: 

Deadline for abstract submissions: 13 April 2025

Notification of acceptance: 27 April 2025

Submission of paper: 15 September 2025

Publication: December 2025

ContactZone is the double-blind peer-reviewed e-journal of the Italian Association for the Study of Science Fiction and the Fantastic (www.aisff-starfiction.com).