"'He's changed names and other items; as for the gaps in what you fed him, he's guessed wrong more often than right. If anybody who knows the future should chance to read this, it'll look at most like one of science fiction's occasional close-to-target hits.' His laugh rattled. 'Which are made on the shotgun principle, remember!...But I doubt anybody will. These stories never had wide circulation. They soon dropped into complete obscurity.'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XII, p. 129.
M. assesses Ian Fleming's James Bond novels:
"The inevitable publicity, particularly in the foreign Press, accorded some of these adventures, made him, much against his will, something of a public figure, with the inevitable result that a series of popular books came to be written around him by a personal friend and former colleague of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at the Ministry, that action has not yet - I emphasize the qualification - been taken against the author and publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of an outstanding public servant."
-Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice (London, 1966), 21, Obit:, p. 180.
Not only self-reference but also self-deprecation in both novels. We want to read:
a novel set in whatever the Maurai Federation was really called;
an unromanticized and accurate account of Bond's adventures.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember that bit you quote from THERE WILL BE TIME, but not the text taken from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Which only goes to show I need to reread the Bond books.
Hmmm, what might have been the "real" name of the Maurai Federation? The Maurai Kingdom or Thalassocracy? We do know the Federation was an elective monarchy, and that the reigning sovereign in ORION SHALL RISE was an elderly lady, ailing and privately expected to soon die. And there was concern over who would be elected king or queen in succession.
Sean
Sean:
It might still have been a word that COULD be translated from their language as "Federation" — but could also be translated as something WE would consider very different from a "federation."
As an example, I was amused to discover that the Russian word for "union" — soyuz — is also used for "alliance." And "league." AND "federation." So if there were a war between two polities known only as the Union and the Alliance (as happens in one SF series by C.J. Cherryh), Russian-speakers would have to add some not-otherwise-there distinction between "Soyuz" and "Soyuz" to avoid confusing them in conversations.
Alternatively, imagine if one people's completely-accepted name for themselves in the future were something that at present is considered a racist slur against them ... or, to make it even weirder, a slur against someone wholly unrelated. Consider the bewilderment of a time traveler finding out that an Asian people of the distant future proudly refer to themselves by a term the traveler knew only as an insult referring to homosexuals ... or labor union agitators ... or Scandinavians....
Kaor, DAVID!
Very interesting comments by you. My use of the of the seldom used word "thalassocracy" would fit in with your first paragraph.
Yes, in different ways, the problem posed by words like the Russian "soyuz," can be found in all languages, I'm sure. Translators will have no choice but to "add" to what they translated in order to avoid confusion.
And your third paragraph made me think almost at once of Stirling's Southsiders, met by Rudi and his fellow Questers as they struggled and fought their way eastwards. Simply recall their use of "studs" and "bitches" could be easily misunderstood. Nothing NEGATIVE was meant, it was simply an example of how words could change in meaning and new languages start taking form or shape.
Words like "faggots" can have very different meanings. It's a common slang term for homosexuals. And it means a bundle of sticks tied together. And I think it has also been used to mean "cigarettes."
Sean
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