Translating between science and science fiction

Activity: Talk or presentation types › Presentation

Description

Join the Scottish Society at their online event about interdisciplinary research projects involving science fiction and different kinds of translation. The Multilingual Science Fiction Translation Project, based at the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science, employed multilingual students and those studying in the School of Modern Languages as translators. They took examples of imaginary exoplanets from science fiction published in Bulgarian, Catalan, German, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Russian and Slovak and translated extracts into English; translated a passage from Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series into multiple languages; and worked with exoplanet scientists to ‘translate’ specialist knowledge about real exoplanets as annotations to the fictional extracts. In another project, we use scenarios from science fiction as a reservoir of ideas about possible futures in space. For centuries, science fiction has predicted the consequences— from physical to moral, individual to societal — of real and imagined scientific advances. We will discuss how translations from science fiction can inform ethical thinking and ensure diverse voices are heard by researchers who are making human futures in space a reality.
Period29 Nov 2025
Held atScottish Society | CIOL (Chartered Institute of Linguists), United Kingdom
Degree of RecognitionNational

Keywords

  • science fiction
  • exoplanet science
  • multilingualism
  • translation
  • diversity

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