Links of interest
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First up–a really nice writeup of the Ancillary trilogy at Slate:
The protagonist of the series calls herself Breq; she was once an ancillary and is the sole survivor of the destruction of the Radchaai ship Justice of Toren. Breq is One Esk Nineteen, a single segment of Justice of Toren, but she also is the A.I. Justice of Toren—its last remnant. If that seems hard to wrap your head around, well, that’s rather the point: At the heart of Leckie’s series is a profound grappling with the way identity—our very sense of self—is imagined, is regulated, and shifts over time.
And at Interfictions, “Translating Gender: Ancillary Justice in Five Languages“:
After reading a comment by the Hungarian translator, Csilla Kleinheincz, posted on Cheryl Morgan’s blog, we wanted to know more about this. We invited the translators of the novel into Bulgarian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian and Japanese to discuss the process, with particular interest in the translation of gender. What emerges is an insight into the work of translators and the rigidity and versatility of grammatical gender in the face of non-standard demands. Where necessary, translators turned to innovative and even inventive ways to write their languages.
And last–a link to my Etsy store. I have ordered another batch of Awn pins, plus a batch of Spoiler pins. I still have some Translator Dlique pins left. Once the Awn pins arrive here, I’ll start listing them again (and the others as well). I’ll do the same thing I’ve been doing–I’ll list them in batches of twenty, I’ll combine shipping if you order more than one pin, and I’ll leave a listing up a day or two before I tweet or blog or tumbl about it. In the past, they’ve gone really quick once I’ve tweeted! So if you’re one of the folks who keeps just missing them, favorite the shop and check back regularly probably starting in about two weeks.
I’m reading the third Ancillary right now. The translator (whatever her name is) is certainly a weird being and I am looking forward to what her role turns out to be.
Have any of your books been translated into a language that does not have gender-distinguishing pronouns, such as Turkish or Farsi? I have a strong suspicion that speakers of those languages have ways of making the gender of the person they are referring to clear, and I suppose the translator will have to try to avoid those techniques. Sounds damn difficult.
Hungarian doesn’t use gendered pronouns. A Turkish translation is in the works. The Hungarian translator has some interesting comments in the article–I don’t know how close their experience will have been to the Turkish translator, but I’ve seen a few folks comment that Finnish would come out very similarly. Of course, Finnish and Hungarian are related languages.
I am now reading the Turkish copy of the book Mercy. In my personal opinion the term Ancillary could not find a proper meaning in the title of the Turkish translation of the book.
Just wanted to share the info that at the page of 266 only one adjective as “handsome” made me think of Skaait as man and came out the result that Raw is female. Had no idea if Breq was female/male until I saw the sentence “The protagonist of the series calls herself Breq;” in this page.
There are several misspelling in the Turkish version but I choose to ignore and keep pleasingly reading for long hours.
Oh dear. Now I am seriously lusting for memorial pins.
Ms. Leckie, I finished Ancillary Mercy last night and was absolutely moved. I had to chat with my one friend who also follows your work (together, we constitute the “Ann Leckie Fan Club” in our university department) for about two hours afterward just to fully unpack and contend with the brilliance of the entire trilogy. I would not be surprised if your work ends up inspiring scores of dissertations.
The author from the Slate article is quite right when she states, “There’s perhaps no science-fiction series as descriptive of our current political and cultural moment or as insistent that we open our eyes to it as Ann Leckie’s Hugo- and Nebula-winning Imperial Radch trilogy.” I was stunned at how Ancillary Sword, in particular, provided some of the most concise yet thorough social commentary of our contemporary structure of feeling – from gentrification, sexual assault, model minority discourse, economic exploitation. Breq, as a figure, remains an importantly hopeful one in the face of these multiple structural oppressions; she is the embodiment of the micropolitics of kindness, but a kindness that is mindful of history, inequality, and privilege. Very rarely, despite my hope for it, am I actually convinced that an everyday ethics of kindness can amount to revolution, and yet Breq powerfully demonstrates its possibility.
I will refrain from spoiling the end of Mercy here in case any other readers would be offended at this; however, I will say that, despite my initial skepticism of how it all came together, I was quite pleased, and realized that it was quite subversive to the genre. In this trilogy, you have presented not a utopian society – the Radch is far from it – but you have presented a utopian sociality, a means by which we can hope to relate to one another and beyond. In this contemporary neoliberal moment of staggering alienation, Breq’s story is one of the most resoundingly empowering narratives I’ve encountered. I could ramble on, but I’ll just say, thank you so much for these loving, brilliant books.