Friday, February 13, 2009

Fooled Again

One of my earliest stories was Fool Britannia, a conspiracy tale that includes lots of odd happenings from recent British history. It was published in Aphelion in August 2005. I haven’t submitted it to any foreign language markets as I thought the concept wouldn’t translate well.

So I was quite surprised to note today on the Greek SFF forum that a translation has just appeared in a Greek SF magazine. I can’t work out what the magazine is called yet, and Google's translation doesn't make it clear whether the comments about it are favourable or not. I’m attempting to get some details.

Obviously I’m pleased to have my work translated and published, but it would be nice to know something about it!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Gareth,

I’ve spotted your comment for the Greek SFF forum and thought you’d like to know what’s written there for your story.

The magazine is a fanzine «ΕΦ ΖΙΝ» which translates to “SF LIFE” (also it could mean “good life” from ancient Greek sounding). The fanzine is about a collection of stories about SF and the first issue published in July 2002. On issue 14, January 2009, a member of SFF.gr, “DinoHajiyorgi”, translated your story for the fanzine. On the next posts after issue 14 is presented, your story gets praised from members that could stop reading it till they finished reading it all. I hope that helps a bit.

Stefanos
SFF.gr Community manager

PS. I will let know the people about this post so they could post their own comments.

Ευθυμία Ε. Δεσποτάκη said...

Hi Gareth,
I'm Efthimia Despotaki. Remember this? http://ar.groups.yahoo.com/group/planetasf/message/1958

Well, it seems out of a very funny story, but Dino, the guy who wrote the above remark is the actuall translator of Fool Britania. He got himself to try to understand your work and I think he really liked it!

About EF ZIN, it's one of those little but cult magazines in Greece, a remarkable twice-a-year one-man-show. It's editor, Dimitris Spyridonos, is a guy worth meeting both electronically and in person and he has an excellent sense of humor.

oh, and by the way, hilarious story, even with all those things gone missing at the translation!

Anonymous said...

Hello, Gareth!

I'm one of the members commenting on the (greek translation of your) story and I can assure you, reading it was a very pleasurable experience! I'm looking forward to reading something more of yours (in Greek or in English, either would do fine!)

Gareth D Jones said...

Thanks everyone, and nice to hear from you again Efthimia.

I'm amazed that 'Fool Britannia'could be translated as it depends a lot on British culture and deliberate spelling mistakes!