Una conversazione con Massimo Soumaré sulla traduzione della fantascienza giapponese in Italia

In this interview, Iannuzzi and Soumaré discuss the small number of professional translators from Japanese into Italian in the field of entertainment literature. This makes it particularly difficult to introduce works to an Italian readership. Additionally, the narrative modes and procedures of Japanese writers are different from those found in Italian literature. Some fantasy works such as mangas, though, have been widely translated. According to Soumaré, a translator should act as a cultural mediator while leaving concepts from the original texts as intact as possible. Soumaré mentions his editing of a series of volumes called Alia, for which he chose writers who might appeal to Italian readers unfamiliar with the Japanese fantasy genre. Among these writers are Sakyō Komatsu, Yasutaka Tsutsui and Shin’ichi Hoshi. He notices that the impact of Japanese works on Italian readers is often visual, determined by films and animations. He believes that, in contrast to the situation in Italy, entertainment literature in Japan has a cultural space of its own due to academic literary critics such as Takayuki Tatsumi. Japanese publishers, too, are more prepared than Italian publishers to risk publishing unusual works and little-known authors. He finally mentions some of his recent translations from the work of Okina Kamino, Ryō Suzukaze, and Jūza Unno.