Future Imperfect: Fictional Translators in Science-Fiction Films and Novels

While science-fiction, being a genre often concerned with imagining encounters with nonhuman races, could be logically considered a privileged place for a reflection about mental and linguistic barriers of an intercultural (intergalactic!) communication, translation issues are rarely a focal point of s-f novels and tend to be utterly ignored in s-f films, where the invention of a “universal translator” usually erase all communication problems. This contribution shall deal with the motives behind this scarce interest for the subject and it will also analyse the difference of the approach to the topic in s-f literature and film. The fact that even when s-f works try to explore the problem of linguistic and communication relativism the figure of a translator rarely comes into the picture will be discussed as well. The analysis will be based on works of Polish writer Stanisław Lem (an author renowned for his attention to communication issues) as far as literary s-f is concerned and on vast material furnished by Star Trek television series – especially the last one, Star Trek Enterprise, the only one in which a figure of a human translator is actually featured and assigned an important part in the film - for the part of audiovisual products