Quandaries of a translator

[hdw]

This article in Swedish Book Review 2004:1 highlights the kind of quandary a translator can be faced with, and how one resourceful translator came up with a solution.

http://www.swedishbookreview.com/article-2004-1-vinde.asp

Harry Martinsson and Eyvind Johnson were controversial joint-winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1974. Controversial, because both were on the Nobel Committee, but apart from that there was a lot of ill-informed bleating about these "obscure" [i.e. to British literati] Scandinavian writers shouldering aside more fancied candidates for the prize.

Harry

[Eric]

Although I have read little of either Martinson or Johnson (I always think, for some reason, of Masters & Johnson) I don't think that some of the better infomed critics (most of whom had arse-elbow knowledge of Swedish literature, anyway) were "bleating" about the "obscurity" of the books, but about the fact that both of the recipients were sitting on the very Nobel committee that was awarding the prize at the time, if I've got my facts straight.

Does anyone know more about who Naomi Walford was? Biographical details, and so on. At the one-day conference I attended a couple of days ago, mention was made of those lady-translators who didn't always stick to the text. Was Walford the exception that proves the rule?

Incidentally, the ? sound, a sound like the consonant in the German "ich", I think, doesn't exist in the Finland-Swedish brand of Swedish; they use an "English" ch-sound instead: tsh?rna versus the Swedish-Swedish ??rna. But this phonetic difference hasn't inhibited Finland-Swedish literature. (I won't mention ?land...). When many educated Swedes from the central part of Sweden say the word for "shit", it sounds to me like "khweet". But the Finland-Swedes pronounce it like our thin bed covering, twixt blanket and pyjamas (or bum, if you sleep naked, and face-down).

[hdw]

People will tell you that Swedish doesn't have the guttural sound heard in Scots "loch" (and German Loch), but the -sk- sound in m?nniska, as many Swedes pronounce it, sounds pretty like it to me.

Try saying sj? sj?sjuka sj?m?n sj?nk i sj?n without blowing out a candle flame or sounding like Tony Benn.

Harry

[Eric]

I think that the seven seasick seamen sank into the lake thing, in the kind of educated Swedish most of get to hear, sounds like:

khw?? khw??-khw?wka khwunk ee khwunn

That's not a perfect rendering phonetically, but that's roughly what I hear.

But the ? denotes the softish guttural of the German "ich" whilst, apart from what I hear as a following double-u ("w") sound, the "kh" in my pseudo-phonetics is a more back guttural, as in the Scots "loch" or German "Ach", as Harry suggests.

[Eric]

To return to Martinson & Johnson, why was "Nässlorna blomma" translated as "Flowering Nettles"? I can, of course, understand why the translator avoided "Blooming Nettles", but what's wrong with "The Nettles Bloom" or "The Nettles Flower" as the Spanish translation has?

It has to be said that for years I just didn't "get" the grammar of "Nässlorna blomma" until someone pointed out that the Swedish verb once had a plural. Nowadays, I am thoroughly familiar with such plurals, having read Strindberg in the unannotated version with regard to spelling and conjugation.

Ann-Marie Vinde makes some interesting points. One thing I note is that she rightly says that English does not have the phonetic sound [ç], i.e. the way that tj, kj and k in front of soft vowels are pronounced. However, not all of Sweden pronounces it thus. In parts of Sweden (and Finland), these letters are pronounced like the English ch as in "church". We have a similar phenomenon in England, when it is said that bath and path are pronounced with a long "a"-sound,when the northern half of England gives them a short "a"-sound.

There is always a danger in suggesting that in any country there is only one pronunciation (usually that of educated people from the capital city). For beginners, this is a god-send, but it doesn't represent the full reality of speech in any country.

[hdw]

One thing I note is that she rightly says that English does not have the phonetic sound [ç], i.e. the way that tj, kj and k in front of soft vowels are pronounced. However, not all of Sweden pronounces it thus. In parts of Sweden (and Finland), these letters are pronounced like the English ch as in "church".


In one of my advanced conversation classes in Sweden I had a dental surgeon who was brushing up his English preparatory to emigrating to Australia. He was fed-up paying a huge whack of his earnings in tax to finance the Social Democrats' paradise on earth. His first name (can't exactly call it a Christian name) was Kjell, pronounced with the initial sound that Eric refers to. He told me he was going to call himself Chell in Australia, with an initial ch- as in church. I suppose it was better than Shell, which apart from the reviled oil firm sounds like somebody who goes out on hen nights with her mates Tracy and Kayleigh.

Going off at a crazed tangent as is my wont, one of the mind-bending things about learning Faroese, for somebody who knows Swedish, is that the Swedish word hos, meaning 'at (someone's place)' - and pronounced "hoose" (a Scottish house) - has an equivalent in Faroese spelt hjá, but pronounced "chaw", as in 'want a chaw of my baccy, pardner?' And in Faroese it is also used in place of a possessive pronoun (his, her, its).

So you can say "Heima hjá Kristini", 'at Kristin's place' or 'in Kristin's home', but you can also say "Kristin stendur við bilin hjá sær", 'Kristin is standing beside her car'; which is outwith the scope of Swedish hos.

Excuse this linguistic pedantry, but us Scandinavianists are fascinated by such quirks of language.

Harry

[hdw]

One thing I note is that she rightly says that English does not have the phonetic sound [ç], i.e. the way that tj, kj and k in front of soft vowels are pronounced. However, not all of Sweden pronounces it thus. In parts of Sweden (and Finland), these letters are pronounced like the English ch as in "church".


In one of my advanced conversation classes in Sweden I had a dental surgeon who was brushing up his English preparatory to emigrating to Australia. He was fed-up paying a huge whack of his earnings in tax to finance the Social Democrats' paradise on earth. His first name (can't exactly call it a Christian name) was Kjell, pronounced with the initial sound that Eric refers to. He told me he was going to call himself Chell in Australia, with an initial ch- as in church. I suppose it was better than Shell, which apart from the reviled oil firm sounds like somebody who goes out on hen nights with her mates Tracy and Kayleigh.

Going off at a crazed tangent as is my wont, one of the mind-bending things about learning Faroese, for somebody who knows Swedish, is that the Swedish word hos, meaning 'at (someone's place)' - and pronounced "hoose" (a Scottish house) - has an equivalent in Faroese spelt hjá, but pronounced "chaw", as in 'want a chaw of my baccy, pardner?' And in Faroese it is also used in place of a possessive pronoun (his, her, its).

So you can say "Heima hjá Kristini", 'at Kristin's place' or 'in Kristin's home', but you can also say "Kristin stendur við bilin hjá sær", 'Kristin is standing beside her car'; which is outwith the scope of Swedish hos.

Excuse this linguistic pedantry, but us Scandinavianists are fascinated by such quirks of language.

Harry

[Eric]

There's nowt like a bit of Scandinavian pedantry, as they say down in Yorkshire. In Yorkshire they also say "sithee" meaning "look!", which is almost identical to "si du" used in the Swedish-speaking province of Finland called Ostrobothnia. So words get around.

I haven't tackled my Faroese dictionary-cum-grammar yet. But "chaw" is not what you'd expect from, say, a knowledge of Icelandic. In fact, I've not been back to the second-hand bookshop where I bought it, which is only about fifty metres from where the Luton psychopath set his car alight before doing himself in on a sidestreet last weekend. (You will note that he set off two explosions.)

I've not had any translatory quandaries today, as I've not translated a thing. It's snowing prettily outside and dusk is approaching, at 14:30 in the afternoon because of winter time. And I feel more like a drink than a translation. (I mean to say: I wish to drink rather than to translate; I do not imagine myself to be either a glass of vodka or wine, or a piece of paper.)

Even the ambiguity two sentences ago is a translation quandary for someone translating out of English, something I never do. "To feel like something..." involves an punning idiom that cannot be replicated in all languages. Word play is a huge and problematical area for the translator. If you're very lucky, they have the same idiom in both the source and the target language. But this is rarely the case.

[hdw]

I've not had any translatory quandaries today, as I've not translated a thing. It's snowing prettily outside and dusk is approaching

I'm glad it's snowing prettily for you. If you check out the Internut you'll find that swathes (or in Guardian-speak, swaths) of Britain have been brought to a standstill again because of the white stuff, and the Met Office issued a emergency red-alert type warning for this part of east-central Scotland. Our central-heating-boiler has failed twice recently, leaving us without heating and hot water in sub-zero temperatures, and I just phoned my elder sister today, who lives an hour's drive away in Fife, to cancel our proposed Christmas get-together. We had planned to drive through there and bring her back here for the festive weekend. At the moment we wouldn't even attempt to back our car down the driveway let alone try to drive anywhere.

Harry

[Eric]

Thanks for that, Harry. It's almost stopped snowing here. I think I've just arranged my Christmas dinner. I will only have to walk 30 metres, maybe twice your driveway. But I wouldn't fancy an hour's drive. What are the clever dicks at the University of East Anglia saying now about global warming? The snow came two months early here in Sweden, after a sweltering summer. Isn't that the good old-fashioned changing of the seasons?

[hdw]

It's what in days of yore used to be called "winter", but that kind of old-fashioned English is out of favour now.

On the Radio Four news, anchorman Ed Stourton asked a travel expert, who's to blame for the chaos at Heathrow and Gatwick, is it the individual airlines or the BAA? The guy answered, "Neither, it's the snow".

Harry

[Eric]

This snow chaos theme is not confined to British and Swedish newspapers.

Even the Finns, and they know about snow, allow their more hysterical jourrnos to have free range on the front pages. For instance, that loudly shouting tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, literally has the headline Hirmupakkaset ja uusi myrsky! With free exclamation mark. This means: Dreadful freeze and new storm! This is all part of the Joulun sääextra: hurja ennuste, i.e. Christmas (or Yule) weather extra: wild prognosis. And what is the "wild prognosis"? Well, the predictable chaos on the trains, planes, minus 30, and so on. There are pages of it. As Vanda Airport in Helsinki is not much affected, the desperate Finnish journos have had to resort to photos and text covering Frankfurt and Heathrow, and interviews with stranded Finns, like one at Frankfurt from the absurdly small Finnish town of Orimattila. Further front-page news includes: Christmas travel threatened; Drivers,take these things with you; Take a look at the New Year weather; Children test sledges.

I have no quandaries or qualms about translating this exciting information from the Finnish. It's all good practice. Why do I buy such crappy tabloids? Because the Finnish is easier than in works of literature.