Finnish Literature

[Eric]

I'll see what I can find next time I'm in the public library. Uppsala has a fairly good Finnish section. A couple of stacks.

A question that I find interesting: in your experience, Lola, does the translator have any say as to what gets translated, as well as the target-language and source-language publishing houses, FILI, Stilton, and so on?

 

[Lola]

I've given my opinion to English-language publishers in the form of reader's reports, and I may (or may not) have influenced Finnish publishers and agents in their decisions about which books to prioritize in marketing to Americans, but thus far I haven't been able to initiate interest in a book purely through my own suggestion or submission to an English-language publisher. On the other hand, I haven't really tried to do so, since as a relatively new translator I haven't had many contacts in publishing. Perhaps that will change over time.

I would be interested in hearing what your experience and the experience of other translators has been.

 

[Eric]

I too would be interested in the experiences of others. I feel that you move forward gradually in this area as you get older and have acquired more experience of the source and also the target language.

The target language and its hinterland of culture is perhaps the area that is neglected most by the national organisations that promote literature abroad. This is why I always hope that target-language publishers can understand that literary translators build up a knowledge of both the source- and target-language cultures over the years, and should therefore be able to liaise in-depth with both the national promotional agencies and indeed literary agents.

It would seem that translators are often employed once others have already decided which books should be translated. As it is patently obvious that monolingual British and American publishers have to rely totally on the opinions of others to assess books written in smaller languages, it seems a pity that translators are not consulted more than they are.

But as an older translator, I have managed to persuade publishers to take a few books. So do not despair when you are young. As you get older and obtain more contacts, you will be able to exercise an amount of influence. But that amount still seems short of the ideal.

 

[Lola]

Would that I were young. To paraphrase Jefferson, I may not be a young woman, but I am a young translator.

 

[Eric]

The sad thing is that while writers start practising in their twenties, translators don't find their feet and build up a solid amount of experience until much later in life. This is exacerbated by the fact that some academics would love to translate while working at universities and writing all those meaningless papers to keep themselves competitive with their rivals for tenure, but they are too exhausted by that and by marking student essays (mostly nicked off the internet nowadays, no doubt), and spend some forty years not being able to translate.

So not until they retire can academics devote their efforts to full-time translation. If the profession of translator were better recognised and funded, people who don't really want to teach endless year-one intake eighteen-year-olds, could drop out of the academic rat-race and perform the very necessary task of translating literature.

I'd love to translate something from Finnish myself, but realise that my vocabulary is still wanting. So the nearest I can get to that is by translating things by Finland-Swedes, as Swedish is one of my best foreign languages. I have quite a bit of knowledge about Finland, having lived there for a total of four years in five different towns, but I'm still struggling with the language of the 94% majority.

 

[Eric]

Lola, I presume you saw your name mentioned in the print version of Hesari on 29th March in connection with the Pulkkinen translation. It is typical of newspaper editing that when I saw the same article, slightly abridged, on the online website, your name was no longer there. Clearly, translators are not as important to shout about and namedrop as the names of The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books.

In the print version it said:

Sen on englannintanut Seattlessa asuva Lola M. Rogers. Sama kääntäjä on myös englannintanut Grove/Atlanticin kustantaman Sofi Oksasen "Puhdistuksen" nimellä "Purge".

 

[Liam]

Great, now you blew her cover, .

 

[Lola]

Thanks, Eric for thoughtfully letting me know about the HS mention, but I have a small coterie of excitable spies in Finland who rush to their computer keyboards at any mention of my name in the press, so I had three messages about it the next day.

 

[Eric]

Well, Lola, you deserve your little coterie, as only you and the Jeremiahs seem to be making much headway with getting Finnish literature visible in the English-speaking world just at present. I'm afraid that most people on this website haven't got past Paasilinna and his hare yet. Otherwise, Finnish literature (with the exception of Waltari) is not much discussed. But of course, people have to be able to read things in translation (mostly English here) to discuss them. I'm sure people will find your translation in due course.

I've ordered the original, i.e. "Totta" from the town library. Strangely enough, they have two copies, each in branch libraries in the countryside, but no copy in the central library in town (i.e. Uppsala). At the moment I'm reading an interesting book, non-fiction, called "Salainen sotapäiväkirja - Itä-Karjalasta 1941-1942" (Secret War Diaries. Eastern Karelia 1941-1942) about some intelligence officer who went over to the Soviet part of Karelia to have a look, as the Finns were thinking of annexing some bit or other with the permission of the inhabitants. I don't usually read all the endless WWII and Continuation War stuff, or War Children in Sweden (sotalapset) material, or even the books about the lost marches of Karelia itself, but the comment "julkaiseminen toistaiseksi kielletty" (publication until further notice forbidden) did make me curious. And the diaries are personal, not just routine things.

The Teos publishing house still seems to be publishing interesting books. But in general, I haven't really caught up with what is being published in the Finnish language over in Finland. Is this Tiina Raevaara worth reading? Or Johanna Sinisalo's "Enkelten verta" (The Blood of Angels)?

 

[Lola]

Unfortunately, I haven't read Enkelten verta yet, nor any works by Tiina Raevaara, so I can't advise you. Raevaara's books do sound intriguing, though.

It's a bit difficult for me to keep up with Finland's book scene from here. I end up reading the books that publishers send me. It's so expensive to buy them from Finland! The books they send are those they feel are worthy of export, and are thus (usually) good books, at least. I had made a resolution to try to read all the Finlandia nominees each year, and have managed less than half of them. Good books all.

 

[Eric]

When I was in Finland recently, I bought a couple of books. First I found "Totta" in a cheap paperback edition, then I found "True". Both of these I found at Akateeminen Kirjakauppa. So I can read the book and improve my Finnish vocabulary at the same time.

Because of increased immigration nowadays, several more useful books have been published to what was available when I was last in Helsinki, many years ago. One useful book for foreigners that hope to actually understand what people are saying is called Oikeeta suomee - Dictionary of spoken Finnish, which has a useful introduction explaining various regular contractions in the spoken, as opposed to written, language. As in any language, there is some difference between the written and spoken versions, the differences often involving shortening things. Written Finnish does strike me as exceptionally long. Sometimes there are colloquial or slang expressions which are completely different to the standard language. Helsinki slang, for instance, has a lot of Swedish words in it.​

 

[Liam]

Oh god, this should give Eric a boner.

 

[Eric]

As a Brit, I'm not sure what a boner is. But if you mean an erection, you've got some funny ideas about the excitement of languages (for cunning linguists?) as opposed to sex.

Seriously though, thanks for drawing my attention to this June event and the 2014 Frankfurt thing. While I'm not yet good enough to translate from Finnish, I have just translated a Finland-Swedish play, and a Finland-Swedish children's book. And I'm doing excerpts from Finland-Swedish novels. So by 2014 I should be the sort of translator that attends such meetings.

You will notice from the photos that the vast majority of literary translators (this is what this event was about, not those translating legal or business texts) are women. I've never really worked out why.

 

[Lola]

I attended the conference, and it was terrific. The support that the Finnish government gives to translators (through FILI) is phenomenal. I've written about it on my blog.

 

[Eric]

Hello, mush-brained you. (Funny thing to say next to a photo.) There's no doubt about it: Finland is one of the countries that understands the necessity to get its literature translated. Both for cultural and geo-political reasons, no doubt. I'm glad the conference was a success. When's the next one?

Why I am asking is because I'm eager to join the next time round, when my Finnish is up to scratch. I'm putting efforts into improving it, as I realised some months ago just how little I really did know. But by the time they organise the next extravaganza in a few years' time, I'll have enough Finnish to join the into-English club.

But I have not been idle with the Finland-Swedes. I translated a play and a children's book from that brand of Swedish this year. Though neither have been published yet. Nevertheless, unlike my Finnish, my Swedish is fluent.

I still find Finnish a phenomenally difficult language compared with most others I can read or otherwise have a smattering of. The things they do to both the verb and the noun cannot be mentioned in polite company. There's a lot of potty training involved, before one can manage to produce things elegantly on one's own grammatically, and especially concerning the vocabulary, which is amazingly purist. Finnish sometimes has a parallel international word, but many words, even in the field of medicine and computers seem to have Finno-Ugrian roots.

 

[Lola]

Hello Eric,

The conference actually included a large contingent of translators of Finland Swedish lit as well as Finland Finnish. Don't hesitate to contact FILI directly about the possibility of contributing to Books from Finland magazine, if that interests you, or applying for grants for sample translations if you have a piece you'd particularly like to translate and try to get published. If you are ever in Helsinki, write ahead and arrange to visit FILI. That's how I first made contact with them. Then they asked me to send in a CV and some of my translations and, having read them, commissioned a few translations from me for BfF. We've been fast friends ever since.

 

[Eric]

Yes, that's a good idea, Lola. I'll send them my CV, including the play, and excerpts from the children's book I've translated from (Finland-) Swedish. But I'm not sitting still with Finnish either. I translated a short-story a few days ago, just to see whether I could do it. I'll have to see what others think of the result. The play, by Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo (a Finland-Swede) is already on the Labbet website which can be viewed publicly, if you register with them, log in, or similar:

http://labbet.fi/pjasbanken/index.p...ublishedStart=&publishedEnd=&x=-1&y=-1&id=261

Labbet is a rather specialist website, in that it caters specifically for people who want to read (or perform) Finland-Swedish plays. Such plays, because of the minority status of the language, are a bit of a rarity in both Finland and neighbouring Sweden (where people know alarmingly little in general about Finland, as a rule).

 

[Eric]

Just out of interest, Lola, I'm still going methodically through those four books I mentioned some while back called "Harjoitus tekee mestarin", by Marja-Liisa Saunela, and which are a great help for people who want enough exercises (with answers to check on progress) for each grammatical point. I've been tackling the participles in the second volume of the four, and am, at last, beginning to get those memory-strainers right. At the moment I'm doing the so-called participle of negation (kieltopartisiippi). I can't really imagine people saying, rather than writing, words such as "tuulettamattomassa", "näkymättömällä", "tiedostamattomia", and "pilaantumattomana" in real-life conversations in the pub, but maybe a couple of beers help the flow of thoughts.

 

[Lola]

Hello Eric,

I think some of the words you mention wouldn't sound at all strange in conversation. It's difficult to say which sounds more natural – "in an unventilated house" (tuulettamattomassa talossa) or "in a house that isn't ventilated" (talossa, jota ei tuuleteta), and näkymättömällä seems like the most logical choice if you're describing writing "with invisible ink", for instance. It's such a common word that even I might use it without batting an eye. I'm unlikely to use a word like tuulettamattomassa without pausing at great length to put the thing together, but I don't think it would pose any problem for a Finn. Being a non-native speaker, however, my instincts are not to be trusted.

As far as anticipating the next big translator's conference, I think we may have to wait for a long time. Finland's theme country status in Frankfurt in 2014 is the kind of motivator that doesn't come around very often.

 

[Eric]

Frankfurt is indeed the spur. I'm still fighting Finnish participles and have now bought Books 3 and 4, to supplement the other two. My problem with the participles is twofold. a) it's hard to remember which vowels you leave out, and which consonants are doubled or not or mutated, depending on which root you are starting from; and b) the inefficiency, syllables versus meaning, of such particles in the oblique cases.

I've actually translated a story from Finnish now, and sent it to the author for approval. I feel that she was pretty positive about most of it. I had, of course, misunderstood things here and there, but as a whole I think I've succeeded. I didn't notice a surfeit of participles there.

One problem I have is interference between Estonian and Finnish. This rarely occurs when the text is in front of me on the page, even though "ilu", "raamat", "linn", "vaim", and "hilja" are not the same as "ilo", "Raamattu", "linna", "vaimo" and "hiljaa". There are quite a few faux amis between the two languages. If I try to speak, i.e. generate a grammatical sentence in either language, I start throwing in things from the other one. This can lead to confusion. Muidugi, I mean tietysti. Unfortunately, I cannot quite shut off one altogether and concentrate on the other. I translate from one and I'm learning the other. People have the same problems with Spanish and Portuguese, Dutch and German, Russian and Polish, and so on. Only people such as the Hungarians and Basques are fairly safe from faux amis, as no one else on Earth speaks like they do.