Sjón

**hdw** · 08-Aug-2011, 14:23

Sjón is the pen-name of Icelandic novelist, poet and lyricist Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson. I've been looking for information about him online as he will be appearing in just over two weeks at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF). I'll post about him later today on the European Literature thread.

I found an interview with him in which he answers a question about literary translation -

SP: Congratulations on being nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. What are your thoughts on translation? There is always an element of compromise involved, do you find that difficult?

S: Thank you. I think that the translation of literature is one of the greatest projects our species have undertaken. It satisfies elemental needs which seem to be at the core of our being, that is to swap stories, to get news from faraway places, to cry over the misfortune of strangers, to laugh at the mishaps of rascals. There seems to be a growing interest in world literature and it might stem from people's wish to look beyond the global news media's fragmented and clichéd presentation of exotic and ravaged places. Regarding the translation process itself I very much enjoy working with the translators of my books. I know I do not make their work easy as I never think about if a book will travel or not while writing it, so I do not hesitate to use the most obscure, nearly forgotten, untranslatable 17th century term if it happens to make a sentence sound better. How the translators always manage to escape from those traps amazes me. Being brought up on translated books I know that when the book is well written in its foster language the reader will not realize that a compromise was made. I once witnessed an incredibly long and boring conversation between Jose Saramago and and Icelandic moderator about how much he suffered because some of his translators insisted on placing the commas in the text according to the grammatical rules of the target language. I couldn't care less and imagine most readers do not miss out on much ...

Harry

**Liam** · 19-Mar-2012, 19:16

Another [upcoming] translation of one of Sjón's novels: The Whispering Muse, trans. Victoria Cribb:

"The year is 1949 and Valdimar Haraldsson, an eccentric Icelander with elevated ideas about the influence of fish consumption on Nordic civilisation, has had the singular good fortune to be invited to join a Danish merchant ship on its way to the Black Sea.

Among the crew is the mythical hero Caeneus, disguised as the second mate.

Every evening after dinner he entrances his fellow travellers with the tale of how he sailed with the fabled vessel the Argo on the Argonauts' legendary quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

En route the heroes happened upon the island of Lemnos and discovered to their astonishment, and considerable delight, that it was inhabited solely by women.

An ode to storytelling, The Whispering Muse evokes a time gone by with wit and verve, from the rogues and oddities among sea-faring types, to the long-lost romance and mystique of ancient mythology."

**Eric** · 20-Mar-2012, 13:04

Wouldn't you be a bit peeved, Liam, if you found out that Lemnos had the social composition it does...? I wonder what real island with a similar name Sjón might have been thinking of.

Anyway, Vicky Cribb does one more Sjón. It's good when a particular translator gets to do several books by the same author, especially when author and translator liaise. They both came to Nordic Translation Conference in London back in 2008. So I hope they turn up again next year, when the next one is scheduled, this time at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (England), my old alma mater.

**pesahson** · 21-Oct-2012, 11:52

Originally Posted by hdw

SP: Congratulations on being nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. What are your thoughts on translation? There is always an element of compromise involved, do you find that difficult?

S: Thank you. I think that the translation of literature is one of the greatest projects our species have undertaken. It satisfies elemental needs which seem to be at the core of our being, that is to swap stories, to get news from faraway places, to cry over the misfortune of strangers, to laugh at the mishaps of rascals. There seems to be a growing interest in world literature and it might stem from people's wish to look beyond the global news media's fragmented and clichéd presentation of exotic and ravaged places.

I really like that.

I’ve recently finished the only book that is available in Polish- The Blue Fox. In Icelandic and in Polish the title is almost the same „Skugga Baldur”, with An Icelandic Tale added in Polish, in English it became The Blue Fox. Quite a departure.
It’s only about 100 pages long and in the first part, Sjon puts just a couple of sentences on a single page so it’s a really quick read. The first part, which is a description of hunting for a blue fox by the protagonist Skugga, was my least favorite, but then it picked up. There is a great depiction of hallucinations experienced by Skugga Baldur, it is wonderfully imaginative and surreal. It was my favorite part of the book.
Overall, I recommend it.

Has anyone read any of his other novels?

**Daniel del Real** · 22-Oct-2012, 21:19

I read that same novel and thought it was fascinating. It's hard to find his books here and when you do, they're really expensive and that's the only reason Skugga Baldur is the only novel I've read so far.