Catherine Venner is a translator of German based in Durham. However, she has a sideline in Swedish and became an Associate Member of SELTA in 2018. SELTA’s Edinburgh workshop offered her the chance to get her feet wet with colleagues working in Swedish-English.

At the end of October, I travelled north to Edinburgh for a very special event: I was going to the SELTA Emerging Voices literary translation workshop and Swedish Speed Bookclub. It was to be my first time attending any SELTA event, so I had been looking forward to it with a mixture of curiosity and a little nervousness, not to mention the fact that I had no idea what a Speed Bookclub was!

As it turns out Speed Bookclub is a fantastic way of getting to know books and their authors in a more informal setting. SELTA had invited four authors; Balsam Karam, Adrian Perera, Kayo Mpoyi and Joel Mauricio Isabel Ortiz to attend the Speed Bookclub and workshop. They are all debut novelists whose work has not yet been translated into English, so members of SELTA provided handy translations of excerpts from each novel so that the Speed Bookclub was accessible to everyone whether you read Swedish or not.

As participants, we separated into small groups of four or five and visited each author and translator at their table for about 20 minutes before moving on to the next table. Although I had initially felt slightly daunted by the prospect of such an intimate setting with the authors, they and the translators were happy to fill us in on the synopsis of their books and to talk about the general themes running through their work. The authors, translators and participants enjoyed chatting about these topics so much that there was often a reluctance to stop when it was time to move on to the next table. Having visited many book presentations and panels before, the Speed Bookclub was a refreshing change that offers people like me, who feel very self-conscious asking questions in front of an audience, the chance to have my curiosity about the novels satisfied in a friendly and relaxed setting. The conversations and ideas carried on into the following wine reception sponsored by the Scandinavian Studies Section at the University of Edinburgh.

The next morning, we met bright and early at 9 o’clock in the rooms back at the university to start our translation workshops. In attendance were not only members of SELTA, but also students, members of the public and translators from other Scandinavian languages, who were all curious to learn more about the challenges of translating the “emerging voices” of our four authors. After a fascinating presentation about diversity in literature by Anja Tröger, the morning workshops began with Balsam Karam and Adrian Perera presenting their novels. Balsam’s “Event Horizon”, driven by her love of astronomy, illustrates the problems facing social outcasts whatever the place and time, while Adrian’s “Mama” set in 90s Swedish speaking Finland is designed as a horror story about what happens when there is no common language. We then split into two groups, each with one of the authors, to discuss the novels and translation excerpts in more detail.

After a lovely lunch and some good chats among the participants, the afternoon session kicked off with Kayo Mpoyi and Joel Mauricio Isabel Ortiz introducing us to their work. Kayo’s “Mai Means Water” is based upon the myths told in her family, while Joel’s “A Story of a Son” is an exploration of how bad things can get and is definitely not autobiographical. The following workshops with the authors provided valuable feedback about how they as authors would like to see their work presented in another language and how, as a translator, you can sometimes set off on the wrong track and only realise it right at the end.

Before we knew it, the workshops were over and we were all heading back to our various homes across the country and beyond. As a first-timer, I absolutely loved attending this event, meeting the friendly and welcoming members of SELTA and taking part in extremely interesting workshops that provided input for translation whatever your working languages (for the sake of full disclosure, I should also add that I am actually a German translator, who reads and loves Scandinavian languages). To conclude, I would like to thank Ian for organising such a wonderful event, the authors for their input on our translations and everyone who helped make this an absolutely wonderful event.

Participants had prepared their own translations of a brief excerpt from Elin’s 2016 novel Gånglåt (‘A Walking Melody’) and met to discuss their interpretations and word choices.

The English translation here is by SELTA member Marie Andersson. Scroll down for Elin’s original Swedish.

What exactly does the Swedish word sly (pronounced somewhat like ‘slee’, meaning ‘brushwood’ or ‘undergrowth’) refer to?

What English word best describes the vegetation that is so abundant in the wooded landscapes in the north of Sweden, where my books are set?

How tall is it? How dense?

What could be hidden in it?

A small cat, an escaped criminal, or perhaps even a two-metre-tall elk, about to run out into the road and pose mortal danger to an unsuspecting driver?

Indeed, what could be hidden in the sly? And what could it signify?

What does it represent, this brushwood or undergrowth that appears so frequently in my books?

Perhaps my sly is more about people’s inner state than the actual vegetation out there in the natural world? These were some of the thoughts that I brought with me back to my desk in Jämtland in Sweden after participating in the SELTA seminar in London in May.

I don’t know exactly how we came to talk about brushwood, the enthusiastic (passionate!) translators in my workshop group and I, but I think what triggered it was something related to people and what grows both inside and around a person (we did also discuss sexual slang terms and little cottages for rent amongst the mosquitoes!). You may think a discussion about brushwood could be easily dealt with, as it only concerns some little birches, or tiny goat willow or rowan saplings, or perhaps some newly sprouted fir trees in a row, but it turned out – as so often happens when it comes to words, languages and stories – that there was a whole world concealed in that sly.

A world that is about what we see and what we don’t. In each other, or in our surroundings.

Somehow for me, who grew up in rural Jämtland, it is only natural that brushwood represents deserted farming country. In a depopulated region the brushwood is left free to grow wild. It swallows up fields and consumes gravel roads and even whole houses, where no one wants to live anymore.

Thus, I believe that brushwood stands for a kind of sadness in my stories.

Sadness for what has become of everything, all this life that once was lived.

But brushwood is also vitality – as anyone who has ever tried to combat it will know. It never gives up. You can cut it down to the ground and try to dig up all its roots, and yet it keeps coming back. The moment you turn your back, it shoots up, tall and dense.

Nature has made brushwood unstoppable. That makes it impressive in itself.

And quite a lot like mankind.

And like a story that always finds a way forward.

I took these thoughts about brushwood – the translators’ interesting discussion about the value in finding exactly the right expression for Swedish sly, plus one single word’s importance with regard to context and implied meaning – back with me from London and the SELTA seminar, right into the final touches to my forthcoming novel Krokas. Here brushwood, trees and shrubs together actually conceal a person, but also eventually make it possible for the central characters to show human kindness.

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Vad är egentligen ”sly”?

Vilket engelskt ord passar bäst för att beskriva den vegetation som det finns så gott om i det skogslandskap i norra Sverige, där mina böcker utspelar sig?

Hur hög är slyn? Hur tät?

Vad kan denna sly dölja?

En liten katt, en brottsling på rymmen eller kanske en till och med en två meter hög älg, som strax ska störta ut på vägen och bli till en livsfara för en intet ont anande bilist?

Ja, vad kan slyn dölja? Och vad kan den visa på?

Vad står den för, denna sly som så ofta förekommer i mina böcker?

Handlar min sly kanske mer om människornas inre tillstånd än om den faktiska växtligheten där ute i naturen? Ja, det var några av de funderingar jag tog med mig hem till Sverige, Jämtland och mitt skrivbord efter att ha deltagit på SELTA:s seminarium i London i maj.

Jag vet inte varför vi kom att diskutera just sly, de engagerade (passionerade!) översättarna i min workshop-grupp och jag, men jag tror att det var det där med människan och vad som växer både inuti och runt henne som satte igång oss (vi diskuterade ju könsord också … Och små stugor att hyra, mitt bland myggen!). Man kan ju tycka att ett samtal om sly vore enkelt överstökat när det bara rör sig om några enstaka tunna björkar eller några små skott av sälg eller rönn eller kanske alldeles nyfödda små granar på rad, men det visade sig – som så ofta när man har med ord, språk och berättelser att göra – att en hel värld dolde sig i den där slyn.

En värld som har med det vi ser och inte ser att göra. Hos varandra eller i omgivningen.

För mig, som är uppvuxen på den jämtländska landsbygden, är det på något sätt självklart att sly står för en övergiven jordbruksbygd. I en öde trakt låter man slyn härja fritt. Slyn slukar åkrar och tuggar i sig både grusvägar och hela hus, där ingen vill bo längre.

Därför står sly för en sorts sorg, tror jag, i mina berättelser.

Sorg över vad det blev av allting, allt detta liv som en gång levdes.

Men sly är livskraft också – det vet alla som försökt hålla tillbaka sly. Den ger aldrig upp. Du kan såga av den längs med marken och försöka gräva upp rötterna, men den kommer alltid tillbaka. Så fort du tittar åt ett annat håll växer den sig tät och hög.

Den är av naturen obetvinglig. Slyn är imponerande på så sätt.

Och påminner inte så lite om människan.

Och om berättelsen, som alltid letar sig fram.

Jag tog med mig tankarna om sly – översättarnas intressanta diskussion om värdet av att finna exakt rätt ord för sly samt vad ett enskilt litet ord bär med sig av kontext och underförstådd innebörd – hem från London och SELTA-seminariet, rakt in i slutförandet av min kommande roman Krokas. Där döljer sly, träd och buskar tillsammans bokstavligen en människa, men blir också till det som slutligen gör det möjligt för huvudpersonerna att visa medmänsklighet.

Sooner or later every translator of Swedish literature has to grapple with descriptions of the natural world. Even in books that are not primarily about nature, the Swedish landscape, weather, flora and fauna often appear in the course of the narrative. Just how fluffy or slushy is that snow, and how solid is the ice? What sorts of trees are present in the forest? What kinds of fish are biting in the lake? And how can we translators convey all that to English-speaking readers?

With that theme in mind, SELTA invited four Swedish authors – Göran Bergengren, Jonas Gren, Elin Olofsson and Therése Söderlind – to come to the UK for a two-day programme of translation workshops and other events. All four of these authors are well established in their native Sweden but still unpublished in English. While they work in a variety of genres spanning fiction, poetry, essays and children’s books, they all address the natural world in their writing to a greater or lesser extent.

We were lucky enough to secure a slot in the Free Word Centre’s Wanderlust programme of international literary events. Their ‘speed book clubbing’ format was ideal for giving audience members an opportunity to hear all four authors speak about their work up close. Everyone was seated at four round tables. The authors, each accompanied by a SELTA member who had translated a brief extract from one of their works, introduced themselves and their writing and responded to questions and comments from the group. After around 20 minutes a bell rang out, signalling it was time for the authors and translators to move to the next table and meet a new group of readers. The dynamic format kept interest levels high, and eventually all the groups had a chance to engage with each of the visiting authors. If you missed this exciting event – tickets sold out well in advance! – you can still get a sneak peek at the pieces that were specially translated for the evening on the Free Word Centre website.

The next morning, SELTA members and the authors descended on the Swedish Embassy in London for an intensive day of discussions and talks about writing and translation. First we heard presentations by Elin Olofsson and Therése Söderlind about their novels. Sweden’s rural north figures prominently in the works of both writers. Elin spoke powerfully about the inspiration she derives from the experiences of her own mother and other strong women in her family tree – her foremothers. Therése outlined the in-depth research she did to uncover the true events that led to over 70 people being put to death for witchcraft in the late 17th century. This story forms the core of her second novel, a review of which is available online.

We then split into two groups to analyse and discuss a bundle of translations that participants had prepared of a brief extract from Elin and Therése’s most recent novels. Looking at multiple English versions of a single source text highlights the differences between individual translators’ interpretations and word choices. It also gives us translators a chance to really geek out about fine shades of meaning and to expand our range of translation strategies, learning from the solutions chosen by our colleagues. Elin Olofsson has shared her own reflections on her group’s workshop discussion in a guest post.

The afternoon session began with presentations by Göran Bergengren and Jonas Gren about their work. Göran’s most recent books contain personal, lyrical essays about birds, butterflies and other elements of the natural world, but he has also written many children’s books. He read some brief extracts and commented movingly about the environmental changes he has observed over the years in his role as a naturalist. Jonas treated us to readings of some of his poems, which added a new dimension to our enjoyment of them. In addition to his creative output as a poet, Jonas is on the editorial team at Effekt, a Swedish magazine that focuses on climate and environmental issues. He does more than just talk the talk: having taken the decision to stop flying, Jonas travelled all the way from Stockholm to London by train for this seminar. Göran and Jonas’ presentations were followed by small-group workshop sessions in which we compared participants’ brief translated extracts that had been prepared in advance.

Then it was time to listen to a panel of UK editors who shared their experiences of publishing nature-related books in translation and what they look for in a book when commissioning. Saskia Vogel of SELTA moderated the panel discussion with Laura Barber of Portobello Books, Katharina Bielenberg of MacLehose Press and Luke Neima of Granta Online.

The day concluded with a reception at the Swedish embassy for specially invited publishers and others involved in the UK’s literary scene to chat with the authors and translators over a glass of wine.

The Spring 2018 issue of Swedish Book Review, a literary journal with close ties to SELTA, will feature translated excerpts from these four authors’ works. Let’s hope some enterprising UK publishers will soon snap up their intriguing books and make them available in full to English-speaking readers!

If you’d like to learn more about these four fascinating authors’ works – plus a few more titles from Swedish and Finland-Swedish authors – you can download this PDF brochure.

SELTA is grateful to the Swedish Arts Council and the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation for the grants that made it possible to bring the authors over to the UK, to the Embassy of Sweden in London for the use of the seminar venue and staff assistance, and to the Free Word Centre for hosting the public event. My thanks go to Saskia Vogel and Nichola Smalley for their assistance in planning these events and to all the participating authors and translators for contributing to such a thought-provoking and rewarding experience.

By Ruth Urbom

Photo credit: Ian Giles

Author and poet Malte Persson joined four other Swedish writers who came to London in November to participate in a day of practical literary translation workshops with SELTA members. Since his literary debut in 2002 with the novel Livet på den här planeten (‘Life on This Planet’), Malte Persson’s output has encompassed fiction, poetry, literary criticism and children’s literature. He has received a number of awards for his work, including the 2012 Tegnér Prize, and was nominated for the prestigious August Prize in 2008 for his novel Edelcrantz förbindelser (‘Edelcrantz’s Relations’). In this guest post, Malte reflects on workshop participants’ various translations of an extract from his 2012 children’s book, Resan till världens farligaste land (‘Journey to the World’s Most Dangerous Land’). The English translation here is by Nichola Smalley.

We Swedes are so used to reading and hearing English that you can start to convince yourself you’re completely fluent in it. That’s wrong, of course. I wish I could translate myself, but every time I try, I have the distinct feeling that my English, even if it should happen to be grammatically correct, doesn’t really sound like normal English. And what’s worse: I have no clue whether it sounds abnormal in a good, intentional way (which even my Swedish does sometimes) or if it just sounds weird.

That’s why we need translators – these often all-too-anonymous wordsmiths at the literary anvils of our ungrateful book market. In any case, discussing and trying to solve translation problems is one of the funnest things I can think of, and it was a privilege to get to take part in SELTA’s seminar on the translation of Swedish children’s and YA literature in London on 7 November this year. The highlight for me was of course the workshop in which I and a group of translators discussed six different versions of an excerpt from Resan til världens farligaste land, a picture book by me and illustrator Rui Tenreiro. Even the title is complicated: ‘The Journey to the World’s Most Dangerous Land’, ‘Journey to the World’s Most Perilous Land’, ‘Journey to the Scariest Land in the World’, or perhaps ‘A Journey to the World’s Most Fearsome Land’… And it just keeps on getting worse.

The book’s fantasy world is full of dangers. After crossing a dangerous sea, you come to a spooky shore, and beyond the shore you find first a forest full of trolls and kidnapped children, and then a dangerous bog, which we can take as an example of the difficulties a translator also encounters during the journey. In Swedish, it says: “I skogen ligger världens värsta träsk / som bubbler brunt som kolaläsk.” And here are the various English translations, which are remarkable not least for the fact that they are so varied:

You’ll find a bog, in all the world the worst,
where bubbles brown as toffee cola burst.

The forest’s swamp is truly deadly,
Bubbling up like a can of Pepsi.

In the forest, the world’s most hideous bog
bubbles brown and dank under odious fog.

In the forest lies the world’s worst blistering bog:
Cola-dark its bubbles rise as from a drowning dog.

Deep in the forest the world’s worst swamp can be found,
like cola pop its brown mud fizzes and bubbles around.

The world’s worst swamp you’ll find there too –
It bubbles up like thick brown stew.

In Swedish, the ‘träsk’ (bog/marsh) bubbles brown like a fizzy drink, but which fizzy drink? There’s a double meaning in the ‘kolaläsk’ – should you be thinking about something in the Coca-Cola genre (‘cola’ in Swedish) or a fizzy drink that tastes like toffee (‘kola’ in Swedish)? This double meaning can’t be reproduced in English. The translators have chosen different alternatives here, or even exchanged the image for another. Personally, I like the creative half-rhyme of ‘Pepsi’ and the addition of ‘like a drowning dog’, which isn’t in the original, but retains its drastic spirit. Exchanging the untranslatable fizzy drink for a ‘thick brown stew’ is totally fine too.

Then we have rhyme and metre – the original is somewhat irregular; some translators have made it even more irregular, others have made it more regular in English. As a fan of Alexander Pope, I wouldn’t have had anything against being translated into ‘heroic couplets’, as in ‘You’ll find a bog…’ But opinions were strongly divided as to which was preferable. It’s safe to say, though, that you can only succeed with a translation like this if you’re daring enough to take pretty big liberties with the original text.

As an author, one can dream of being translated by the joint labours of a great committee of translators, but alas, that’s hardly realistic… and in any case, finding a competent translator is less difficult than finding a publisher prepared to take the risk of publishing a translated book.

Between the presentations and workshops, there was time during the day for informal conversations and a huge amount of sandwiches and cakes. I hope the participating translators found it as rewarding as I did.

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Per Gustavsson is a Swedish author and illustrator who travelled to London in November 2014 to take part in SELTA’s event on children’s and young adult (YA) literature. In addition to being a member of the Swedish Academy for Children’s Books, Per has won a number of awards for his work. His most recent prize is the 2014 Elsa Beskow plaque for the year’s best Swedish illustrated children’s book, which he received for Skuggsidan (‘Shadowside’, 2013). In this guest post, Per shares his reflections on the day of workshops and discussions. The English translation here is by Ruth Urbom.

The one thing I miss from my time at school (my education as an illustrator/designer) is the group crits where everybody had to present their own solutions to a given task. I was always amazed at all the solutions I was never anywhere close to. They might not always have been better. But just the fact that they were new ways of looking at the problem was inspiring.

A couple of years ago, a fellow illustrator (Helena Willis) and I worked on a project to write and illustrate a book together. We wrote a story and figured out the pagination, and then we each went off to our own studios to sketch out the book. It was incredibly exciting to see how we had dealt with each double-page spread. Sometimes they turned out eerily similar and other times totally different. The latter cases were the most interesting, of course. The end result was our book Kaninkostymen (‘The Rabbit Costume’, 2015).

It was brilliant to be able to see the translations that people did of my book Måntornet (‘The Moon Tower’, 2014). So many variations. So many possibilities. Some of the translations made me want to revise the Swedish text, because I thought the translation was better than what I had written myself. That’s because whatever the case, I surprise myself all too seldom. I get stuck in old thought patterns. Having access to so many new ways of interpreting a text was hugely inspiring. I’ve always regarded myself as an illustration person. I’ve never been as interested in texts as I am in images. But after my days in London where everything revolved around words, sentences and meanings, I’ve had a textual awakening. I see the texts I’m working on now in a new light. And that’s really inspiring.

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Cilla Naumann is one of five award-winning Swedish authors who travelled to London in early November for a day of practical translation workshops and discussions with SELTA members, other translators and postgraduate students. In one of the workshop sessions, participants compared their translations of an extract from Cilla’s young adult novel 62 dagar (‘62 Days’), published in 2011, and discussed the differences in word choice and textual interpretations that emerged from the various translations. Cilla Naumann’s blog post has been translated into English by SELTA member Nichola Smalley.

On 6 November I left a freezing and snowy Stockholm
– and went out in London’s sunshine and into SELTA’s concentrated world.
What’s a ‘tuva’[^1]? And what’s a ‘pir’ – jetty or breakwater?
And the squirrel’s tail – how gruesome can it be?
And why all these compound colour nuances? Is ‘vitgrå’ more grey or more white?
And that little word ‘ju’ just can’t be translated. It has to be left in the sentence as is –
right?

On the plane home my unconscious word choices whirring round my head – why did I write this and not that?
And what was that thing about ‘spyflugor’[^2] – how could I write green-blue when ‘shimmering’ is so much better?
Hear it: ‘skimrande gröna’. What beautiful Swedish!
Then I dozed off and awoke in Stockholm and the snow was all gone.
Thank you SELTA for two intensive, reflective, productive, fun days.

^[1] a clod? a clump? a tussock?
^[2] bluebottles/blowflies

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