November 4, 2016

Book Bloggers Panel with SELTA

Chair of SELTA, Ruth Urbom, gives an account of the book bloggers’ panel who spoke to our members after SELTA’s 2016 AGM.

On 1 November SELTA members were joined by a panel of three book bloggers who spoke to us about world literature, blogging and the unexpected benefits of sharing their interest in books with other readers. All three of our guest speakers – Ann Morgan, Stu Allen and Bookwitch – have a strong international dimension to their blogs.

The blogger known as Bookwitch, who originally hails from Sweden but has lived in the UK for quite some time now, posts in English as well as Swedish on books for children and young adults. Of books that have been translated from English into Swedish or vice versa, Bookwitch prefers some in Swedish and others in their English version, because the two versions can have slightly different voices and tones. She especially enjoys meeting and interviewing authors for both of her book blogs: a few days before her visit to SELTA, she had conducted an in-depth interview with the popular German author Cornelia Funke. There have been occasions when young readers have found an interview with a favourite author on her blog and mistakenly thought Bookwitch was actually that author herself!

Stu Allen’s blog has a clear focus on the literary end of the spectrum. Stu has been blogging about his interest in world literature for the past eight years and has built up an impressive record of over 600 reviews on his site. He enjoys identifying common themes and features among books from different places. For example, villages often have similar casts of characters no matter where they’re located in the world – you can recognise certain familiar types. Stu is active on social media as well. He originated the #translationthurs hashtag on Twitter, which helps users connect with others who share an interest in reading international fiction. Stu is enthusiastic about helping people to discover world literature and says you can find all kinds of ways in, such as books that feature a particular sport or are set in an interesting location.

When she realised she had read mainly books from the Anglophone world in the year preceding the London Olympics, Ann Morgan set herself a new challenge to read a book from every country in the world in a single year. She named her project A Year of Reading the World and by the time the year was over, her endeavour had taken on some exciting and unexpected dimensions. People from all over the globe got in touch to make suggestions, and Ann received a publishing deal to write up her experiences as a book of her own. Some countries’ writing proved difficult to obtain in English translation, but translators and readers pitched in to contribute stories for Ann to read and review on her blog. Even now, nearly five years after she launched the project, people continue to discover her blog and suggest their favourite books. Ann says there is clearly an interest and an appetite for books from around the world. People are generous and excited about sharing stories.

In the Q&A period following the panellists’ presentations of their blogging activities, SELTA members wanted to know what they do with all the books. All three bloggers said they’re regularly offered free books from publishers’ publicity departments and have to turn some down. Local libraries and charity shops receive some of the volumes after they’ve been read. Bookwitch sizes up children of her acquaintance in order to match young readers with age-appropriate titles. The panellists also asked us about our work as translators. SELTA members’ opinions were divided on whether it’s necessary to read a book all the way through before starting to translate it: one camp says it’s impossible to understand the text sufficiently without reading it first; according to the other school of thought, that’s what the second draft is for.

On behalf of SELTA, I’d like to thank all three of our guest speakers for travelling into London just to speak to us and for giving us some really interesting thoughts from their perspectives as readers and book bloggers.

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April 7, 2016

Finnished!

SELTA member Annie Prime is, among many other things, the English translator of Finland-Swedish writer Maria Turtschaninoff. In this blog, Annie reflects on the 2016 FILI translators-in-residence and getting to know your author.

“Last year I helped triple the sales of Finnish books to foreign publishers. Next year I’m going to increase it ten-fold.” Literary agent Elina Ahlbäck’s Helsinki office is decorated with pink tulips that match her flawless nails and signature magenta jacket. She offers me fresh melon and dates as we discuss the future of Maria Turtschaninoff’s Red Abbey Chronicles in the UK, USA and beyond. Elina is impressive to the point of formidable and I do not doubt her one bit when she tells me of her ambitions. It is a good time to be involved in Finnish literature. My stay in Helsinki was generously funded by FILI, the Finnish Literature Exchange, who are also ablaze with plans to encourage the translation and propagation of Finnish literature. So much so, in fact, that they are trying to encourage me to learn Finnish – of which I know exactly three words, if you don’t count sauna.

I was lucky enough to spend time with two of the bastions of Finnish to English literary translation, Owen Witesman and David Hackston. Lunch with them gave me an invaluable insight into the small world of Finnish literary translation. Their numbers do not go into double figures, and they seem to be flooded with work. This starts me thinking that perhaps I should make efforts to study Finnish, though there is very little that looks welcoming about the language, beautiful though its bobbing melody is.

But back to where my strengths lie, namely translation from Swedish, it is a fortuitous coincidence that I am here to witness the birth of brand new publishing house Förlaget, which I suspect is destined for great things. It is partially funded by Tove Jansson’s family and the Moomin characters brand who are on a mission to promote Finland-Swedish literature specifically. The director, Fredrik Rahka, is just as impressive and trustworthy as you hope a Moomin representative would be. It is a good time to be involved in Finland-Swedish literature.

During my residency I was housed on the six-island sea fortress of Suomenlinna. Built in 1748 as a Swedish maritime fortress, Suomenlinna was later occupied by the Russians then used as a Finnish naval base before becoming a world heritage site in the 20th century. It is currently a residential community and global tourist attraction. Suomenlinna has been the ideal environment to get lost in Maria Turtschaninoff’s far-off, pre-industrial fantasy world. It is an island like no other, covered in centuries-old ruins, stone-walled chambers, dark passages, rocky shores and ancient cannons. Store rooms with low doors under mounds of earth like Hobbit homes. Footbridges over partially frozen inlets. The otherworldly sense of living history is incredible. It is a place for stories to come to life.

This has been especially fitting for working on Naondel, the second novel in the Red Abbey Chronicles. It is a story of castle-building and sea-faring in a forgotten age, where sacred sites offer profound magical powers. The first novel Maresi is actually set on an island fortress, the eponymous Red Abbey, a refuge for girls and women fleeing lives of cruelty and servitude, and a powerhouse for knowledge and female community. I would not be surprised if Suomenlinna was Maria’s inspiration for this island world, at least on an unconscious level.

Naondel is the prequel and follows the lives of the First Sisters, the founders of the Red Abbey, before they come to the island. It is the story of the lives of women: their ordeals and suffering; the often tragic consequences of the injustice they have to endure; and the strength it takes to overcome and fight back. The characters of this book are an incredible example of the Finnish notion of sisu (grit, guts, hardiness) with which I have recently become acquainted.

 Naondel is the prequel and follows the lives of the First Sisters, the founders of the Red Abbey, before they come to the island. It is the story of the lives of women: their ordeals and suffering; the often tragic consequences of the injustice they have to endure; and the strength it takes to overcome and fight back. The characters of this book are an incredible example of the Finnish notion of sisu (grit, guts, hardiness) with which I have recently become acquainted.

Though the women in the story come from disparate cultures, all of which belong exclusively to the fantasy reality in which they live, their stories are representative and reflective of the tragic lives lived by many women past and present. Often difficult to read, the book makes no attempt to sugarcoat harsh realities, and yet offers such a profoundly empathetic vision of struggle, and such a realistic reality of natural magic, that the reader cannot help but be uplifted. It is a real privilege to be trusted with the English words that will go some way to recreating Maria’s magical world and reanimating the characters she has made so real.

When I haven’t been translating Naondel and appreciating the profound peace and silence of a snow-quilted island, I have had a chance to meet some wonderful people in Helsinki, including several publishers and agents from Finland and abroad at FILI’s publishing event on my first week.

But best of all, I had a chance to spend time with ‘my’ author, Maria Turtschaninoff, and turn our business relationship into a genuine and enduring friendship. I have gone from studying her work at university, to becoming her official English translator, to playing Lego with her son on their living room floor. What could be better.

 

Photo: Annie Prime

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January 4, 2016

Spoilers?

Is the ultimate taboo in modern-day reviewing appropriate for Swedish Book Review? SELTA member Sarah Death reflects on the thorny issue of spoilers.

Two experiences this week have finally prompted me to write a piece that has been forming in my mind for some time. The other day I read two Danish newspaper reviews of a new book translated my colleague Anne Marie Bjerg: a volume containing the Selma Lagerlöf novellas Dunungen and Tösen på Stormyrtorpet (Gyldendal), neither of which had appeared in Danish previously. Both reviews of these classic stories, which have, after all, been available for over a century in a neighbouring language fairly easily read by Danes, were complimentary. I was struck, however, by the fact that one reviewer felt the need to avoid revealing how the plots of the two stories developed.

Meanwhile on BBC Radio’s Today programme this week, an interview with Patricia Routledge (Patron of the Beatrix Potter Society) about a late, unpublished Beatrix Potter story that has been found in the author’s archive at the V&A, was full of remarks from the interviewer about ‘getting into trouble’ if they gave away too much of the story – even though Patricia Routledge had already told us she had only been allowed access to the first few paragraphs. I was put in mind of the translators of the Harry Potter books around the world, who were sworn to contractual secrecy as they scrambled to meet their unfeasible deadlines.

In an age when publishers and booksellers love to generate excitement round an ‘event’, the Beatrix Potter case is perhaps understandable, but when future new editions or productions of such well-worn classics as A Christmas Carol, Anna Karenina, Miss Julie, A Doll’s House, or Conan Doyle’s cliffhanger ‘The Final Problem’ appear, are reviewers to tie themselves in knots trying not to reveal the endings, just in case they inadvertently spoil the surprise for a few people? Will Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well ultimately have to be re-titled? Has the appreciation of literature really been so infected by our love of crime fiction and the conventions of reviewing whodunnits that our enjoyment potential has been reduced to the frisson of not knowing how a story ends? In my view, the whole phenomenon has been allowed to get out of hand.

And it is not only in the case of established classics that the modern spoiler phobia is misplaced, in my view. More seriously for my own work, every time I review a fiction title for Swedish Book Review nowadays, I have to consider whether my plot outline should be left incomplete. Reviewing Jerker Virdborg’s Skyddsrummet Luxgatan (The Lux Street Bunker) for the spring 2016 issue, I ended up writing one full text and then an abridged version – with possible spoilers excised – which I then submitted for publication. In other reviews I have sometimes trodden the tricky path of trying to hint at the ending without stating it outright, as for example in my review, for our Finland-Swedish themed issue, of Ulla Lena Lundberg’s novel Is (Ice), which is now, gratifyingly, about to be published in a translation by Tom Teal (Sort Of Books).

Although it is always SBR’s aspiration for its reviews to interest non-Swedish-speaking publishers enough to make them consider acquiring translation rights to the books, the majority of the titles we cover are unlikely to become available, at least in English, within a short period of time, and in many cases they never will. That makes it pretty ridiculous for us to have to avoid revealing endings, especially as the very publishers we are trying to attract will by definition want to know as much about the plot as possible, just as they do when commissioning formal reader’s reports from SELTA members.

It would be fascinating, and very useful for SBR contributors and editors, to receive feedback not only from publishers but also from other categories of reader on this subject.

By Sarah Death

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November 4, 2014

SELTA Workshop on Children’s and YA Literature 2014

In November 2014, Swedish authors Per Gustavsson, Annelis Johansson, Cilla Naumann and Malte Persson came to London to join SELTA members in a workshop on children’s and young adult literature.

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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An ethnologist by training, Annelis Johansson was twice nominated for the August Prize for Young Writers, a national award for promising Swedish writers aged 16–20. She made her publishing debut with Fågelungar (‘Baby Birds’), a young adult novel, in 2007 and followed that up with two more YA novels. Her most recent book, Herr Fikonhatt och slottet Thoufve (‘Mr Fighat and Castle Thoufve’), just out from Opal in September 2014, marks a new direction in Annelis’ writing as it is aimed at slightly younger readers. The English translation here is by Agnes Broomé.

It’s been a week since I and four other Swedish authors had the honour of participating in SELTA’s Literary Translation Seminar and Workshop in London. Outside the sky is low and grey; the Swedish autumn has descended on us, making it difficult to remember that there even is a sun. It’s back to the grind of everyday again, and my inspiration is sealed away inside the memory of green leaves, brighter days and a body trembling with the joy of spring.

Back in the slow November rhythm of my small town, London feels very far away. Winter is almost here and it’s time to hibernate. I actually think I do my best writing in winter. It’s as though my longing to live breathes life into my words and it’s in the mild light of reflection my stories develop and grow wings.

“It’s a gorgeous day!” my boyfriend exclaims when we wake up and look out the window. His words contain no hint of irony, and suddenly I see the cold, bare trees anew. This is the way November expresses itself. Why not? November has a story to tell too.

We go to the library for some inspiration and to feel the power of the thoughts and words hidden there. My boyfriend studies, reading a text about cures for HIV, and I sit here contemplating words. Words that hold so many things. To be honest, there are days when I can’t make myself go to the library. On occasion I’ve made it here only to immediately leave again. It’s as though the power of the words and the thoughts locked inside them is an energy that sometimes knocks me over. And yet, there are so few of them. Because really, who among us can say there is a language able to explain everything? What sound does a budding wood anemone make when it bends in the breeze, and who can describe what it feels like when the forest hums and tingles and you’re struck by the enormity of the fact that something has existed for aeons of time, while you yourself have only been drawing breath for a fleeting moment. Sometimes I have enviously wished I worked with music, not words, because I somehow believe that notes can speak where words fail. That there is a language beyond words. And yet, words are what I choose to surround myself with.

At SELTA’s seminar the other week it was brought home to me that Swedish is a feeble language. It’s been said that people get terser the further north you go, but it suddenly seemed so ridiculous to me that we northern people have so few nuances to describe the world around us, while the English language seems to be an endless well to draw on. I snuck in during the conversation between a group of translators and the Swedish illustrator and author Per Gustavsson. A lively debate was under way about how to translate the Swedish word “skog”. The contenders seemed to be “forest” or “wood”. The discussion centred on whether a “forest” is darker and scarier than a “wood” and I asked whether maybe a “forest” might be evergreen while “wood” could be predominantly deciduous.

We journeyed on through the text, pausing at the translation of the expression “simsalabim”. Someone had used a brief English rhyme that neither Per nor myself had heard and it seemed like the English language had several different ways of describing a sudden and somewhat surprising event that still falls well short of Harry Potter magic. Per looks to me for support and asks if I can think of an expression for an event of that kind in Swedish, but despite desperate efforts, nothing comes to mind. “Maybe we’re not that magicky in Sweden,” I put in hesitantly, and we share a laugh. The Swedish language feels inadequate. Someone suggests “tada!” and we smile again, because even though “tada!” might be as close as Swedish can get, it doesn’t quite feel like a word; it’s more of a sound. Like something from a speech bubble in an old comic book.

A few hours later it’s time for my own workshop, and I have used the word “rumpa” in my text. The translators put forward a range of suggestions on how to phrase that in English. Words like “bum”, “ass”, “bottom” and “arse” featured. “Bum” is the popular favourite. I have no idea which one is more suitable. We have several words for “rumpa” in Swedish too, but the difference in register of “röv” or “arsle”, for example, seems so great there’s really no need to discuss them. Especially in the context of a children’s book. “Röv” is not a word you often hear coming out of children’s mouths.

The discussion was long and lively and at this very moment, when I’m writing this and realise that I keep reverting to the present tense to express myself, I remember that somebody told me that English children’s books are almost always written in the past tense. As though the past tense sets the right mood for a story and that rich language exists to bring memories to life. A story told in the present tense doesn’t contain within it the considered reflections of the narrator; it bounces along in the here-and-now, with little time for verbosity. Maybe that’s why we’re so feeble in Sweden? Events are habitually retold in the present tense, where memory hasn’t had a chance to add brighter shades to the colours and sharpness to the details. It’s like November. The sea is never bluer, the fields never more golden and the trees never more beautiful than in November. When it happens, when life is in the present tense, those short weeks when the banks of the river are covered with wood anemones, when you’re busy just being and wondering at the enormity of spring returning, year after year, the joy and exultation comes out as a delighted “ahh”. Or “guuuud, vad härligt!” or the almost fully English “shit, vad najs!”. Swedified English loanwords that sound innovative and international but maybe express nothing so much as our inability to put our thoughts into apposite words.

I think about language more and more. I think about how words are tools that make it possible for us to express our inner selves to the outside world. To make ourselves better understood.

A little girl, maybe one year old, has been watching us while we sit reading and writing. She observes, delighted, and her eyes are more alive than ours. She doesn’t have any words yet. Even so, she’s happy and alive, and yet we know that she, like the rest of us, will spend her life mastering language. It’s through words she will explore life and herself.

I’m grateful that I was given the chance to participate in SELTA’s seminar. Grateful to have realised how adept the English language is at expressing exactly what needs to be said, and how impressed I am by all the translators and their ceaseless efforts to strike the right note when words are transformed on their journey to a new country. Imagine, if I had been born in the UK instead! Then I would have had a richer palette to work with. Then my word-painting could have been even more subtle.

“Do you want to go for a fika?” my boyfriend asks, and I look up and smile. Fika would be good. Because when all’s said and done, I’m Swedish. And we always go for fika. So I wrap things up, turn my mind to other things, and finally admit to myself that ultimately, it might be a good thing that I don’t have to make a decision every time I think about “skog” or “rumpa”.

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