by translation
My first language is Finnish but opportunities to speak it are now rare. Reading it at so many good blogs and news sites on the internet helps to keep me somewhat literate. One favourite place, though in English, is Books from Finland, ‘a journal of writing from and about Finland’.
Yesterday’s article particularly interested me: Why translate? by British poet Herbert Lomas (1924–2011) who was a prolific translator from Finnish. He describes the work and knowledge and understanding of language differences in order to capture the author’s intent. The following excerpts intrigued me and challenged my own rusty linguistic understanding of my mother tongue:
There are many differences between Finnish and English. Leaving aside for the moment the extraordinary disparity between Teutonic syntax and Finno-Ugrian syntax, the vocabulary alone puts you into a different climate and weather. Vowels are musical notes and Finnish is full of vowels.
Consonants are noises – and English is full of consonants. Finnish words are all stressed on the first syllable. English words simply alternate stressed and unstressed syllables – and the word may begin with unstress or stress. Finnish lends itself to dactyls. Dactyls have never been much at home in English. Most English poetry is written in iambs, with trochees coming second, a few anapaestic poems, usually not very good; and not even Hiawatha, imitating the Kalevala, resorted to the dactyl. But Finnish words are all Finnish – either invented from existing roots or naturalised beyond recognition.
Do read on if this subject interests you. Most of us know that the Finnish language is a difficult one for outsiders to learn so I have great respect for translators like Lomas and others who have mastered the language enough to note subtleties, especially in poetry.
More articles by Herbert Lomas here and about him and his list of works here.
Related posts on the Finnish language can be found in my archives under Linguistics.
PS: I just noticed that Herbert Lomas also translated Troll: a love story by Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo, which I was ever so lucky to find in our local library and enjoyed reading. It is rare to find Finnish books here.
January 29, 2015 in Books, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Linguistics by Marja-Leena
Kiitos. I will bookmark the site for future reading. It looks very interesting.
Typy, I’m glad this is of interest. Does Toronto have a Finnish bookstore since it has a fairly large Finnish population? Thunder Bay has or used to have one. I find ordering from Finland much too expensive with the duties I have to pay here.
Languages are not my strong point; certainly when it comes to understanding someone else’s French. On the other hand, it is my opinion that everything originating in Finland is absolutely lovely. 🙂
Thanks, Tom, you are sweet! Actually languages are not my strong point either, or the study of their structure. I am just curious about the difference between that strange and different Finnish compared to English. I’ve written elsewhere how difficult English spelling is, on the other hand.
Still blocked, so still no pix. But this one didn’t really need them. I recall back in the Second Ice Age you read a long, long post of mine about translating Shakespeare into French and you sought to prove you’d got to the end of it. So here I am, returning the gesture. The last word in your post is “here”. Or does the full stop, which you no doubt skittishly call “period”, count?
Mr Lomas’s views are a bit odd. He says “Consonants are noises – and English is full of consonants.” I’d dispute this. Could Mr Lomas articulate the sounds of b, c, d, f, etc? I’d prefer to say that consonants modify the sounds of English vowels, of which there are five listed in the English alphabet but a myriad more as a result of our puckish way with pronunciation. But you’d expect me to disagree about something, wouldn’t you?
I’ll depart as abruptly as I arrived. You’re not missing anything over at Tone Deaf. My next birthday is one of those big ones and the consensus seems to be that I have already arrived at Jacques’ seventh and final stage in the evolution of man:
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Hello Robbie! I’m sorry you are still having trouble seeing everything here but I’m glad for your visit!
I found Lomas’ views very interesting and strange but since he’s expert in the translation of the only two languages I know well enough, and the differences in the sounds that the words make in poetry, I paid attention. Not being a linguist, I cannot argue though I know you like to, fair enough. Perhaps if one thinks of those words in song…. think of Italian vs English.
I do still visit Tone Deaf from time to time and note that you are well and in good shape for that next milestone birthday, not the state of Jacques yet.
That quote reminds me of the wonderful, very memorable acting of that scene on a stage in a Winnipeg theatre. (My future husband and I were on a date.) Jacques went across the stage, first as wee child creeping on the floor and quickly growing and moving though the next stages of life, then shrinking again to second childhood. It received great applause and he had to repeat it several times. What a nimble actor.
Thanks for visiting!
Interesting. I think Lomas was overlooking one thing in his “not even ‘Hiawatha'” point. Less than ten years before “Hiawatha,” Longfellow wrote “Evangeline” in dactylic hexameter. I’m not sure when he became interested in the Kalevala, but he was both a poet and a well-traveled professor of modern languages.
Marly, I don’t really understand dactylics nor hexameters but that Longfellow used them earlier than ‘Hiawatha’ is interesting. I knew he was a poet, well-travelled and studied languages. Thanks for pointing this out!
Now I’m made to think of Tolkien and his interest in the Finnish language.
I know next to nothing about languages other the one I was born to. However, I do appreciate the difficulty of translating literature and have been impressed a number of times at how well a good translator can depict the nuanced meaning of the original work.
Thanks for posting the picture of your lovely snowdrops.
Susan, yes, exactly! Being a good translator is a special skill.
The snowdrops are for you, since you’d asked 🙂
I love the musical sound of Finnish.
You must have heard Finnish spoken then, Hattie? When I tell people my name in Finnish, (not the Anglicized pronounciation I got stuck with in school), many think it is Italian which is very musical. I think the rolling of the ‘r’ scares some folks.
Marja-Leena, now that you mentioned, I do remember that Sinisalo’s book was translated under that name Troll: a Love Story. You found the book in Finnish over there? And it wasn’t too difficult for you?
It should be a rule that people can start their school, at least first 4-5 yrs speaking and learning their mother tongue. It is a basis. I think it has to do with the rhythm, that follows the child from infant years on, and is for that reason important for development. There isn’t a country which is fully following that rule, any place.
As we have two official languages, Finnish and Swedish, we do know the difference between Germanic (Teutonic! That brings me to think of the cartoon named Asterix!) and Finnish Uralic languages. That is the basis. We have about 4% of population speaking Swedish here. It was funny that you looked into translations at the same time as I went to see a theater performance in three language, third one being English, of course.
In some way, also theater is communicating about the changes that has happened. The premier of Minna Canth’s Sylvi was 1893. It was brought by sound, costumes and stage set into the modern times. So it was not bad at all to read the translation on the stage wall.
Ripsa, our library copy of Sinisalo’s Troll: a Love Story is an English translation by Herbert Lomas. I do find some Finnish books difficult but still like to try reading it when I can get hold of it. I have some of my late parents’ books, several of which are actually translations from English. The harder ones I still have to tackle, like “Tuntematon Sotilas” (“Unknown Soldier”), “Under the North Star” and others.
I am very surprised by what you say that in no country is the mother tongue taught fully for the first 4-5 years. When I went to school we started learning Latin and French in our 7th year as did our daughters (but no Latin), except for our youngest who took French immersion for the first 6 years. As you know we are also a bilingual nation, French and English.
I have not read any of Minna Canths’s work. The play sounds fascinating. And I know Asterix somewhat, and of course my German husband knew it well.
I find the translation of languages a fascinating subject. I recently read an interesting book: David Bellos Is that a Fish in your Ear, Translation and the Meaning of Everything.
I have not pursued your link above because I am totally ignorant of Finnish – apart from having been told by a friend who learned it that it is DIFFICULT! – and I found Herbert Lomas’ didactic statements about English rather narrow in their outlook.
However, translators never get the praise that they really deserve. A good translation is a magical gift to a reader because it not only provides the sense, but also part of the mind view of the original.
Olga, with your career in publishing, translation would be indeed be of great interest, and I take your comments about Loma’s statements in light of your work.
Finnish is difficult to learn because it is unlike any other language. Once you know it though, it is easy because it follows the rules unlike some other languages such as English. I particularly enjoyed his comment about the musical quality of the Finnish.
Marja-Leena, I wrote my answer too fast, sorry! I meant of course that no country has any IMMIGRANT children fully learning first years of his/her monster tongue. So: I’m living on a block of most immigrants, foreign students and refugees of this city, and they have maybe two-four hours/week teaching of their home language, depending if they managed to get a teacher.
It is difficult to find teachers for instance to some Central African languages, even finding Somali teachers is difficult. So that way children grow up being only partially literate, and that is because of the rough start mostly in Finnish.
Many refugee mothers are also illiterate so they can’t support the children very much. Only people coming from English speaking countries are in good position here. And of course if someone moves from Sweden, which doesn’t happen much.
But then that’s how it has been everywhere. First generation people are hard up, maybe the children make it.
Ripsa, I see what you mean! That is so true, even for me. I was five years old coming to Canada. My mother had already taught me to read in Finnish but all my formal education was in English of course. In some communities in Canada where there were/are more Finns, some Saturday morning classes were offered, and this was true for other groups. There were not enough Finns in Winnipeg for this, but my husband and his sisters were able to attend German classes for instance. Here in Vancouver we have a large Chinese population which has language classes, even in some public schools where there are a majority of them. French immersion in the public school system is very popular.
The New World was settled by immigrants but the emphasis of course is for everyone to learn English or whatever is the dominant language of those countries. In Canada, English or French is now a requirement for citizenship, I think. The onus for maintaining one’s birth language seems to still be on the family and its ethnic group. As I’ve mentioned in some of my past posts on language, I believe in diversity in languages for they represent diverse cultures. English is so dominant everywhere, isn’t it? The more languages we know, the richer we are and hopefully have more understanding and empathy for other cultures.
Oh fascinating! The first time I ever heard Finnish spoken was in Kaurismäki’s 2002 film “The Man Without a Past.” I find it very easy on the ears and would love to hear what Finnish poetry sounds like.
I’m glad you found this interesting and also the sound of spoken Finnish. Kaurismäki’s earlier films are rather strange, this perhaps not quite so, but we enjoyed “Le Havre” which was not even in Finnish.