All I want for Christmas is a new translation, a new translation, a new translation. That doesn’t scan quite the same as “my two front teeth,” but if I say it often enough, will it happen? The Snowsinger could sing…
Blog Archives
Waiting for translation: Snowsinger
Tagged with: books, Emmi Itäranta, Finnish, Kalevala, Lumenlaulaja, Snowsinger, Translation
Posted in books, Folklore
Posted in books, Folklore
Waiting for translation: Ester, slaughterer
When Mariia Niskavaara went on holiday, she came back to find that her lettuces had run wild. “They grew themselves long stems and started flowering, and good God they were gorgeous. I realized that if lettuces had their way, that’s…
Tagged with: books, Ester teurastaja, Finnish, Helsingin Sanomat, Literature, Mariia Niskavaara, Translation
Posted in translation
Posted in translation
Waiting for translation: Light!
Ah, it’s summer, you’re fourteen and in love… isn’t that perfect? Except it’s 1986, and Chernobyl just exploded. Except the girl you’re in love with is having a hard time. Except you’re a girl too, and your parents are absolutely…
Tagged with: books, Finnish, Light light light, Owen Whitesman, Translation, Valoa valoa valoa, Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen
Posted in books, Queer, translation
Posted in books, Queer, translation
The love story of the century
Three years shy of its fiftieth anniversary, this book still bites. Märta Tikkanen’s Århundradets kärlekssaga came out with S&S in 1978. I read Eila Pennanen’s Finnish translation, Vuosisadan rakkaustarina published by Tammi in the same year. In English, Stina Katchadourian’s…
Tagged with: books, Deep Vellum, Eila Pennanen, Finnish, Märta Tikkanen, Poetry, Stina Katchadourian, Swedish, Translation
Posted in books
Posted in books
Waiting for translation: where the rivers run
Spring starts in the cellar. It’s still cold, the snow is deep, the light, fitful. The potato feels it first. And slowly extends a pale, tentative root. Downward, between its siblings, looking for the earth below. It’s time to grow…
Tagged with: Aviador, books, Finnish, Mari Laaksonen, Missä joet juoksevat, Poetry, Translation, Where the rivers run
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Heaven’s salt lake
Tiny languages need books like this. If your language is a bigger sibling to a tiny language, you could help your smaller sibling reach more readers through a bilingual edition. Poetry needs more bilingual editions like this. Even if you’ve…
Tagged with: Aviador, Baiba Damberg, books, English, Finnish, Kerran olin taivaan suolajärvi, Kōrd vóļ minā touvõs sūoljõraks, Language, Livonian, Olli Heikkonen, Poetry, Renāte Blumberga, Ryan Van Winkle, Salaca, Translation, Trillium, Uldis Balodis, Valt Ernštreit, Ķempi Kārl
Posted in books, language, translation
Posted in books, language, translation
Backlight
Being a teenager is often awful, sometimes amazing, but rarely, if ever, dull. The emotions are too huge. At least that’s how I – and Saisio – remember it. Vastavalo/Backlight tells it as a girl at the end of her…
Tagged with: Backlight, books, Finnish, Mia Spangenberg, Penguin, Pirkko Saisio, Translation, Two Lines Press, Vastavalo
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
On the calculation of translated volumes
Solvej Balle’s Om udregning af rumfang, published by Pelagraf, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2022. Then, she’d written three of her seven volumes of speculative fiction in Danish. Barbara Haveland’s English translation, On the Calculation of Volume, is…
Han Kang: finding the translations
The journey from Korea to the northern fringes of Europe is a long one. To get there, you have to go on a TV show, or stir up a storm in a translators’ teacup. Or you could miss the bus,…
Tagged with: books, Deborah Smith, English, Finnish, Han Kang, Korean, Man Booker International Prize, Nobel Prize, Taru Salminen, Translation
Posted in literature, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in literature, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Merkel’s Freedom
An hour and a half of my life listening for every year she was in office. Yes, Angela Merkel’s Freiheit/Freedom clocks up an impressive 24 hours as an audio book, or 720 pages. I stuck with it, because I wanted…
Tagged with: Angela Merkel, books, freedom, Freiheit, German, politics, Translation
Posted in books, history
Posted in books, history
found in translation 