UPPSALA UNIVERSITET Institutionen för moderna språk
C-UPPSATS Ht 2009
Elliot Sturdy
Leppäsuonkatu 9c 402 00100 HELSINKI Tfn: 00358 403669387
LOST IN TRANSLATION
An analysis of three translations of Rosa
Liksom’s Tyhjän Tien Paratiisit
Handledare: Ulla Lundgren
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ... 3
1.1 The need for dialogue ... 4
2. A good translation ... 5
2.1 An ethics of translation ... 6
2.2 The dawn of discourse ... 8
3. Method and material………..12
3.1 Mouse or rat? ... 12
3.2 Points of reference ... 14
3.3 The obscurity of The Other ... 15
4. An archaeology of translation ... 17
4.1 Anselm Hollo’s translation ... 25
4.2 David McDuff’s translation ... 30
4.3 Tapani Ritamäki’s translation ... 32
5. Is it slang, dialect or spoken Finnish? ... 33
5.1 Spoken Finnish in translation ... 38
6. The final product ... 41
7. The “blurb” ... 42
8. Conclusion ... 44
8.1 A final aporia ... 46
Sources ... 49
1 Introduction
The ability of a translation to capture the meaning of the original text has always been a hotly debated topic, from the first translations of the bible and Greek philosophy to today’s translations of modern literature.
In his The Scandals of Translation (1998) Lawrence Venuti succinctly describes the almost impossible position of the translator; the translator is under pressure from his or her employer to deliver the translation as quickly as possible and to produce a text which is likely to appeal to a specific audience and be economically viable. It is hoped by the publisher that the work will contain the particular kinds of linguistic capital that will insure its popularity. The publisher may wish that the translation is as readable as possible for the widest audience as possible (i.e. they wish to see adaptations in the text, that it should be fully integrated into the target language) or the publisher may wish to see a successful translation of the idiosyncrasies in the text, that it should maintain it’s exotic nature and not become too integrated into the target language.
At the same time the translator is under observation by the academic community who often criticize the translators for their lack of understanding of the original grammar, vocabulary and contexts and their deviations from the source text. To some extent my essay can be seen as being part of that particular discourse.
The translator also comes under attack by critics in newspapers and magazines, who often blame the translator for things which they are critical of within the text; if a text is obscure or doesn’t flow it is often the translator that gets the blame, even when it is a feature of the original text.
While enduring all these different sources of criticism, the translator must also struggle to be objective about his or her work. The translator must distance himself/herself from his/her own reactions and interpretations of the text and find both other possible readings and keep the balance between making the text easy to understand and not losing the original essence of the text. The translator must also try to locate the core of what the writer was trying to communicate and draw upon a huge range of different kinds of knowledge to understand the context of the original text; the translator needs to be
knowledgeable about a huge range of subjects, from the symbolism of different kinds of birds to the colour of a particular kind of chocolate wrapper.
On top of all this, translators are often poorly paid, which puts another kind of pressure upon the translator.
1.1 The need for dialogue
There is a real need for constructive dialogue between translators and academics, but first they must find a common language, one which can look at assemblages rather than structures and can explore the significance of contexts. It is all too easy to become
bogged down in the search for direct word-for-word equivalents whilst ignoring the other layers of significance that exist within a text, such as the use of rhetorical devices and the nature of the narrative voice.
The common language between translators and academics needs to be a multi-
disciplinary language, one that takes in elements of archaeology, psychology, semiotics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy and linguistics.
My essay should therefore not be seen as a crushing critique of the translations that I’m examining, nor is it an attempt to claim that a definitive translation can be made from a text that expresses all of the aspects of the original.
The essay underlines the unfeasibility of a single person being able to understand and consider every single possibility of meaning in a translation, yet the economic interests of the publisher and the translator turn the task of translation into the job of one person. The less people consulted in the process of translation, the lower the cost of the translation.
This essay attempts to serve as an archaeology of the translator’s methodology, that attempts to trace how the translator came to the choices that he or she made and what other possibilities the translator could have made use of.
2 A good translation
What makes a good translation? In 1540 Etienne Dolet wrote his La Manière de bien traduire (1540:12-16). For Dolet a good translation should contain the following points:
1. The translator must perfectly understand the sense and material of the original author, although he (sic) should feel free to clarify obscurities.
2. The translator should have a perfect knowledge of both SL (source language) and TL (target language), so as not to lessen the majesty of the knowledge.
3. The translator should avoid word for word renderings.
4. The translator should avoid Latinate and unusual forms.
5. The translator should assemble and liaise words eloquently to avoid clumsiness.
This early example of translation theory can be seen as an example of a TL biased method of translation. The emphasis here is on creating an eloquent text which avoids clumsiness. We can take the idea of avoiding unusual forms one of two ways: either we can see it as a demand for linguistic accuracy or as a hegemonic discourse that
assimilates another language completely into its existing forms.
Martin Luther’s translation of the bible (1534) can be seen as being contemporary with these translation guidelines and a good example of the general attitude towards
translation at that time; the emphasis was on making the text easy to understand in the target language.
Jean Paul Vinay described many of the different problems involved with word-for-word or literal translations from other languages in his book Stylistique Comparée du Français et de l'Anglais – Methode de Traduction (1958:48-50); their features can be summarized in the following way:
A literal translation can have:
1. Another meaning than the original.
3. A structurally impossible form.
4. A non-corresponding expression.
5. A corresponding expression that has a different register.
The complete opposite of a word-for-word translation would be a sense-for-sense translation, which is often referred to as a free translation where none of the original direct linguistic equivalents (that is, words that are suggested as having equivalent meaning in a bi-lingual dictionary) are used. Such a translation might work to translate a metaphor or some other culturally specific phenomena, but if the whole text were
translated in this way we would end up with something very different to the original work; a sense-for-sense translation would not even have to use words, it could translate the novel into a painting or music instead.
2.1 An ethics of translation
In 1797 Alexander Fraser Tytler (1907:9) wrote the following guidelines for successful translations:
1. The translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.
2. The style and manner of the writing should be of the same character with that of the original.
3. The translation should have all the ease of the original composition.
We can see here a clear shift towards an understanding of the importance of context. In the recent works of writers such as Lawrence Venuti (2000) and Antoine Berman (1985) we’ve seen a development of the ethical role of the translator in the work that is
produced. Berman described the following deforming tendencies in the work of translators in Translation and the Trials of the Foreign (Berman 1985:67-81):
1. Rationalization.
3. Expansion.
4. Ennoblement.
5. Qualitative impoverishment.
6. Quantitative impoverishment.
7. The destruction of rhythms.
8. The destruction of underlying networks of signification.
9. The destruction of linguistic patternings.
10. The destruction of vernacular network or their exotic aspects being overstated.
11. The destruction of expressions and idioms.
12. The effacement of the superimposition of languages.
These tendencies should not be seen as being totally negative in themselves, as one must often resort to such deforming strategies to preserve the core of intended meaning in the transition from source text to target text; perhaps a relevant example would be how to translate the Finnish word löyly to someone who had no conception of what a sauna is. In such a situation a strategy of rough equivalence must be taken and some loss of meaning accepted. The categories should perhaps instead be seen as danger areas, where the translator must be especially vigilant that he doesn’t take away more than he adds to a translation by using one of these strategies.
A similar stance to the one shown by Berman in his deforming tendencies can be seen in Venuti’s The Translation Studies Reader (Venuti 2000) and his The Scandals of Translation (Venuti 1998) where he develops the idea of the translator as the preserver of heterogeneity and ethnic identity in the texts which are translated. The translator should not be attempting to absorb a minor literature (Deleuze 1986:16-27) into a major
literature, but should instead attempt to preserve the marginal aspects of the work which they are translating.
It can be said that an ethics of difference has become an important part of translation theory, that a good translation is not just one that can be entirely assimilated into the target language but also one which shows us new possibilities for our own language.
The idea of the marginal is of particular relevance to the works of Rosa Liksom. In her novels she gives marginal characters a voice and her use of language is particularly important in expressing their marginality.
This essay looks at the successes and failings of different translations of these expressive voices.
It is difficult to know how far the translator should go in preserving the culture in the source text. Does it make any difference if a Lapin Kulta becomes a Fosters or a Budweiser? The answer to this can only come through the consideration of context and the relationship between words and meaning.
2.2 The dawn of discourse
The study of context and semiotic significance in relationship to translation is often referred to as pragmatics. In George Yule’s Pragmatics (1996:3-4) he describes pragmatics as being:
1. The study of speaker meaning.
2. The study of contextual meaning.
3. The study of how more is communicated than is said
4. The study of the expression of relative distance (how much information is needed to be understood).
Pragmatics makes use of rhetorical terms to understand the structure and meaning of a source text and seeks to know both what is said and what is inferred. This is needed so that a translator will know when he is dealing with an example of mitigation or deference when dealing with a text, and when a written conversation is running at a level of high involvement or high politeness.
In Basil Hatim and Ian Mason’s book Discourse and the translator (1994) the authors take up the idea of translator as mediator between writer and reader. A translation is a visible product with an invisible process and Hatim and Mason discuss the importance of exposing the process in order to see which kinds of discourse are taking place.
According to Hatim and Mason (1994:7-8) the translator should consider both the formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence of words. The formal equivalence can be communicated with dictionaries and grammatical schemes, for example: koira is given as
being dog in a Finnish - English dictionary. Using a book of grammar we can see that certain endings on words give us certain pieces of information, such as whether an action takes place over a long period of time or took place at a certain point in time in
relationship to the present.
The dynamic equivalence on the other hand can only be communicated through the translator’s interaction in a discourse with different contexts that can reveal the possible layers of meaning in an expression.
The common mistake is to concentrate on irrelevant aspects of meaning that are contained within phrases; one could say that this is rather like describing a portrait of a woman as being skin, hair and teeth instead of a smiling woman’s face. One of them gives arbitrary details from which it is impossible to form any kind of definite
assemblage, the other gives a vague approximation, but it at least suggests something concrete and familiar.
For Hatim and Mason a text consists of both a surface structure of details and a deep structure (1994:31-32) which is the context of the text and its place in society.
By this the authors mean that he translator needs to consider when a text is displaying the unconscious linguistic habits of the writer and when it displays the intentional effects of linguistic devices. For instance, if the narrative voice would be an elderly gentleman who was suffering the onset of dementia, he might be somewhat confused in the way he expresses himself or use archaic forms of speech. His sentences might remain unfinished or often be repeated. The mistake would be to try and tidy up such a text. A more
common problem is the use of assonance or consonance in poetry: how is it possible to know if the poet intended it and attached some significance to it or if it just happened to be that way?
Many texts also contain a layer of intertextuality (references to other texts). The translator has to consider the significance of these references and how to preserve the range of possible interpretations in a translation so as not to give a one-sided or narrow representation of the original text.
To avoid traducing the meaning of a text the translator often has to consider several different layers of translation at once, such as:
1. Phonetic translation.
2. Literal translation.
3. Metrical translation.
4. Prose translation.
5. Rhymed translation.
6. Blank verse translation.
7. Interpretations (when a complete change of language use is needed, often needed when translating common metaphors and sayings).(Hatim and Mason 1994:15)
The successful translator must juggle several of these criteria at once if the translation is to be successful. Hatim and Mason also describe the work done by Saussure (Hatim and Mason 1994:107) and Barthes (1994:111-112) in connection to the semiotics of language. A translator is forced to consider both his or her cultural symbols (such as what the image of Colonel Sanders on the Kentucky Fried Chicken box really signifies) and also the cultural symbols of other countries. In a Muslim country they might refer to what a westerner might call a suicide attack as being a martyrdom.
The translator is forced into a discourse between the two cultures when considering what the correct term to use would be.
Hatim and Mason split discourse into three main groups in their writings:
1. The fields of discourse (the context and purpose of a text)
2. The modes of discourse (is it spoken, written, a newspaper article?) 3. The tenor of the discourse (is it casual, formal, informative or assuming?). (Hatim and Mason 1994:48)
In James Paul Gee’s Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1999) he describes discourse analysis in the following manner:
When we speak or write we always take a particular perspective on what ” the world” is like. This involves us taking perspectives on what is “normal” and what is not; what is “acceptable” and what is not; what is “right” and what is not; what is “real” and what is not; what is “the way things are” and what is not; what is “the way things ought to be” and not; what is “possible” and not;
what “people like us” or “people like them” do and don’t do; and so on and so forth.
(Gee 1999:2)
For James Paul Gee discourse analysis involves trying to recognise that which is characteristic by looking at language as a performance. The notion of identity is a key part of Gee’s discourse analysis, and how the identity is defined by situations and
environments. For Gee the environments can be both mental and physical. Gee also tries to examine the behavior which becomes characteristic or automatic by looking at the ideologies that cause such behavior (1999:26-28).
Perhaps a good example of discourse is the implied meaning behind the word bachelor.
In English it can mean unmarried man, but it is also an academic qualification, which perhaps says something about the perceived gender of the academic.
I refer here to the use of bachelor as an unmarried man and one would not say that the pope is a bachelor, or a male priest, nor would we call an old man a bachelor. With bachelor we are also saying sexually active young man or person who should be married or in a relationship, the bachelor is an anomaly.
The person who is referred to as a bachelor is therefore being described as being
something strange or unusual in relationship to the normative cultural model. We can also note that the female equivalents are spinster, widower and virgin, none of which can be used in the same sense as a bachelor. Virgin shares the same idea of sexual normality as bachelor, but it is too clearly related to the sexual act to be used in everyday language, the female is too personal and the male is deeply coded.
From the theories mentioned above it can be seen that a translator must consider a wide range of concepts in order to produce a good translation. The most common feature of all these theories seems to be the consideration of context and the range of meanings that exist within a text as well as the avoidance of straight word for word translations. To what extent the translations in this study possess these qualities shall be examined later in this essay.
3 Method and material
The source text for the translations in this study is Rosa Liksom’s Tyhjän Tien Paratiisit (1989); the translations are taken from Anselm Hollo’s anthology of works by Rosa Liksom One Night Stands (1993), David McDuff’s translation Dark Paradise (2007) and Tapani Ritamäki’s translation into Swedish Paradis Ultra-Light (1992).
My main area of study will be the manner in which the translations have managed to recreate the style of writing in Liksom’s short stories and where they have been
influenced by other literary conventions in their own use of language, but I will also be looking at how the translators have dealt with culturally specific phenomena in the stories (such as the Fazer chocolate bar) and how successfully the translators have retained the different levels of meaning that are in existence in the original text. I will look at
particular examples of when the translation is source orientated and contains foreignising tendencies and when it is target orientated and contains domesticating tendencies.
3.1 Mouse or rat?
In my own translations and my understanding of the original text I have been influenced by the writings of Umberto Eco, especially his writings in the book Mouse or Rat (2004).
Eco’s writings underline the importance of dealing with several different translations at once that could eventually be put together in the final version. These different translations could also be defined as summaries that would remind the translator of the different contexts that exist within the text; some examples of the possible summaries would be:
1. Plot.
2. Character.
3. Setting.
4. Form.
These categories suggest the feasibility of possible words and expressions. I also make use of hierarchies that are both functional and connotative, and word maps where I write
out all the different types of words I can think of or find in different dictionaries and class them into different groups according to what the core meaning of the original text is.
An example of this is the following table:
Table 1. Level of associated meaning for possible words of equivalence in translation
5 4 3 2 1
Rehellinen Good
honest truthful straightforward frank blunt
bad Siisti
Strong
fantastic wonderful pleasant nice ok
weak Keskustella
Active
fighting arguing disputing debating discussing
passive Käsitella
technical
computing analyzing processing handling sorting non- technical Hieno
masculine
nice fine exquisite lovely delightful
feminine Makustella
Archaic
voyage journey convey travel transport
modern Paska
Impolite
shit crap turd poo excrement
polite Tahrannut
Clean
smudged marked stained covered submerged dirty Kuollut
Comic
snuffed it had it passed away died deceased
tragic Rakastaa
Poetic
enchanted by
pine for desire love like
everyday Rakastella
Sexual
shagging making love
coitus intercourse relation
nonsexual
It is important to keep a balance between translation of setting and translation of
meaning; it might well work to capture the slang of Helsinki by transferring it to cockney slang, and therefore capture that aspect of Liksom’s meaning, but how does that affect the overall credibility of the rest of the novel? Does it make sense for someone to be
speaking cockney in Stockman eating a Fazer chocolate bar? It would make about as much sense for a Finnish lumberjack to be eating a Yorkshire pudding for his dinner.
When translating I think we should assume that someone who reads a book by a foreign writer is interested in reading about Finns and won’t be put off by references to Finnish culture as long as they are explained in some way, perhaps by using notes at the end of the book.
My placement of words into different categories comes not only from my own
subjective reactions to words but also from their use in different contexts and from asking Finnish speaking people how they relate to different words upon hearing them in
different contexts.
If my choices of expressions are ruled by my understanding of what the author’s intention was, or what the core of their expression is, how do I then go about deciding what the core meaning of a text is?
3.2 Points of reference
In my readings of texts by Rosa Liksom I have been influenced by my previous readings by other authors; in Liksom I recognized the stream of consciousness style of Louis Ferdinand Celine that can be found in his book Death on the Installment Plan (1991). I also saw a connection between the street slang and marginal characters that are found in the Hubert Selby Junior’s Last Exit to Brooklyn (2007) and the language used by the characters that are to be found in Liksom’s work.
I understand the main purpose of Liksom’s text to be a critique of society and an attempt to give marginal figures a voice. In my opinion a good translation would attempt to express both of these aspects as clearly as possible and in my analysis of the
translations I will try to point out where I think that the translators have succeeded in this, and where I think that they have failed.
3.3 The obscurity of the Other
Every reading of an author is an encounter with the other and my concept of the other is built upon the theories of Jacques Lacan’s Ecrits (2006), where the other is both a projection of the self (autre) and a unique separate subject (Autre).
When I read a text purely for my own pleasure I usually don’t concern myself with the question of whether I am experiencing a part of myself which the text has inspired me to see or if I am genuinely encountering a descriptive account of something real.
While reading I see everything before me as a film which has been based upon the text;
I am undoubtedly seeing things which are not actually described in the text itself when I create that mental picture.
In the act of translation I am torn between translating the text I have before me and the experience I had while reading it, there is the text, and there is the memory of the
experience of the text.
Each encounter with the other brings with it a new awareness of something that was unknown to us before. The language of Rosa Liksom is other to me, not only because it is not written in the language of my thoughts (which is English) but also because I would not naturally use the language that Liksom uses even when it is translated.
If I have no experience of an equivalent to Rosa Liksom’s characters in my own language I am forced to look to other literature or to life itself to find them.
For the reader of the translation the text always contains an element of the exotic. The exoticness of the text originates in the very fact that it comes from an unknown language, a foreign language. The translation of a text exists as a minority within the target
language, as Finnish in English (or whatever the target language might be). In the
publicity texts on the covers of the translations which are discussed later in this essay we see how the notion of the exotic is used as a selling point for Liksom’s stories. On the
back cover of David McDuff’s translation (2007) the exotic nature of Helsinki is expressed as being a bleak and sprawling urban landscape covered in snow.
Even when the translator has mastered the source language there are still large areas of unknown knowledge to them; even in our own languages there are large areas that are unknown to us, this is why the many of the plays by Shakespeare come with translations into modern English opposite the original text
Perhaps one needs to be wary of idealizing the Other, in this case the tone and intentions of Liksom in her stories. Is my interpretation of Liksom too liberal and humanistic, is she really laughing at the characters in her novels, and is the true aim of her stories to write a critique of modern society and the monsters that are created by it?
Am I looking at the other or the Other?
Perhaps it can be said that we always suffer from a certain pathological standpoint in our interpretations of that which we attempt to examine. The clichéd example of this is the difference between the pessimist and the optimist, the former sees the glass as being half empty and the latter sees the glass as being half full.
In his Avhandling I Litteraturvetenskap (2003) Anders Johansson describes the distorting tendencies of an established orthodoxy of interpretation. Johansson gives the example of the way in which every single word of Jorge Luis Borges’ novels is seen as having significance (2003:59-87). Once the interpretational stance has been established, it becomes a starting point for the majority of those who examine his work; a starting point which makes it hard to see the other possible levels of interpretation.
Two of the most popular fields of investigation in academia at the moment are gender and ethnicity, and it’s easy to see how those fields might be relevant to Liksom’s work;
Liksom is a woman and her work describes what one might call marginal characters, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that those are areas of significance in her work. The
translator needs to be wary of the projection of meaning into a text caused by a pathological (unconscious) interpretation created by the orthodoxy of current trends within our present culture.
One possible way round this would be to read interviews that have been conducted with Liksom and articles about how her work was critically received in Finland, and with which other novels her work might be compared.
4 An archaeology of translation
There are three main fields of translation studies: the first looks at existing translations, the second examines different contexts and the third examines the methodology behind the translation.
Although my approach looks primarily at existing translations I hope to bring in the other two branches of translation studies throughout my study. The first stage of translation is often the literal translation from source text to target text. One of the
alternatives to a manual translation is the machine translation, where a computer program automatically translates the words and follows grammatical rules that are typical for the two languages.
Using Google’s translation program at http://translate.google.com/#fi|en| I have translated page ten of Rosa Liksom’s Tyhjän tien paratiisit (1989) into English; the original text reads like this:
Faija osti mulle millin kämpän Eirasta kun meillä tuli Haukilahdessa pieniä erimielisyyksiä hygieniasta.
Siellä oli pölyä joka paikassa ja jumalauta missä kondiksessa meidän kylpyamme oli. Siis joka ainut kerta mä jouduin desinfioimaan sen.
Veskipyttyä mä en voinut käyttää ennenku mä laiton siihen päälle steriilin suojuksen. Meille meni elämä jatkuvasti riitelyksi ja faija sit osti mulle oman kämpän. Siisti kämppä, sellaset helvetin korkeet huoneet. Siihen on tehty täydellinen peruskorjaus. Mä muutin himasta ja mä todella huokasin helpotuksesta, ett enää mulla ei mee koko päivää kämpän siivoukseen.
Mutta kun mä olin niinku toista päivää siellä kämpässä, mä tajusin ett se edellinen asukas saatto olla mikä homo tahansa, ja mä ostin kunnon tapponesteet ja rassasin kolme viikkoa sitä luukua. Mä kävin tikulla läpi jokaisen saumauksen, listan, kaikki.
(Liksom 1989:10)
Unfortunately Google Translate does not recognize a large number of the words in the Finnish text, and in order to attempt a translation I had to change many of the Finnish
words into the formal written language. The words which had to be changed for Google to recognize them were:
Kondiksessa – kunnossa veskipyttyä – vessan istuinta ennenku – ennen kuin sit – sitten
sellaset – sellaiset korkeet – korkeat himasta – kodista
huokasin – huokailin (huokasin was not recognized by Google Translate) ett – että
mee – mene
kämpässä – asunnossa
rassasin – rassaa (the word was only recognised in the present tense in the third person, and only as meaning to bother and not to clean or to work on. Siivosin was not
recognized either, perhaps indicating a problem with certain type four verbs) luukua – asuntoa
From this list we can see that not only does Google Translate have problems translating spoken Finnish, it also struggles to recognize normal written Finnish when combined with different grammatical forms. The machine translation by Google was as follows:
Dad bought me a millimeter Eirasta cabin when we came Haukilahti minor differences hygiene.
There was dust everywhere, and my God what condition we had bath. So every single time I went I disinfect it. The toilet seat I do not have to use before I to the top of the sterile black hood. For us, the continuing controversy over my life, and then dad bought me my cabin. Neat cabin, those damn high ceilings. It has been a complete overhaul. I moved home and I actually sighed with relief that the longer I only go to the cabin the whole day cleaning. But when I was like a second home there for days, I realized that the previous
and it really bothers three weeks to dwelling. I went to stick through each sealer, mailing list, everything.
(http://translate.google.com/#)
The results in Swedish version were not much clearer:
Pappa köpte mig en millimeter Eirasta hytt när vi kom Gäddvik mindre skillnader hygien.
Det var damm överallt, och min Gud vilket skick vi hade bad. Så varje gång jag gick jag desinficera det. Wc-stolen jag behöver inte använda innan jag till toppen av den sterila svarta huvan. För oss, den pågående kontroversen om mitt liv, och sedan pappa köpte mig min hytt. Neat stuga, de förbannade högt i tak. Det har varit en fullständig översyn. Jag flyttade hem och jag faktiskt suckade med lättnad att ju längre jag bara gå till hytten hela dagen rengöring.
Men när jag var som ett andra hem där i dagar, insåg jag att de tidigare invånarna vad gay eskort som helst, och jag köpte en anständig döda vätskor och jag understryka tre veckor till bostaden. Jag gick för att sticka igenom varje GRUNDPOLISH, sändlista, allting.
(http://translate.google.com/#)
Despite the rather amusing qualities of these texts, there is a more serious intention behind my use of Google Translate, which is to show the difficulties involved with machine translation and the accuracy of mathematical formulas when used to translate meaning.
From the translations we can make out some typical mistakes for machine translation.
The first thing that strikes me upon reading these texts is inconsistency of the
translations. In the Swedish translation we can see that kämppä is translated as both hytt and stuga. Neither of the translations recognizes Eira as a place with a grammatical ending (Eira + STA) and translates it simply as Eirasta. Haukilahti loses its grammatical form completely, with both translations dropping the –SSA ending.
Both translations produce a completely ungrammatical translation for the sentence about the bathtub, what condition we had bath and vilket skick vi hade bad. Kylpyamme in fact always has a –mme ending, even though it does not refer to it belonging to us.
form of saattoi. The statement mä kävin tikulla läpi is also strangely translated in both versions; in English it has the equivalence of saying I went over it with a fine tooth comb or I cleaned every nook and cranny but it could also be translated literally as I cleaned it all with a stick.
The translations also change the punctuation and in the case of the Swedish translation it writes a word in capital letters, for no apparent reason.
It would be quite easy to fill an entire study with the problems encountered in machine translations, but there are some positive signs from these translations: both translations pick up on the fact that joka paikassa is everywhere and not in every place and that huokasin helpotuksesta is sighed with relief, when the word huokasin was changed to huokailin it was able to recognize the new word; the program also recognizes words like mä and oon.
Although the translations give a general idea of the outline of the source text, that the father has bought the offspring a dwelling which he is obsessed with cleaning, it can’t really be said that the machine translation at this point can have any real role in the translation of literature, as it only really makes sense if one can already speak the language which is being translated, in which case the machine translation would not be needed.
What the texts make us realize is the importance of context and an extensive knowledge of vocabulary and grammar when undertaking a translation. I’ll attempt to clarify the problems of the machine translation by creating a grammatically and linguistically accurate version of the above translations:
Dad bought me a flat for a million in Eira when we we’d had some small disputes about hygiene in Haukilahti.
There was dust everywhere and god what a state our bath was in. That was why I had to disinfect it every time. I couldn’t use the toilet seat before I’d laid a sterile protective cover on it. We continued arguing all the time and then dad bought me my own flat.
A nice place, those bloody high rooms. It had been completely renovated. I moved from home and I really sighed from relief that I didn’t have to go around cleaning the flat all day. But when I’d been in the flat for a couple of
and bought some good disinfectant and strained for three weeks in that place, I went with a stick through every join, skirting board, everything.
The text now makes grammatical sense and relates better to the original text. However, it still lacks the character of the original text, but what clues about the context of the text can we find in the original source text?
In the first case we should not automatically assume that spoken language means working class or un-educated. Everybody in Finland uses some variant of the spoken language; it does not have the same connotations as using slang in English has.
The primary clues come in the description of the flat being bought for a large amount of money in an exclusive area, later in the text come further references to the person being well off, that they buy their food from Stockman and talk about holidays in Greece.
This character is not marginal because of his class, intelligence or economic position, but because he has a psychological illness, namely an obsession with cleanliness. The character’s compulsive, almost autistic nature is one of the key features of meaning in this text and the text should therefore reflect that.
The first problem in this text is the idea of the flat being bought for a million, the reader instantly thinks of a million pounds, Euros or dollars, when in fact this text dates to the time when Finns still used the markka, At the point of conversion, the rate was fixed at one euro being approximately equal to six markka, or precisely €1 = 5.94573 mk.
Therefore the actual cost in Euros would now be something like 250,000 Euros, which was probably about the average cost of a fairly normal 2 bedroom flat in Eira at that time.
It is indeed expensive, but not in the region of a million pounds or Euros. In my opinion the credibility of the novel would be undermined by changing the currency to Euros or pounds, that would be a domesticating tendency that would obscure the meaning of the original text. There are many other references to cultural phenomena that were around at the same time that the novel was published, Liksom also refers to Public Enemy
(1989:77) and Nick Cave (1989:79) in Tyhjän Tien Paratiisit. Should one change those references as well to make them current day equivalents? If one begins with such an adaption it is difficult to know where to stop, it ceases to be a translation and becomes a reworking.
The best option in this case seems to be to add the currency to the text as Markka or Finnish Marks, either in the text itself or as a footnote explaining the rate of exchange, in my opinion the book makes more sense being about a real moment in the past rather than a constructed present day.
The next problem is siisti kämppä, sellaset helvetin korkeet huoneet, the Swedish language has a good equivalent to siisti, namely snygg, which has been used in the Swedish translation. In English the word nice does not contain the same amount of positivity as the Swedish and Finnish words, but it is the most likely alternative in this case. It might also be worth pointing out how words affect the words around them, nice is more frequently used with place rather than flat, as it describes the atmosphere as well as the architectural features.
Sellainen is a rather difficult word to translate, directly translated it means that kind, but it can also infer those kind or the kind or even the like or such. In translating this
expression to English we are quite restricted by what is grammatically possible, such fucking high walls is rather strong, and perhaps too firmly placed in the vernacular of someone of a lower class than the character in this story; such damn high walls on the other hand would be too firmly placed in the upper classes and would seem a little antiquated. Perhaps the most neutral expression in this case would be such bloody high walls, an expression that would be free of association to any particular class.
The next problem for the English translation is mikä homo tahansa. Swedish has the equivalent expression som helst, which can be said to mean any kind, as opposed to the too specific some kind in the machine translated text. In order to find an equivalent we have to rewrite the entire sentence: I realized that any kind of gay could have been living there before me.
The word homo is in itself a little difficult to handle, homo is the standard name for homosexuals in Finland, but homosexual is a much too formal name to be used in this text. A look at Wikisaurus’ online thesaurus gives us multiple options of words that can be used to describe a homosexual:
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikisaurus:male_homosexual). In this case I tried to go for the most neutral expression I could find.
Kunnon tapponesteet might be better as strong disinfectant as good disinfectant is a little vague, we don’t know in what way it is good. It could be good for the environment, but in the context of the story we see that it has to be good at killing germs.
The last sentence of the page is perhaps the most difficult to translate of all:
Mä kävin tikulla läpi jokaisen saumauksen, listan, kaikki
Kävin means I went, the adessive ending on tikku means with, so a direct translation would be:
I went with a stick through every seam, skirting board, everything
We can see that this doesn’t really make much sense, until we see that saumauksen can also mean the grout between tiles, and that instead of skirting board we can have
molding. In Finnish homes there is often a skirting board between ceiling and wall as well as between wall and floor. The word molding in English suggests something a little too ornate, but perhaps crevice is a good compromise in this case as it means narrow crack, the kind that would occur between two surfaces. It keeps the sense of small details from the original, although it loses the particular surface.
Tikku is a very difficult word to translate as it can mean anything from a splinter to a USB memory stick. Toothbrush or matchstick are perhaps good compromises here, as hammastikku and tulitikku both contain the word tikku. In English cleaning something with a toothbrush is often used in expressions concerning pedantic cleaning.
The end translation then becomes:
I cleaned between the tiles with a toothbrush, I cleaned every crevice, everything.
The sentence relates the feeling of obsession quite well, especially in the repetition of cleaned. The translator must be aware of the risk of trying to improve the text or trying to
tikku are difficult to maintain in translation. As there is no direct equivalent for tikku the translator is forced to go for a more concrete term, a particular kind of stick, and the problem is in knowing how far an adaptation should go. The translator has the original to refer to, but the reader can only refer to the translation itself. There is always a risk of underestimating the ability of the reader to understand vague or unusual language. We can also consider the feasibility of using with a small stick in the translation. The translator should also consider the possible benefits of consulting a reader who has no knowledge of the original text and ask them how they respond to each of the different versions.
The meaning of tikku is context based, as it is in English when using the word stick. If I were to ask someone Do you have a stick? depending on the context of the situation I could mean any number of things: a walking stick, a USB memory stick, a pointing stick, a piece of wood (an off-cut that could be used to stir some paint or thrown in a fire) or a piece of wood direct from a tree that is smaller than a branch but bigger than a twig.
Related to stick are the words pick (closer to puikko, due to the sharpness of its ends) and splinter.
Perhaps the most important thing here is to consider the level of detail and the context of the household, that the tool which is used should be something which could be found within the home, such as a toothpick, toothbrush, matchstick or chopstick.
Table 1 (p 12-13) could be a useful tool in this particular translation, even if a translator cannot find a word with the same range of meanings in English; it still might be possible to find the word that would be used in the same context. Using the table it is possible to examine aspects of the tikku. For example, the translator can consider how sharp it is or how large it is. Once the translator has a range of aspects or contexts of the tikku it can then be considered what it would be called in English, as if the translator were seeing the tikku (or partially simulated tikku) for the first time.
But the translator must also keep in mind the relationship between the tikku and the text: is it a metaphor? Does it play a part in the narrative later on? Is it used for a
particular job? Is it being used to say something about the character? The translator needs to consider both the contexts and the hierarchy of contexts in the expression of meaning.
Another alternative is to simply leave the translation as stick and preserve the ambiguity of the original meaning.
With all the above corrections and a few others added to my translation it becomes (please note that this translation is given here to demonstrate the process of translation, and should not be seen as my idea of the perfect translation):
Dad bought me a flat for a million marks in Eira after we’d had a few small disputes about hygiene in Haukilahti.
There was dust everywhere there, Jesus what a state the bath was in, I had to disinfect it every time, I couldn’t use the toilet seat before I’d laid a sterile protective cover on it. We kept on arguing all the time and then dad bought me my own flat.
A nice place, such bloody high ceilings, it had been completely renovated. I moved from home and I really sighed from relief that I didn’t have to go around cleaning the flat all day. But when I’d been in the flat for a couple of days I realized that any kind of queer could have been living there before me, so I bought some strong disinfectant and slaved for three weeks in that place, I cleaned between the tiles with a toothbrush, I cleaned every single crevice, everything.
4.1 Anselm Hollo’s translation
Anselm Hollo translates the same text in the following way:
My dad bought me this apartment in Eira, it wasn’t cheap, but back in Haukilahti we had these constant fights about hygiene. There was dust everywhere, and god, you should have seen the bathtub. I had to disinfect it every single time I used it. I couldn’t use the toilet before spreading a sterilized cover on it. We had fights every second, and so he bought me my own crib. It’s a nice one, great high ceilings, it’s been renovated from top to bottom. So I moved in here and breathed a great big sigh of relief that I
here it occurred to me that the previous inhabitant might have been some incredible queer or something, So I went and bought some heavy-duty cleansers and spent three weeks on the job. I even used a toothpick to clean out every nook and cranny, and finally the place looked real good. (1993:71)
We can see from the first line that Hollo has been faced with many of the same
problems that I discussed in my translation, that the reference to a million was unclear in the English translation. Hollo has decided to directly describe what he imagines the significance of the million is within the context of the story, but we can also see how Hollo was forced to continue his addition in the next sentence, it wasn’t cheap, but. Here he indicates that things were so bad that the narrator had to move from Haukalahti whatever the costs were. In choosing this method Hollo has added a meaning to the text that wasn’t there before.
In the original Liksom story the narrator ironically understates the importance of the fights, calling them pieniä erimielisyyksiä hygieniasta, but Hollo has stated them directly by calling them constant fights, losing the sense of irony.
Hollo has retained Jumalauta as God. I changed this expression to Jesus in my own translation as it is one that’s more common amongst speakers of English from England.
Hollo leaves out the helvetin in helvetin korkeet huoneet and replaces it with great. I also found it hard to form a natural sounding sentence around this phrase.
Hollo also alters todella huokasin helpotuksesta to great big sigh of relief once again Hollo amplifies the expressions of the original work, great or big by themselves would have sufficed in this case.
Hollo has also had trouble with translating mikä homo tahansa. Hollo alters it to some incredible queer or something, another amplification with the addition of incredible that sounds highly unusual in any context, never mind the context of the story that we’re dealing with. It is interesting to consider why this expression seems so strange to me, it appears to stand outside what I would consider to be the normal use of language. As a guide for which word to use in this case we can refer back to my table of meaning on page 13 of this essay. We can consider an equivalent for homo by considering several different axis of meaning.
The first axis (or level of equivalence) we can consider is the axis of intensity, where would the word homo be placed on axis of intensity between a slang expression and derogatory insult, is it an every day insult or is it an unusual expression?
Where would we place the word queer on the same axis? The problem with this method is that homo has not been used in isolation, but as part of a phrase. Although gay has perhaps most equivalence with homo, if we are to preserve the expression mikä homo tahansa we need to find a word that fits both the phrase and the meaning. Any kind of gay doesn’t work in this context as the expression seems illogical. One can wonder how relevant it is to talk about logic in this particular case, it may in fact be more relevant to refer to rhetorical forms. The phrase any kind of gay simply doesn’t fit any known
expressions and therefore strikes the reader as being ill-fitting. The original expression in Finnish is a common one, and it therefore makes more sense to search for a common expression in the English language.
Although gay is used in expressions such as don’t be so gay, that’s well gay and he’s a real gayboy to refer to someone or something as being transgressive or wrong (or
homosexual) it is the phrase here that seems more important than the close equivalence of the word gay with homo.
But why does the phrase seem more important than the meaning of the word? One possible explanation for this can be given by referring back to the possible subdivisions of meaning (p 13) that can be summarized as plot, character, setting and form. In terms of character we have a narrative voice that appears to suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. The character appears to have a compulsive desire to create a sterile
environment because of a fear of germs. Any kind of queer fits this character better than any kind of gay because it expresses a fear of anything strange or foreign, rather than just homosexuals, the character’s fear is total, not specific.
If we bring in the dimension of a specific prejudice against the homosexual act the whole texture of the piece changes, the failed sexual interaction that occurs later in the text would perhaps then be seen as the character’s repressed homosexuality and the obsessive compulsive disorder could be seen as an expression of guilt over the character’s sexual orientation.
That would not be my interpretation of this particular text, although it cannot be excluded as a possible interpretation. I think we should be careful not to force the
reader’s perception in this direction by giving them misleading signs. What this might be said to demonstrate is that both the range of meanings (p 12-13) and the hierarchy of meaning (p 12) need to be looked at simultaneously when doing a translation.
My interpretation of this particular text is that it refers particularly to the relationship between individuals and their control over their own environments, the excessive control of the known and limited space is an expression of the fear of the unknown and unlimited space that exists outside of the flat. There is perhaps (in my opinion) something
particularly Finnish about this state of mind, especially when one considers the long winters spent indoors, and the concept of Finland as being a distanced and isolated nation of people. This is of course a stereotype, but there is some truth in all stereotypes.
Perhaps one needs to consider the context in which Hollo was translating; who was he translating for, from whom had he learnt English and in what contexts did he use the English language? Is it important to consider who would actually buy a translation of an unknown Finnish author? Is it because of Liksom’s name or the translator’s name, or perhaps it is because of the publisher’s reputation; does the purchaser expect a
translator’s text to be similar to his other translations? We can certainly see similarities between McDuff’s translations of Russian authors and his translation of Rosa Liksom.
Perhaps the expression incredible queer is perfectly normal among a certain class of American people. The problem here is that even if incredible queer is an adequate translation for certain kind of person’s understanding of English, for the majority of people it appears overstated and antiquated, where as the original expression could be used by any kind of person in everyday life. Here I appear to be claiming to be a spokesperson for everyday spoken English and am claiming more authority than Hollo.
This is perhaps a good indication of why the definitive or perfect translation can never be agreed upon, as every translation comes from a different linguistic context and each translator has a different idea of a projected audience. It is perhaps only when the book is published that the translator can really have access to a wide range of understandings by seeing what kind of reactions their translation has produced.
Heavy-duty is an acceptable and interesting alternative to kunnon, but in the English language a cleanser is something used to get rid of make-up. As Hollo has spent most of his life in America, this could perhaps be an American term for disinfectant, but the book itself is an English publication aimed at an English market, all of the reviews on the back page come from English newspapers and magazines, so it seems strange that the word cleanser should have been chosen. If one looks a little closer at the cover it can be seen that there is a second price given in dollars after the price in English pounds, which can perhaps be seen as a sign that the publishers wanted a translation that would work both in America and England, and it could be that in this case it was the American audience that received more consideration in the translation.
Hollo has offered an alternative to the Finnish version of the last sentence mä kävin tikulla läpi jokaisen saumauksen, listan, kaikki. Hollo’s version is a successful one, he chooses the word toothpick instead of toothbrush or stick and uses the phrase every nook and cranny. Although this adaption can be seen as being successful, it does lose the separate details of the specific sites of saumauksen, listan, kaikki.
Anselm Hollo is in fact a native speaker of Finnish, although he has lived in America since the 1960’s and this might offer some explanation to why Hollo feels able to make so many diversions from the original text. Undoubtedly he has the reader’s interests at heart and wants to make sure that the reader understands the meaning of the original text, but by amplifying the level of intensity of many words contained in the text it would seem that he often does more harm than good.
If we reconsider the deforming tendencies described by Antoine Berman (1985:67-81) that were mentioned earlier on in this essay, we can see some of these tendencies in Hollo’s text. His text shows signs of clarification, expansion, ennoblement and the destruction of expressions and idioms, but to some extent this seems unavoidable when no direct equivalent can be found, such as for the word tikku and the phrase mikä homo tahansa. A translator often has to adopt a strategy of adaptation in order to maintain the integrity of the text; the biggest problem with Hollo’s translation is his lack of fidelity to common usage of the English language. Hollo’s style strikes the English reader as being too literary, a view which is shared by many of the Finnish people with whom I have
My own text undoubtedly contains similar tendencies, but this is not a competition to prove the best way of translating a text, it is an examination of the methodology that produces texts. Through my comparison of Hollo’s translation and my own we can see that there are similar grey areas when translating a text which are met with by using different strategies; some diminish the meaning of the original, while others exaggerate the meaning, and to a certain extent this seems inescapable.
4.2 David McDuff’s translation
David McDuff’s translation came out in 2007; the fact that a publisher saw a potential market for a new translation of Liksom’s work seems to suggest a certain level of dissatisfaction with Hollo’s translation. A prerequisite for publishing the same source texts by a different translator is that the translations should be different. In the following sections I will describe how Hollo’s and McDuff’s translations differ from each other in their translation technique and choice of texts.
Dad got me an apartment in Eira - cost him an even million - after we’d had some little spats back in Haukilahti. Our problem was hygiene. There was dust everywhere. The shower was a complete mess. I had to disinfect it every time I used it, and I never used the toilet until I’d put a sterile covering on the seat.
Anyway we were fighting about this all the time, so Dad finally got me a place of my own. A nice apartment with high ceilings. Completely
modernized. I moved out and was really relieved to think that now I wouldn’t have to spend all day cleaning. But when I’d been in the new apartment for a couple of days, it occurred to me that I knew nothing about the previous owner - he could’ve been gay for all I knew - so I bought some disinfectants and spent three weeks scrubbing the place down. I went over every inch with a fine-tooth comb, until finally the place was really clean, and I started to think about getting a job. (2007:8)
Unlike the previous two translations, McDuff settles for an even million without describing the currency, perhaps he felt it was adequate that the reader understood that the flat was expensive without describing the currency.
The choice of shower is slightly unusual for kylpyamme as it explicitly means bathtub.
McDuff leaves out both the Jumalauta and the helvetin without substituting them for anything.
McDuff has completely removed all reference to there being a sigh of relief in its place he uses was really relieved.
Like the other two translations, McDuff has altered the sentence about the homosexual by using the word gay, but he also completely restructures the original phrase, which in McDuff’s version becomes he could have been gay for all I knew. This adaptation seems to be a successful one as it suggests the anxiety about the unknown identity of the person who was living in the flat before the character moved in via the inclusion of the words for all I knew. The adaption fits both the style of the original and the familiar forms of
English. In McDuff’s translation the disinfectants are only disinfectants, he doesn’t try to translate kunnon at all.
McDuff makes use of the fine tooth comb expression that I mentioned earlier (p 19).
In my opinion he improves upon Hollo’s translation in the way in which he retains the micro level of cleaning by using the expression I went over every inch.
We can see a consistent policy of reduction in McDuff’s translation but despite the many details which he has left out of his translation, it still strikes me as being closer to the original text than Hollo’s version. This is because McDuff has made a greater success of communicating that which isn’t said in Liksom’s original, he has managed to
communicate the flowing verbal style of Liksom’s written language through the use of short sentences and dashes. McDuff’s translation can be said to be more considerate of the structural style of the original work and less interested in following literary
convention. It is interesting that David McDuff is an English translator, yet he uses the word apartment for flat. A look at the publisher’s address reveals that the book was published in America, once again we see how the publisher’s location and idea of a potential market has an effect upon the words chosen by a translator.
Looking at the list of translations that have been carried out by David McDuff the majority of his translations seem to have been from Russian and Swedish, with only a couple from Finnish. It would be interesting to know how much influence the Swedish translation had upon McDuff when he translated this work.
4.3 Tapani Ritamäki’s translation
In conclusion we can take a look at the Swedish translation and see if there are similar problems in the translation of Finnish to Swedish.
Farsan köpte en lya åt mej i Eira för en miljon när vi kom ihop oss lite om hygienen i Gäddvik. De va dammigt överallt å fy fan så badkaret såg ut. Alltså ja blev vareviga gång tvungen att desinficera de. Ja kunde int använda
toaletten utan att först ha täckt kanterna me ett sterilt skyddshölje.
Ti slut gjorde vi ingenting annat än grälade å de va därför farsan köpte denhär lyan åt mej. Snygg plejs, rummen e helvetes höga. Den e totalrenoverad. Ja flytta hemifrån å ja sucka verkligen av lättnad över att int längre behöva använda hela dan åt att städa. Men när ja hade varit sådär ett par dar i bostaden så fatta ja att den som hade bott där före mej kunde ha varit vafören bög som helst så jag köpte några rejäla doser likvideringsmedel å använde de tre veckor ti att putsa upp plejsen. Ja gick me tandpetare genom vareviga fog, vareviga list, allt. (1992:10)
One can quickly understand that the Swedish translator has been faced with a different set of problems to the English translators.
En miljon in Swedish currency seems fairly comparable to the Finnish currency of that time, it suggests expense but not any kind of massive wealth.
Like in McDuff’s and my own version the Swedish translation uses ironical understatement for the first description of the arguments vi kom ihop oss lite. The Swedish translation uses dusty everywhere rather than there being dust everywhere.
For Jumalauta the Swedish translation has made use of fy fan, an expression often associated with a feeling of disgust.
The Swedish version offers more detail of the manner in which the toilet seat was covered, which wasn’t there in the original Finnish version. ha täckt kanterna describes how the sides were covered, rather that the protective cover simply being placed upon the seat.
Swedish has a direct equivalent of helvetti in helvete, which makes it easier to translate than in the English language versions. The sigh remains a sigh in the Swedish version, McDuff is the only translator to leave it out.
The Swedish version uses the word bög, which has a usage as a general insult as well as a name for a homosexual. It can be compared with Hollo’s and my own use of the word queer as it doesn’t involve such a great level of adaptation as was used in McDuff’s version.
The Swedish version also uses the word toothpick for the tool used to clean the flat and fog for saumauksen. Fog can really be used to refer to any kind of filler used as a sealant in building and decorating, but it is most commonly used in reference to tiling. The Swedes also have the equivalent word list for lista, where as we have a variety of words in English, skirting board, skirting, molding and cornicing.
One can’t avoid noticing the use of spoken Swedish and slang in this translation, something that I will take up in the next part of my essay.
5 Is it slang, dialect, or spoken Finnish?
Many people who aren’t well acquainted with spoken Finnish have referred to Rosa Liksom’s language as being Helsinki slang; in actual fact, as we can see in the texts translated above, many of the words in Liksom’s book are also common to normal spoken Finnish and when specific slang words do occur, they are often used quite sparingly. Intense use of Helsinki slang is used in particular stories to express particular aspects of character.
In the translation from Finnish to Swedish we can see successful attempts to emulate spoken Finnish by using shortened versions or more phonetically accurate versions of the
å, inte to int, med to me, till to ti and är to e. What these words have in common is that they are all short words (of around three or four letters) that have been shortened to one or two letters, which is common in their spoken forms.
Could the same thing be achieved in the English language? The majority of personal pronouns in the English language are already very short, words such as me I, you and us cannot really be successfully shortened.
The shortened words that do occur in the English language are often too strongly connected to a particular part of England to be suitable translations of the language used in Rosa Liksom’s stories. Words such as innit belong to cockney slang where as int it is firmly placed in northern dialects.
The challenge then is to find neutral expressions of spoken language in English. To a certain extent this can be achieved in the use of words such as can’t for can not and shan’t for shall not. In David McDuff’s translation we have seen an effective use of short sentences to convey the fast pace of spoken language. Anselm Hollo’s translation has been less successful in this, as he has overburdened the translation with unnecessary explanations and firmly placed the language within the literary tradition, rather than the spoken.
Ritamäki has used spoken Swedish that is commonly spoken by the Finnish Swedish population in the south of Sweden to emulate the style of Liksom’s story, but could the same thing be done with spoken English? Unfortunately I don’t have any recordings of people from a similar context to the one in Liksom’s story about the drug addict, but I can give an example of a story told by an American teenage girl in James Paul Gee’s An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1999:143-144):
So they’re like so yesterday he was arguing and she held a rake and she wasn’t like that to hit him on the back of the butt, like she wouldn’t hit him, she wouldn’t hit him, she just taps him with things, she won’t actually like actually hit him, she just puts the rake like fool around wit’ him, like go like that, like he does to her, like he was, and like she was holding the rake up like this, and he pushed her and the rake toppled over the, um, fan.
It went krkkkkkkkkh, like that, and he started laughing, and when he laughs everybody else laughs ‘cos the way he laughs is funny, it’s like
