People of improbable hope

Nothing I can say could possibly make this any more inspirational. All rise.

Translated Fiction at BookTrust's New Site

Over at translation blog Brave New Words I found a link to BookTrust's new website dedicated to translated fiction and thought I'd link to it here too. The site is a valuable addition to a small field, and certainly worth a look for anyone interested in literature in translation.

For years, BookTrust has been an outstanding exponent of translated fiction, regularly reviewing new titles and giving translated fiction the kind of publicity it is hard even for publishers to provide. Now it seems they have decided to concentrate their efforts on one website, so as to have everything under one roof, as it were.

The site contains articles by publishers, writers and translators alike, reviews of new works in translation and introductions to forthcoming titles. I was pleased to note that, though it – disappointingly – didn't make the shortlist Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008, my translation of Maria Peura's At the Edge of Light did however make it to BookTrust's Recommended Titles section. The review isn't bad, either.

Cowardice vs Bravery

I was shocked to read earlier in the week about the Heinz mayonnaise advert which the company has taken off screens after around 200 complaints about obscenity. The advert, which features two men kissing, was called 'obscene' and 'inappropriate'. Many also complained saying that the advert was detrimental to children and would put parents in the awkward position of having to explain to their children that same-sex couples exist.

An online petition has been set up asking Heinz to reinstate the advert and not to give in to bigotry. So far over 9000 people have signed the petition – far more than the two hundred or so who complained about the original advert. We're no longer living in the 19th century. I can't see how people find this brief kiss offensive. It's not as if they started rimming each other on the kitchen table (cf. Queer as Folk episode 1, about twenty minutes in).

The issue of parenthood amongst same-sex couples came up again last night in two films shown as part of the Helsinki Pride 2008 (going on this week). The first was a documentary Tuplaisät ('Double Dads') focussed on a gay couple in Helsinki who have two foster children and who are now trying to have one biological child each. How refreshing to see a documentary about 'normal' people going about their lives. The film gave a fascinating look at what life with two dads must be like. I found the following anecdote particularly endearing: the two older children were arguing and calling each other gay, when one of the fathers walks in and says, 'That's enough! If anyone's gay round here, it's me.'

The next film, another documentary called The Marching Season, focussed on the differences between Pride marches in London and Riga in 2007. Gay rights hasn't been a political issue in the UK for years; young gay men in particular don't seem very interested in the politics of the movement, nor of the struggles that went on through the 70s and 80s. It was heart-warming to see the brave young members of Mozaīka, the Latvian LGBT rights organisation, determinedly planning their Pride march despite widespread hostility – a counter parade entitled NoPride was to be held at an adjacent park; the event attracted thousands of people who flocked to sign petitions against the Pride march. At the 2006 march, Mozaīka members were pelted with stones and excrement. How brave they are to carry on their work, regardless of the fact that their lives are constantly at risk.

We've come a long way in the last forty years. Equality has increased in many areas of life and gay people don't need to feel threatened in the street. This is largely because, in most western countries, it has become wholly unacceptable to hold such flagrantly homophobic opinions. Sadly, this is not the case in Latvia, where it seems that the neo-Nazi activities of NoPride and other homophobic factions are not universally frowned upon. Mozaīka has the right to hold a march, but the police cannot guarantee participants' personal safety.

In Britain, such attitudes would be, in the words the Heinz complainants, 'offensive and inappropriate'. This is why, although the Heinz debacle is a million miles from the problems in Latvia, the advertisement must be reinstated. Homophobic attitudes are to be condemned unequivocally. After all that people have fought for, it is absurd that something as trivial as two men sharing a kiss can cause such great offence. Reinstating the advert will be a powerful signal that such bigotry will not be tolerated. As things are now, the removal of the advert has caused far more offence than the kiss itself. Heinz: do the right thing.

"we live / the opposite / daring"

A strange news item came to my attention last week: on 1st May, the BBC ran a story about a motion in the Greek parliament to restrict the use of the word 'lesbian' to natives of the Greek island, Lesbos. The modern meaning of the word stems, of course, from the fact that Sappho, who wrote extensively about her love of women, was herself a native of the island. The title of this post is from Sappho's fragment 24C, translated by Anne Carson. In the original: ζ]ώο[μεν ... ]εναντ[ ... τ]όλμαν[

The parliamentary motion sounds far-fetched, to say the least. The Guardian offers a more detailed insight into Lesbian and lesbian life on the island. From these snippets of interviews with the natives, the problems stem largely from Greek tourists from the mainland, while the islanders themselves largely welcome lesbian tourists with open arms. I particularly liked the comment: "So long as they leave our women alone, they are welcome".

In the extremely unlikely event that this act passes through the Greek parliament (it would make them a laughing stock), it's hard to imagine its having any effect on the international use of the word. Languages develop as they will, and it's impossible to rein them in after the fact. Not to mention the fact that, around the world, people who identify themselves as lesbians significantly outnumber the inhabitants of the island.

Besides, this isn't the first time the Greeks have given us a synonym for the unmentionable. In the 19th century, the term 'uranian' was a common euphemism for all manner of sexual deviances, and derives from the word 'Uranus' / Οὐρανός (with its highly unfortunate English pronunciation). According to one version of the story, Aphrodite was born of Uranus (a birth in which "the female has no part") and later came to be associated with "a noble love for male youths". The word 'dyke' is also of Greek origin, and comes from Dika / Δίκα, one of Sappho's most favoured pupils. And if I remember correctly, Forster's Maurice (and, doubtless, Hall's The Well of Loneliness, too) also makes mention of the fact that the characters are "like the Greeks". Hmmm... By all accounts, they've been getting up to all sorts for over two millennia!

To finish with, I loved this comment from one of the women interviewed in the Guardian:

"Thank God Sappho was born on Lesbos, not Rhodes," says Sandra, on holiday from Leeds with a group of friends to celebrate her 60th birthday. "Or we would be stuck being known as Rhodesians."

European Fantasy in Paperback

In 2005 I translated an extensive anthology of Finnish fantasy literature, edited by Johanna Sinisalo, one of the the foremost SF writers in Finland. Some time later I was approached by Sinisalo to translate another of her short stories for an American anthology, the SFWA European Hall of Fame (2007), which features "sixteen contemporary masterpieces of science fiction from the continent". Edited by James and Kathryn Morrow, the anthology gives an overview of contemporary European fantasy writing, presenting it as both similar and distinct from the North American tradition of SF writing (Gaiman et al.) James Morrow's opening essay, 'Extrapolations of Things Past: A Barbarously Brief Account of European Science from Micromégas to Microchips', is informed and insightful, and serves as an excellent introduction to the collection.

The SFWA European Hall of Fame has recently been released in paperback, and in honour of this a video has been posted on YouTube (link below), featuring an interview with the editors about the process of putting the book together and with one of the authors on his feelings about having his work translated.



It's always fascinating listening to people – authors, translators, editors – talk about how they view the translation process. It's clear that most authors welcome the opportunity to have their works translated by professional native speakers (a certain Finnish playwright notwithstanding). However, working with editors, who are outside the initial creative process due to not speaking the source language, can be problematic, as their priority is the translation, while the role of the original is often seen as secondary. Not so with this collection.

As they point out in the interview, rather than normativise the text for an American readership, the Morrows actively encouraged all translators to retain as much of the feel of the original as possible. That being said, adherence to the original versus normativisation is always subject to the context and topos of the text; it is impossible to suggest that a given solution is necessarily desirable in every instance (as a certain Finnish playwright seems incapable of understanding). In the case of Sinisalo's 'Baby Doll' (the text featured in this collection), we all agreed that the language needed to be as accessible to an American readership as possible. After all, the subject matter – the over-sexualisation of pre-teenagers – is by no means a specifically Finnish problem.

This translation process differed considerably from previous ones in that, for the first time, I was working for an American publisher. I speak and translate into British English, so the Morrows agreed to Americanise my initial translation. This was an eye-opening experience; I realised that, though I have no difficulty understanding American English, the differences between our two variants of the language run far deeper than that we say "tomahto", they say "tomayto".

Thankfully, there was no need to call the whole thing off – I had to get that in somehow! It was like going through an additional level of editing. The Morrows sent me a revised version of the text, I then went through it and said whether they had strayed too far from the Finnish, or whether a certain phrase might better suit the feel of the original, until we reached a version all parties were happy with. There was much to think about: apart from vocabulary, word order and syntax is often markedly different; verb declension differs; people swear differently...

Actually having to engage with this on a textual level made me understand the full extent of the chasm between our modes of expression. Just as non-natives cannot translate into a target language that is not their native language, I will never be able to translate into American English, as I'll always need a native speaker to go through the text for me, and vice versa. Of course, real translators, being humble people, will be the first to acknowledge this; we have the conviction to know when we are right, but we also know where our expertise comes to an end. It is depressing that, in my experience, non-native translators have such an aggrandised image of their own abilities that they lack a default setting that says, "Sorry, I'm not qualified to translate that". What a shame that a certain Finnish playwright also falls into that category...

Bowling for Jokela

As incredible as it sounds, I only heard about the school shooting that occurred only some 50km from where I live about 12 hours after it happened. Not having a television and being on the move all day yesterday may have had something to do with it. When I was on the bus, I heard something on the radio about somebody being "rushed to Töölö hospital", but couldn't hear the rest of the item.

It goes without saying that yesterday's events were shocking beyond belief – I don't think there's any need to reiterate that. In a Finnish context the idea of a school shooting seems even more outlandish, because things like that simply don't happen here. Virtually nothing happens here – or so people like to think. Finns and other Scandinavians often seem to live in a fairytale land where they believe they are immune to these freak attacks. But if, as the media has now pointed out, Finland does indeed have the third highest ratio of guns per capita in the world, the answer to the question "How can something like this ever happen in Finland?" seems painfully obvious.

From the Guardian, 8th Nov 2007:

Police said the killer's gun was legally owned but he had obtained a licence only three weeks ago. Finland has the most heavily armed civilian population in Europe, and is third worldwide, after the US and Yemen.
Although murder rates are higher in neighbouring Russia and the former Soviet Baltic states, Finland has the highest murder rate in western Europe at around 28 per 100,000 people.
According to a survey this year by Geneva's Institute of International Studies, there are 56 privately owned firearms for every 100 civilian Finns. The guns must be licensed and a licence costs €32 (£22.50).

Can I really be the only person to whom these statistics come as a real shock? I'm stunned that a firearm licence costs less than the average train ticket and that anyone over the age of 18 can obtain one. However, Finland having the highest murder rate in western Europe doesn't come as a surprise. You only have to open the paper to see that, particularly in the countryside, the only way to sort out an argument with your neighbour is to shoot them with your hunting rifle. "My girlfriend left me, so I shot her" is not an uncommon quote in Finnish newspapers.

Where does this leave the indignation of those asking how this can happen in Finland? It does happen in Finland, it probably happens every day – on a smaller scale – but too often we turn a blind eye to it. I glanced at Finland for Thought this morning, the blog I love to hate, to see what they were saying about the shooting. The issue of guns in Finland came up there a few months ago. The opening comments on blog owner Phil's post speak volumes about the prevailing attitudes over at FfT:

Finland has the third highest number of guns in the world per capita, yet everyone isn’t shooting each other!? This must really confuse the anti-gun advocates! Or maybe, it’s not the *guns* that are the problem…??

Every time something like this happens (Dunblane, Columbine, Virginia Tech), we ask ourselves how many more people are going to have to die before something is finally done about the gun laws in our countries. The Second Amendment (and rest of the Constitution) was written in the belief that most people are decent, honourable citizens who will treat others with dignity and exercise restraint in front of the privileges the Constitution affords them. Perhaps I'm a misanthrope, but I'm not convinced that the majority of people have the common sense necessary to handle a firearm. Though I often dislike his style and his methods, on the issue of gun control, Michael Moore is absolutely right.

I love seeing conservatives and libertarians proved wrong; I only wish it had been in different circumstances. Perhaps you'd like to retract the above statement, Phil?

Formula One Goes Channel Five

Is it only me, or is there something distinctly pornographic about this and other recent photographs from the Formula One Championships? I remember laughing with O a few years ago, when Kimi Räikkönen won his first Grand Prix, at how even Helsingin Sanomat plastered a photograph of the boyish, downy-cheeked, "barely legal" Kimi in a similar pseudo-bukkake pose, but now I realise that the photograph in question, and the one above, are part of a much larger genre.

It's startling quite how closely the imagery of Formula One resembles the aesthetics of porn. The above picture might in another context be called an "autofacial" or something similar. Another common image is what I'll call "the ejaculation pose" (photographs which immortalise the moment upon which the winner first corks the champagne bottle at crotch-height, letting the contents spurt forth). Then there are those in which the winner drenches the other two drivers standing on the podium in the remaining fluids... I mean, champagne.

For all its inherent masculinity, the world of sport is positively brimming with homoeroticism, both overt and covert. For years I've wondered why footballers embrace each other, jump on top of each other and generally frolic on the pitch when somebody scores a goal; rugby scrumming has always held a certain amount of interest; and as for Greco-Roman wrestling... the sight of two men in tight (and I mean tight) lycra jumpsuits grappling each other on a court is quite a spectacle. I'm sure there's been much more written on the subject of homoeroticism in sport and the portrayal of the victorious man (do women shower themselves and in each other in champagne?) – numerous sociologists and queer theorists have doubtless had a stab – though for the time being I'll just have to make do with the pictures.

PS: I promised K last week that I would post on this subject, so thanks for your patience! Your comments, insightful and otherwise, are most welcome. My computer was at the repair store all week... Technology, eh! I don't know whether you can live with it, but as I've discovered you certainly can't live without it...