Caulfield Redux

Though it's old news by now, we may as well note that Fredrik Colting lost the first round in his battle to publish 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye in the United States (the book is available in the U.K.) However, there is still the appeal, which may overturn the court's decision. And in the WSJ, Julie Steinberg wonders about some of the same issues we discussed here:

That Tom Stoppard was able to borrow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from "Hamlet" without penalty speaks more to Shakespeare's inability to protest than to the cultural acceptance of character appropriation.

Nordic or not

Last week there was news that Greenland may soon become a sixth Nordic state. The new form of strengthened self-government for the autonomous country which at present exists within the Kingdom of Denmark apparently contains an "independence option" which can be exercised at a future date.

However, there are questions: would Greenland really be a "Nordic" state? The country's indigenous inhabitants are Inuits, related to other Inuit groups in Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Language-wise there aren't any problems - although Greenlandic isn't an Indo-European tongue, neither is Finnish. But there are aspects of Greenland's history that cause some head-scratching: for example, in 1946 the United States offered to buy Greenland from Denmark for $100,000,000, but Denmark refused to sell. There is also the question of Erfalasorput, the national flag, which doesn't look very Nordic - no cross, but a Japanese-style circle/sun motif.

And what about literature? The list of Greenlandic authors doesn't seem to be a long one, and those who do exist are mainly poets not well known outside their native land. Magssanguaq Qujaukitsoq (b. 1977) has published one collection of poetry, Sisamanik teqeqqulik (The Four-Cornered One), which this year was Greenland's nomination for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and was consequently translated into Danish. Reviews were mixed, to say the least, however: in Politiken, Mikkel Bruun Zangenberg was hard put to it to say a good word about the book, finding the poems lacking in literary quality and characterized by anti-consumerist and anti-colonial tub-thumping.

But perhaps the problem lies in the difficulty of translation? As Zangenberg pointed out, without a knowledge of Greenlandic, one has no way of knowing.

This seems a pity. If any of our readers can suggest some classic or contemporary Greenlandic writing in translation that might be suitable for our summer reading (the great sommarvila/sommerpause/kesätauko is almost upon us now), we would be pleased to hear about it.

See also: Modern Greenlandic Writing

Inspiration

I confess I'd never heard of Swedish writer Fredrik Colting before I read this editorial in the New York Times.

The piece strikes me as rather odd. It seems to be arguing that there are certain characters who should be left alone. That is to say that writers might be able to write "fan fiction" or sequels/prequels based on some fictional characters but not others. Why is that?

I guess I don't get why writers shouldn't have the freedom to write about whatever -- and whomever -- they want. I understand issues of copyright, but I nevertheless don't see why writers shouldn't be able to find inspiration wherever it strikes, even in a copyrighted text.

I'd love to hear what others think about Colting, his work, and this issue.

Crime Does Pay, At Least for Nordic Authors

I was recently browsing the bookshelves of my local Waterstone's. Let me add that my local bookstore is on a university campus, so I had heightened expectations. I thought that perhaps students in particular would be interested in a wide variety, in terms of both international voices and genre.

So I strolled the store, looking for Nordic authors. What I found was unsurprising, but disappointing nonetheless. I saw books by Swedish authors such as Henning Mankell and Håkan Nesser, and Norwegians such as Jo Nesbø. In other words, crime novelists.

Where, I wondered, were the more literary authors? Even an old Nobel Prize-winner or two would have satisfied me. But alas. The only Nordic voices to be found were those of detectives.

Now, some people have said that the popularity of Nordic crime fiction is an excellent thing, since it might get readers interested in the Nordic cultures and languages, and thus, by extension, in other kinds of literatures. But I'm not seeing evidence of that. I don't see bookshelves at libraries or bookstores devoted to Nordic literature and I don't see Nordic authors highlighted in newspapers or book reviews. If Nordic writing is mentioned at all, it is in the context of crime fiction, and crime fiction only.

So what will it take to get people to people to want to learn more about Nordic literature and authors? I don't have an answer, but I long for the day when crime doesn't pay.

Literary values

Also on the Bookseller site this week, author Anthony Horowitz writes in his blog about the place of literary fiction in the new world of publishing, where books are viewed largely as commodities, and the market is led by titles written by celebrity chefs. He quotes from an interview with Giles Foden, professor of creative writing at UEA, who says:

"The idea of what constitutes literary value has changed or become less consensual. It's harder to establish what is good and what is not, and that is one of the things that forms the canon. Barnes, Amis, McEwan were the last people through the door, and then the door closed, and then the building fell down."

As Horowitz points out, although writers of literary fiction and other genres account for one third of all book publishing revenue, "literary values now end with a lot of noughts."

Northern Lights - conference papers in book form

Translation is a practical activity but sometimes needs some theoretical underpinning. There is a whole continuum from descriptive to prescriptive, when aspects of translation are discussed. The papers from the Nordic Translation Conference, held at University College London in 2008, have been collected together to form chapters of a book entitled Northern Lights - Translation in the Nordic Countries, editor B.J. Epstein, published by Peter Lang, Oxford, Bern & New York, 2009. While the accent is on description, the thoughtful translator can glean tips and modi operandi from the various chapters here.

For a brief description of the conference itself, where these papers were first read, I can do no better than quote from the introduction:

The Nordic Translation Conference took place in London on 6-8 March 2008, and it was exciting for two considerable reasons. First, a major international conference had never before been convened to address translating from, and between the Nordic languages. And second, the variety of topics discussed spanned a fascinating range of studies, ideas, practical advice, and inspiration, encompassing seven languages Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Old Norse; unfortunately there were no papers discussing Greenlandic or Sami) and issues about children's literature, poetry, linguistics, subtitling, interpretation, legal and political translation, among others.

The resulting book is divided into six parts. The first deals with the differences between related languages; the second, translations to and from English; the third, challenges created by specific styles; the fourth, children's literature; the fifth, the position and role of the translator; and lastly, political issues. There are nineteen chapters altogether.

The majority of papers, now chapters, focus on the linguistic examination of literary texts, but also deal with everything from subtitling crime films to tag questions in translations between English and Swedish. Style in skaldic verse is examined, but so is the contextualisation of Nordic literature when finding a British audience. Children's literature is used as the basis for three chapters, and the Finnish language for a further three.

One paper, not included on account of the author's computer problems at the time, deserves a mention, and that is Martin Murrell's paper "Cultural Competence and Literary Licence", which dealt with translations of work by Eino Leino, Eva Ström, and others.

The Nordic focus was heartening. To quote again from the introduction:

Though the Nordic countries, by virtue of their small populations and their traditionally externally focused outlook, have long recognized the importance of translation, the study of Nordic languages has never played much of a role in the field of translation studies. At translation studies conferences, the more widely spoken languages, quite naturally, have taken the centre stage, and the few attending Nordic specialists often comprise the audience for each others's talks, gathering together to eagerly share research or just to sympathize over being so alone in the field.

Well, Nordic specialists were certainly not alone last March! The hall was filled to bursting point at the plenary sessions. And it is to be hoped that when the next Nordic Translation Conference comes along, scheduled for 2011, a similar book of papers will be compiled, again covering the Nordic languages.

The Dream of a Nordic Alliance

Much is often talked about the rivalries and divisions between the Nordic nations, based on differences that are seen nowhere so clearly as in the field of culture. Yet it's hard to find written discussions of the subject - as though it were something to be hidden away rather than given a public airing. I recently came across an interesting and in-depth study of the topic, not by a literary figure but by a Danish musicologist, Anders Beyer, who has written extensively about the music of Per Nørgård, among other composers. In his essay, Beyer considers the changing face of the North as it comes, rather uneasily, into contact with the "mainland" of Europe. Although the essay was written some time ago, back in 2002, it still has contemporary relevance, and could perhaps form the basis for further debate. Excerpt:

We now see the outlines of an alliance shaping up between Norway, Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland as opposed to Denmark, Sweden and Finland who belong to the EU. We are seeing a new North, comprising the non-EU Western North and the EU Eastern North. In the case of Iceland, it has with a some justification been suggested that as a result of external influences the Icelanders have more in common with the Celtic temperament than the Nordic mentalilty. This illustrates the fact that in our enthusiasm to examine the Norse traditions we should not overlook other influences, for example from the British Isles.

Taking the birds' eye view of history, so to speak, we must at this point state that the euphoric Scandinavianism of the mid-nineteenth century has been eroded away. Back then, one could truly speak of a common goal which averted the rise of nationalist movements witnessed on the Continent. But strong interests in terms of realpolitik behind Scandinavianism as an alliance no longer exist. The contrary is rather the case, succumbing to temptations in the form of offers of new partnerships in the major central European movements.

Read it all.

SELTA, and the need to move on

Some time ago I wrote the letter below to the new SELTA Google Group, in the hope that it might stimulate some open discussion of issues that have troubled me as someone who has been a member of SELTA more or less since the beginning, nearly thirty years ago. There are some things in the letter I wrote - more or less impromptu, and without the benefit of SELTA's records and archives - which are not true. For example, SELTA met at SSEES (the London School of Slavonic and East European Studies) only once, in 1984. Michael Branch did not "supervise" the meeting, but acted as host to the association on that occasion.

On the other hand, the letter does reflect the way in which I've perceived SELTA over the years, including the perception near the beginning that this was a truly independent organization which stood beyond borders and considerations of statehood, national identity, and so on. I feel that in some ways, because of its name, the society has gravitated towards being a group which, although it represents the interests of many translators from different Nordic languages, has come to be dominated by Sweden - not only in a cultural sense, but also in a political and social one. And that strikes me as unhealthy for a United Kingdom-based organization, which needs to maintain its separation from considerations of Swedish state foreign and cultural policy.

The letter didn't awaken the response and discussion I had hoped for. Tom Geddes, SELTA's former Honorary Secretary, wrote me a long emailed reply, but declined to take part in the discussion online - or even to join the Google Group. From the SELTA committee there was more or less silence, and what several members experienced as a thinly veiled hostility. Partly because of this, we decided to start this blog, in the hope that it might let in some of the fresh air that has been lacking at SELTA, which has felt increasingly like a closed environment. However, it is now time to move on, and I hope that after this we can proceed to shape a new context for interaction between translators of Nordic literature, a context which to our great relef will lack "background and baggage" as one commentator put it.

Here is the text of my letter:

SELTA's Changing Identity

The recent discussion of Nordic translation workshops and memories of past meetings and seminars, together with a reading of B.J. Epstein’s lively and interesting blog and her account of the events and presentations at last year’s Nordic Translation Conference in London prompted me to reflect on the history of SELTA, its background and origins. What follows is a personal observation, and my comments are merely those of a SELTA member who first joined the association in 1981, back near the beginning.

When SELTA first began its life, its gatherings were held in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) under the general supervision of the School’s director, Michael Branch. As my background was in Russian studies (I hold a Ph.D. in Russian from Edinburgh University), the location of the meetings was one of the factors that aroused my interest in the new organization and prompted me to join it. At the time, I’d recently completed a translation of the complete poems of Edith Södergran, a transnational European modernist poet whose work embraces Russian futurism as much as it does German and Scandinavian literature. The fact that she wrote in Swedish is almost coincidental -- she could equally well have written the poems of her maturity in German, or even in Russian, as she was fluent in both of those languages.

I found the concept of an association nominally dedicated to literary translation from Swedish, but also aware of the cultural and literary heritage of the whole of the North-East European region, including Finland and the Baltic countries, a stimulating one. Michael Branch’s considerable reputation as a Finnish scholar added to the interesting mix. In Finland, the crossing and cross-pollination of several cultures – Russian, Swedish and Finnish – is an important part not only of Finnish history, but of the history of Europe.

As time went on, however, in the activities of the group I began to note a growing emphasis on Sweden, and on Swedish (as distinct from Finland-Swedish) literature. This was understandable, given the name of the association – and several of the members were indeed best known for their translations of rikssvensk literature. It was not until the location of the society’s meetings moved to the Swedish Embassy that I began to realize that a subtle shift of priorities had apparently taken place – instead of the general Nordic and East European context, there was now a specific emphasis on rikssvensk writing and authors. This again was understandable – the Swedish Embassy was, after all, offering its facilities to SELTA, and was even offering to pay members’ travel expenses to attend meetings. However, I saw this development as a limitation, and I still do.

Yet still there was a paradox. In 1981 I’d recently edited an issue of the international literary quarterly Stand devoted to new Norwegian writing (I worked as a co-editor of Stand with its principal founder, the poet Jon Silkin, from 1979 to 1981). This special issue was funded by the Norwegian cultural authorities, and the translators involved included Anne Born, Robin Fulton, Roger Greenwald, Tiina Nunnally, myself and others. The preparation of the material involved an officially-funded visit to Norway, which I made together with Jon Silkin and his wife Lorna Tracy – we were hosted by the poet Terje Johanssen, and the trip was organized by Kristin Brudevoll. This contact was one of the factors that eventually led to the formation of the NORLA agency. So when at a SELTA meeting in 1982 a Norwegian cultural representative popped up and promptly invited several of the members present to a seminar in Lillehammer the following year, I was not too surprised. This, however, opened up a new dimension in SELTA – while the Lillehammer seminar proved to be very valuable in terms of the forming of new contacts between authors, publishers and translators of Norwegian (and Nordic) literature, it also muddied the waters somewhat – as of 1983, there was now an “unofficial” SELTA of translators from Norwegian!

Much the same thing eventually happened in relation to Denmark, where some SELTA members, including myself, found themselves being invited to international seminars usually grouped around the Copenhagen Book Fair. And then there was the considerable project of the Finnish cultural authorities (FLIC and later FILI), which involved not only lavish translation get-togethers but also individual all-expenses-paid “study visits” for translators, usually with a carefully planned programme of meetings with authors, editors and publishers.

In spite of all this, however, SELTA meetings continued to be held (as they still are) at the Swedish Embassy. As far as I was aware, the Swedish cultural authorities did not replicate the activities of the Finns, Danes and Norwegians in holding international translation conferences, seminars and workshops. They did, however, make rooms for translators available in Sweden - and they offered sample translation subsidies, paid for selected Swedish authors to visit the UK, and helped Swedish Book Review. But this support seemed rather modest when compared to the extensive budget outlay of the other Nordic lands.

Although I can see some rational justification for it, I still don’t really understand completely why our association is called SELTA – for if one examines its history, one sees that many of its members have been active in translating books from other Nordic languages besides Swedish – in the past, Joan Tate, Tom Geddes, Anne Born and yours truly all translated books from Norwegian or Danish or both, and I’m sure there are many other examples of this. I’ve even translated a couple of books from Finnish. Eric Dickens is well-known as a translator of Estonian literature.

So shouldn’t the society’s name be something like the Nordic Literary Translators’ Association? I’d be interested to hear others’ views about this, if anyone cares to respond. I would be particularly interested to hear from Tom.

Regards,

David McDuff

Welcome to Nordic Voices in Translation

This is a new blog for the discussion of all issues related to the publishing in translation of the literatures of the Nordic countries, and also for the presentation of new material - excerpts from work in progress, fiction, drama, poetry, and criticism.

It's also hoped to include Estonian literature in the blog's future posts.