When in Gothenburg in 2005, at our first event ever, we were both quite pleased that Son got a question in, quite early. I think it was to Toby Litt, and the young questioner obviously had the advantage of language. Didn’t necessarily have to be a good question, although I’m sure it was excellent.
Cough.
At the latest London Book Fair a couple of weeks ago, he finally got to sit in the chair’s chair. It was still down to language. The translators have their own stuff, and there was some last minute shuffling of who did what to whom.
And I didn’t even know until this photo appeared on social media. As always, the names on the sign behind them don’t match who’s sitting there, but I believe that they are Michele Hutchison, Paul Russell Garrett and Rosalind Harvey. I am reasonably certain that the one on the left is Ian Giles. He’s always been good at talking. I shall assume that here it was good talking.
I loved Brinn mig en sol, by Christoffer Carlsson. If you recall, he’s the crime writer from my past, only thirty years after me. This is his second novel set in our shared home town, and it is so much better for that, rather than a great crime novel set anywhere else. Or do I think so because I can see just about every place where there is a dead body, where they work(ed), and I know the two police stations involved, and so on and so forth? I got to walk around somewhere familiar, with people behaving in a way I would expect them to behave.
(I gather there is already a translation into English; Blaze Me a Sun. I agree with one UK online reviewer that it comes across as very American. The US readers seem to have loved the book.)
The narrator is a person very much like Christoffer who, having moved back home, starts digging into what happened the night the prime minister was murdered, when there was also a murder in the woods outside Halmstad. Why does he do this?
Police officer Sven Jörgensson ends up dedicating the rest of his life to solving the several deaths, and his son Vidar trains to be a policeman too, and he also continues to dig. It takes well over thirty years to find the answer.
It feels very true to real life Sweden/Halmstad. I would have enjoyed the plot and the characters anywhere, but it’s the fact that they brought me ‘home’ that is so special. There is not enough fiction set in my past world, but until I read Christoffer’s first Halmstad novel I didn’t know how much I needed them. The title is a quote from a poem by Elsa Grave, who even features in the book. Just a page, but it rings true, because I also have Elsa knowledge.
As people say about momentous dates, I remember precisely what I was doing on March 1st 1986. I woke up with a migraine. And many years before that, I picked bilberries at the scene of the crime.
This was just lovely! The Secret of Helmersbruk Manor, by Eva Frantz, is that wonderful thing; a great Christmas story, and offering the reader – if you start on time – a chapter a day for Advent. (Next year I will do that. Because there will be a next read.)
Flora and her mother end up spending December in Helmersbruk, because the change will do them good. They have never been before, and find some aspects of life in this seaside town a little strange, or unexpected. But Flora likes it.
She discovers some puzzling things around the manor house, and somehow she feels as if she belongs; that she has the right to be there and to look into this mystery.
It’s a sweet fantasy, and an interesting look back at life as it was a hundred years ago, through the eyes of a modern child. It’s really very good. Do read. (If you feel it’s too late now, get the book to have it ready for next Advent.)
This turned up today. It will be just perfect for some Christmas reading; even pre-Christmas if I ignore the chores. And with a book like this, who wouldn’t?
The Secret of Helmersbruk Manor, A Christmas Mystery by Eva Frantz, and translated by A A Prime, with illustrations by Elin Sandström. Eva is a Swedish-speaking Finn, while Elin is Swedish. The cover is gorgeous, and I can’t wait to not do any boring work.
We had tea together in Daughter’s flat on Saturday afternoon, the whole family. It was nice, and quite rare that all of us were in the room at the same time. The Resident IT Consultant was there to lift boxes – of books – for the umpteenth time. We were in post-decorator mode. I was there, I think, to provide moral support. Or something. Daughter was there to enjoy being back after some enforced staying with the old people while paint was wielded. And Son was only there on a laptop screen, as he was mid-event with his fellow translators and some crime writers and academics. But he was sort of there.
It was the Scottish Society for Northern Studies’ half day conference of Partners in Crime. It’s the kind of thing that can threaten to be worthy but boring if you’re unlucky. We weren’t though. It was pretty good throughout the afternoon, including the tea (which we had to provide ourselves).
We missed a few minutes here and there, as we drove from A to B, dealt with a grocery delivery, and generally carried furniture around. But I caught Son in his introduction, followed by more introduction from Alan Macniven, head of Scandinavian Studies in Edinburgh, followed in turn by Dr Joe Kennedy, who seems to have taken over the running of the Gothenburg students’ classes at Sussex. Very appropriately he had to leave to deal with childcare.
Then there was Lorna Hill on women in crime fiction. Before she finished she was joined by Lin Anderson, who had been expecting a green room, but who ended up ‘on stage’ so to speak. She in turn was joined by Arne Dahl and their chair Jacky Collins, who were also a little startled to find there was no privacy, so we could hear everything! But it was nice to listen to these authors discussing their writing, and I will now forever think of bad weather, or good weather, or any other weather, as characters in their books. And I didn’t know that so many small aeroplanes from the Nordic countries crash in the Cairngorms…
After we learned to exercise care in the non-existent green room it was time for Prof. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen to talk. Daughter and I puzzled over his accent to the extent that we didn’t hear all he had to say. Sorry. The last session of the day gave us three Scottish-based translators of Scandinavian crime fiction, Anne Bruce, Kari Dickson and Ian Giles discussing their work with Duncan Beattie. And I/we might have heard it ‘all’ before, but it was actually both fun and interesting. Swedes spend too much time in the staffroom talking about coffee, and sometimes a dead author is best. The Norwegians are dropping their funny letters to sell better abroad. You know, ø and the like.
And as we’d already ‘had our tea’, we didn’t join people in the Magnusson Arms for an informal chat afterwards. I’m sure it was good.
You can end up having to translate ‘terrible tosh’ but that’s all right. You might even like terrible tosh. And if not, someone is bound to want it and to pay you for your efforts.
I attended a Zoom event today where four translators talked about the worst they get to work with. And why they do it. ‘Think of the money, think of the money, think of the money.’ (That’s my boy!)
As part of the Advanced Scandinavian Translation Workshop 2023, Sophie Lewis talked to Charlotte Barslund, Ian Giles and Atar Hadari about bad books. There are a surprising number of them around. And you need to be able to sniff out the ones you really don’t want to read, let alone translate, before it’s too late and you have agreed and have a contract, and you need not to vomit when things get really bad.
Because I seem to know more translators than the average witch, I do hear things. But I would never tell. Some books are dreadful. Some authors are oblivious to the [lack of] quality of their book. When it comes to translations into English, which ‘everyone’ speaks, they often know that their version of English is better than that of the paid professional.
If it’s really awful you might translate faster. Just to get to the end. Some of them divide up a bad task into more manageable chunks. They usually don’t mind putting their names to even the terrible tosh, but Ian did say he’d rather not have had his name displayed on the front cover of one book. Charlotte mentioned a back catalogue translation where a bad word we would not use today occurred, and asked the author if they wanted to change it. They did. Atar read a poem he translated a long time ago, by a poet long dead (apart from this they did not name or shame anyone at all).
All the translators reckoned that they tend to improve the books they work on, especially the ones that ought to have been better edited in the original. It reflects badly on them if they help publish something that is even worse than it needs to be.
This left me very grateful that when I read a book I don’t like, I can always stop. Translators can’t. And won’t. They have mortgages to pay.
It rained – a lot – and the Son shone. We were going to Edinburgh, for the Portobello Book Festival, because Son was appearing in an event, Crime Fiction in Translation. Along with three colleagues, admittedly, but it was a first. I think, anyway…
But we live in Scotland where things go wrong with public transport when you want to go places. It rained. Much rain. In their wisdom ScotRail cancelled most of the trains and ran fewer of the ones on ‘our’ line. We decided not to go. And then the Resident IT Consultant wanted to be brave and to represent the family in Portobello, so went for the ten o’clock train which eventually left just before eleven and arrived at its destination a little after when the next one again was due.
I gather it was a good event, and I would expect no less from either Son or Portobello. Participating were Siân Reynolds, Ian Giles, Vineet Lal and Tim Gutteridge, chaired by Duncan Beattie. The room looked very nice too. The Resident IT Consultant felt it was interesting to learn how translators work.
Afterwards he was treated to a third of a slice of cheesecake, before battling his way back home, very slightly faster than in the morning.
Meanwhile Daughter and I stayed dry and did some chores before sitting down with Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather on dvd. We reckoned we’re close enough to Christmas for it to be OK. It was a real treat to see Terry’s cameo, selling a horse.
I do strange things. Or perhaps they are perfectly normal. I do recall my surprise when Mother-of-Witch admitted to her fascination with patterns in floor boards, and the like.
So, I read through the lists of new members who have joined the Society of Authors every quarter. Just to see if there’s anyone I ‘know’. In my most recent copy of The Author. – Winter 2022 – there were 553 new members. I didn’t count them. I’m counting on the Society getting it right. But thereabouts.
This time there was a surprising number of ‘knowns’ plus a couple I feel entitled to call friends. I’m glad they joined. It’s always good to belong to a union. One or two names were pretty well known, and I was surprised they weren’t already members. But better late than never.
Then there’s the Community spotlight where they report on what goes on in various groups within the society. Who has left a committee, and who has joined. Within my own areas of expertise I nearly always know quite a few such names.
What surprised me the most, however, was finding eldest Offspring’s name among the ‘delighted to welcome’ category. I knew he’s joined the Translators Association, and its committee, but it still came as a surprise.
As it was to him when I mentioned it over the weekend. He’d passed on his copy without finding himself first.
So yeah, that’s slightly over 553 names. I hope it’s not too pathetic that I sit here and peer at the columns of names. After all, I used to practically read the telephone directory, back in the day. The Swedish one, which was a lot more readable than BT’s offerings.
‘I like his bookshelves’ said Daughter about Arne Dahl, as she saw him in his writing ‘cupboard’ online. ‘They are quite black’ she added. And I suppose that fits in with Nordic Noir. His books are better for being a bit black.
We watched Arne’s interview with Dr Noir, aka Jacky Collins, who fan-girled to a hitherto never seen extent. She almost bounced off the ceiling, were such a thing possible for someone seated on a chair in front of her computer. Never mind; I like an interviewer who really, really likes her ‘victim’.
So it was unfortunate that Barnet Libraries who hosted this Teams chat managed to silence Arne. Not forever, and not in that way, but we all agonised a bit while someone found his voice again.
It’s a rather Swedish voice. And he admitted to having had that typical Swedish childhood, with summers spent in the Stockholm archipelago, where I understand he’s not averse to killing people now. It is darker in winter.
We now also know where to hunt Arne down, as he was forced to tell us about his favourite café. It’s Vurma. Except, maybe he led us astray by making this up? There was also something important about Andalucía, but by that point I’d lost the plot.
Jacky very generously mentioned Arne’s [latest] translator, our in-house favourite, who was also listening in. Arne did a sort of ‘nice to see you, Ian’ wave. In as much as you can wave, or clap, on Teams.
There were questions from the worldwide audience, with a prize for the best one. They were all good. I was going to say except for the last one, because you can’t expect an author to know where one can find his books in the original, in another country. Arne assumed anywhere. Because you would, wouldn’t you? But thanks to Ian and Jacky it was made clear that due to Brexit you just can’t. And that is so wrong, and perhaps it was time to make that point publicly.
It was good to have ‘gone out’ for an evening, and I do like authorial cupboards.
And don’t you just love the ‘bullet’ holes in the wall?
Bookcases have been coming and going at Bookwitch Towers. This last week has seen several carryings in and out, both here and at Daughter’s new abode. (Well, one can’t always get the right configuration on a first try, can one?)
Until now I have stashed Son’s books – by which I mean those he has translated – on the low shelf behind my armchair. But the books have sort of outgrown that space. I don’t know how that happened. Maybe I washed the shelf and it shrunk?
So we were discussing what to do, and it seems that the Resident IT Consultant’s Scottish collection will be going upstairs, just like one of the new-to-us bookcases. And then we will display the Nordic Noirs in a more prime position than behind me.
That was when the postman called today. He huffed and puffed a bit, but not too much because he’s a very nice postman.
He was delivering two copies of a children’s Space encyclopaedia on which Daughter has been the specialist consultant. (See, we don’t have just the one consultant any longer!) And because there were two copies, it seems that us old people get to hold on to one. It needs a shelf to live on.
The book is Children’s First Space Encyclopedia by Claudia Martin. It’s the kind of book I’d have liked as a child, and which I might have got for Offspring at the right age too. It features the unnamed Goldilocks and dwarfs and giants, as well as a really large telescope. It is not the consultant’s first, nor her last, but at least she’s not going at the same speed as her brother.
I wonder how long there will be space – hah – for both space and murder on this new prime shelf? Not long I suspect.
The Occasional Bookwitch 