The modern Finnish classics suddenly appear to be hot: Dedalus are working on a new translation of Aleksis Kivi's Seven Brothers, and Penguin Classics have just brought out (in the UK) a new translation of Väinö Linna's Unknown Soldiers in Liesl Yamaguchi's translation.
Linna's classic novel was previously translated in 1957, as The Unknown Soldier, by Alex Matson -- a notorious translation-disaster, perpetrated by the English-language publishers. As Pekka Tarkka writes in his overview of the novel at Books from Finland:
Linna's classic novel was previously translated in 1957, as The Unknown Soldier, by Alex Matson -- a notorious translation-disaster, perpetrated by the English-language publishers. As Pekka Tarkka writes in his overview of the novel at Books from Finland:
The German and English translations were total losses. Initially, The Unknown Soldier was Englished by Alex Matson, known as an excellent interpreter of the works of Aino Kallas and the Nobelist F.E. Sillanpää. Collins of London and Putnam of New York, however, did not find his translation satisfactory: they decided to have it revised by an editor, unidentified to this day, who then proceeded to falsify and rewrite -- one can say, forge -- the text in an outrageous manner.In his Translation and the Problem of Sway Douglas Robinson relates that:
Matson was so angry at the American publisher for radically abridging and otherwise revising his translation that he refused to allow his name to appear as the book's translator, and never translated literature again.So now there's this new translation -- see the Penguin publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.co.uk -- and the opinions seem to be all over the place:
- It's: "A Finnish War and Peace -- without the interesting bits" suggests Max Liu in The Independent. And: "A Finnish classic this may be but, as in war, you're better off with the Russians." Ouch.
- "The prose is short, direct, and to the point, and Yamaguchi renders it into an English so good it hurts to read" warns (rather dubiously -- it takes a lot for prose to cause actual physical pain) Daniel Goulden at the Asymptote blog.
- "In places it feels as if Linna set out to depict a war of attrition that would simultaneously grind down his reader. And yet those who last the arduous course will find much to admire in Linna's unsparing prose and gritty realism. Not a comforting novel by many means, but a profound and enriching one." finds Malcolm Forbes in the Sunday Herald