This season, I had the privilege and pleasure to be a reader for the upcoming CLMP’s Firecracker Awards again. I read many translated works from emerging and celebrated writers alike. As a bilingual reader (German & English) I appreciate the hard work that goes into literary translations, pausing frequently wondering what the text sounds like in its original language.
Damian Searls a celebrated writer, translator and cultural historian approaches his work from a philosophical angle which is reflected in the kind of work he translates including Jon Fosse, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” In “Reading Like a Translator” Searls shares that “translation is linked to a certain kind of writing that’s linked to a certain kind of reading.” He shares in this video that translation is reading one text, writing is another with “some kind of coordination between the two.” He also emphasizes that there is the constraint of genre, origin language and target language. He says that this is the case for every writers, to write within various forms of constraints of language, form, and genre.
In October 2023 I attended the Frankfurt Book Fair. Hosted by the Finnish Literary Exchange I witnessed a poetry reading by five internationally celebrated poets from Finland, Serbia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Poland. The poems were translated into seven languages, read, and performed in front of an international audience. After the performance, I chatted with Serbian poet, Radmila Petrović, who speaks multiple languages, about her work in translation to English. She said, “I don’t like some of them because they don’t hit the mark exactly.” This made sense to me as poetry is intentional and exact in its choice of words, tone, and melody. It seems almost impossible to replicate the same symphony in another language.
I decided to dig deeper and understand the journey of literary translation and the artistic relationship between original and translated text. For this, I reached out to literary translator and writer, Kasper Salonen. Kasper is one of Harri Hertell’s translators. Hertell performed his poems alongside Petrović in Germany. When I asked Salonen how he started translating literary work, he shared that he initially began translating independently as a personal passion, rather than thinking of it as a commissioned endeavor. He said, “As a bilingual speaker of both English and Finnish, and due to my own calling as a poet, my life essentially manifests as a constant act of translation, transliteration, and transmutation. But I began translating the poems of my fellow writers in earnest (both pro bono and with small fees) soon after I started to attend open mic events regularly in Helsinki, around 2010.”
At the Villa Sarkia Literary Residence (managed by the cultural organization Nuoren Voiman Liitto), Salonen translated poems of Finnish poet Arto Melleri (1956-2005). He shares that a decade later, these translations will soon be published by Enostone Publishing.
Curious about Salonen’s process of deciding if a particular project is the right fit for him, he says, “I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to translate only such poems, essays, and books that speak to me deeply, by authors whom I admire. Every translation project is about negotiation, and some involve justified compromises. I am omnivorous when it comes to poetry and literature, or art in general; and my professional translating career includes a huge variety of text types and topics. I am always seeking new projects and cooperations in a diverse range of linguistic services and styles, whether it be technical prose or experimental poetry.”
Salonen adds that he is always inspired by the work he translates, because he “views all language as magical and meaningful, and a matter of creativity and scrutiny.”
Process of Literary Translation
I inquired about Salonen’s process and approach to reading, understanding, and the subsequent translation of the source text. He shares that in general he “imagines the sentences and sequences spoken” in his mind. In the case of poetry he does so by reading the text out loud to find the rhythm which he says, appears “as if on a reel in his mind’s eye as options to input to complement the linguistic (eco)system,” and adds, “There are many visualizations I imagine when choosing between translation tactics; and my impressions are always guided by the intention and style (the “skopos”) of the source text itself, as I interpret them.” He adds, “A translation is a novel creation and a stand-alone literary work; the product of an idiomatic, personal, expressive process whose goal is to transfer the impact of the source text into the target culture. It’s awesome, and sometimes tricky.”
Cultural Nuances and References
Translators inevitably have to grapple with the challenge of how to capture and convey cultural nuances accurately. A delicate dance between the source text and the target language. Salonen tells me that an inspiring and useful concept he’s encountered in translation theory is what he refers to as the “culture bump.“ A term he explains was coined by linguist Ritva Leppihalme at the University of Helsinki. “It refers to the way allusions (cultural touchstones, traditions, and references) might be approached in translation,” he says. “I also reference Leppihalme’s work in my Master’s Thesis, in which I analyzed my own […] process in translating […] Arto Melleri’s poems from Finnish to English. Culture bumps are more prominent in some texts than others; but it’s always a thrill to utilize my intuition and experience to craft a solution to a conundrum like that.”
Salonen shares an example from his thesis, the translation of Melleri’s collection (and eponymous poem) Puukkobulevardi (1996). He says, “The word “puukko” (a type of knife) is culture-specific to [the Finnish language] in its connotations (manual labor, but also crime). It was most important to convey the same sensibility and atmosphere as the original title; so I chose “Switchblade Boulevard” as my solution.”
Navigating the translation process involves collaborating with authors and addressing differences in interpretation or creative choices with a thoughtful approach. Salonen tells me he’s borrowing from acting to “inhabit” the voice of the source text. He says, “[It’s] like cognitive role-playing, a listening and hearing of another’s voice intensely, which then inhabits part of me and guides my own aesthetics. Translating is very interpersonal, especially when it comes to creative writing, but I always […] include my own idiosyncratic flair in any project I undertake. There is no algorithm for je ne sais quoi (at time of writing!)”
“While translating the poems of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) into Finnish for Parkko Publishing […],” he continues, “I found that striking a stylistic midpoint between the grandly epic and the down-to-earth sometimes came down to being aware of specific conjugations and phrasing in Finnish.” He explains that he used the so-called instructive verb form in Finnish for many of Thomas’ “-ing” phrases (e.g. Eng. burning > Fin. palaen). “This form has an archaic flavor in Finnish and overusing it for, say, conciseness or rhythmic convenience should be avoided in this context. It’s a concrete phenomenon that I can now better look out for; thanks to Tommi Parkko and Kimmo Räntilä for bringing that up in the first place.”
Salonen stresses the importance of being in conversation with colleagues, “so that stylistic nuances or reinterpretations might be discovered to the improvement of the translations themselves.” In Part 2 of my conversation with Salonen, he shares his process of collaborating with the author, AI, and his hope for the future of literary translations.