Poetry in Translation

Poetry in Translation is an enterprising venture organized by FILI and aimed at crowdfunding translations of Finnish and Finland-Swedish poetry into 9 languages by 50 translators. The poets include:

Saima Harmaja
Mirkka Rekola
Arto Melleri
Sirkka Turkka
Susinukke Kosola
Tuomas Timonen
Jukka Viikilä
Jukka Itkonen
Anja Erämaja
Henriikka Tavi
Kirsi Kunnas
Sanna Karlström
Sinikka Vuola
Olli-Pekka Tennilä
Bo Carpelan

Encountering myself - and FILI (FLIC)

My profile and interview are up - in Finnish - on the FILI 40th Anniversary website, with among other things my own account of my somewhat tortuous path as a translator:

Tieni kääntäjäksi:
Olen laajentanut kielivalikoimaani venäjästä saksaan ja pohjoismaisiin kieliin. Suomenruotsalaisen kirjallisuuden pariin päädyin tietysti ruotsin kautta, mutta sitä kautta kiinnostuin myös suomenkielisestä kirjallisuudesta. Se tuntui luonnolliselta kehitykseltä.

It's nice to be included along with Danish translator Siri Nordborg Møller and so many other translators of Finnish and Finland-Swedish literature. And it comes as a pleasant surprise that there are so many of us all round the world!

My first visit to Finland under FILI's auspices (though not my first visit) was in 1983 -- back then they were called FLIC. Now, after so many years, I almost feel like one of the family.

FILI Newsletter

The FILI Newsletter for the month of May is out, and can be accessed here. From the letter:

FILI moves to new offices

			FILI is moving to a new office suite in the House of Nobility (Ritarihuone) building on 15 May 2017. Our new offices will be upstairs from our previous location, and our street address will change: the entrance will be at Hallituskatu 2 B. To enter, ring the doorbell. Our new offices are on the second floor.

Items of special interest include the following:

Funding received by FILI

FILI's core funding comes from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, but we always need to seek additional funding from other sources to support our operations.

The Finnish Cultural Foundation awarded FILI a €50,000 grant to hold translator training courses for two years.

We have also received €8,000 from the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland for our work to promote Finland-Swedish literature abroad.

And the Otava Book Foundation awarded us €6,000 to update our translators' forum (known as ‘Kääntöpiiri’).

Our sincerest thanks to these funders – our work will continue!

1,000 copy guys

Over at Three Percent, E.J. Van Lanen is writing about the FILI editors' trip:

We do different kinds of books here (My favorite story so far is when a publisher was going to tell us about two books: one, a more commercial author, they thought would sell 10,000 copies in the US, and the other, a more literary author, who was wonderful but who they thought would sell 1,000. Chad and I both said at the same time, “Tell us about the 1000 copy guy.”), and because we do a special kind of book, I feel like we have different kinds of meetings with publishers.

FILI move

FILI (aka the Finnish Literature Exchange) has moved down the road from Mariankatu to premises in the Ritarihuone assembly building on Ritarikatu. The staff email addresses and phone numbers remain the same, however.

Grant Central

Each year the Finnish Literature Exchange (FILI), a long-established Finnish culture ministry-funded organization (earlier known as FLIC, the Finnish Literature Information Centre) which aims to connect publishers, translators and authors, awards €510,000 in translation and publication grants to more than 300 projects worldwide.

In former days, grant recipients learned the fate of their applications by snail mail, but now are expected to check the lists of awards that are published on the FILI website.

A glance through the lists - there are two, one for complete translations of Finnish and Finland-Swedish works, and another for sample translations of the same - can be useful in forming a picture of what Finnish titles may be likely to appear in translation from English-language publishers in the following year or years.

Sometimes, however, the crop is sometimes quite small, as in the current spring awards, with much of the funding going to translators working in languages other then English.

Book-length translations receiving funding in the first part of the current grant year include Juhani Aho's Rautatie (translator Owen Witesman, publisher Norvik Press), Henry Parland's Sönder (translator Dinah Cannell, publisher Norvik Press), Riikka Pelo's Taivaankantaja (translator David Hackston, publisher Twisted Spoon Press) and Boel Westin's study of the life and work of Tove Jansson, Tove Jansson: Ord, bild, liv (translator Silvester Mazzarella, publisher Sort Of Books).

Swedish Book Review - Contemporary Finland-Swedish Fiction

Swedish Book Review, published in London, has had several articles about, or short translations of, Finland-Swedish material in issues since the year 2000. But halfway through the decade, the editor Sarah Death decided to have a Finland-Swedish issue as a supplement to the review for 2005. The guest editor was Neil Smith, who also regularly publishes the Swedish Book Review with Norvik Press, now housed at University College London. And what is interesting is that this supplement concentrates on contemporary Finland-Swedish literature, i.e. what is being written now.

The introductory article is by Maria Antas of FILI, the Finnish Literature Centre in Helsinki, and she gives some insights into recent prose works by Ulla-Lena Lundberg, Lars Sund, Anders Larsson, Erik Wahlström, Zinaida Lindén, Merete Mazzarella, Robert Åsbacka, Sabine Forsblom, Monika Fagerholm, Mikaela Sundström, Kjell Westö, Henrik Jansson, Peter Sandström, Fredrik Lång, and a few others. These names alone are proof of the continuing vitality of Finland-Swedish literature during the 2000s, despite the fact that the language is spoken as mother-tongue by only about 6% of the total Finnish population.

There follows a compilation by Neil Smith called "Collected Thoughts", where various Finland-Swedish publishers, academics and critics are interviewed and asked to answer five questions about the characteristics, scope, and viability of Finland-Swedish literature today. These people are also asked to identify authors worth translating into English and introducing to the English-speaking world. Some of the most interesting answers come from the freelance researcher Trygve Söderling, who points to the shift in background of Finland-Swedish writers nowadays. He notes that writers no longer come from traditional Finland-Swedish cultural families, with major authors now also coming from what he terms the "periphery". Zinaida Lindén even comes originally from Saint Petersburg. Söderling also notes the strong tradition, with pioneers such as Södergran, Diktonius and Björling. Finally, Finland-Swedish literature sits on the cusp between the Swedish culture of Sweden and the Finnish-speaking one of Finland.

The rest of the special supplement is devoted to introductions to specific contemporary authors, plus excerpts from their recent work. So, for instance, there is a story entitled 1968 from Kjell Westö's recent collection (translator: Sarah Death); an excerpt from Lars Sund's 1991 novel Colorado Avenue (translator Laurie Thompson); an interview with Fredrik Lång and an excerpt from his novel Ryska kusinen (translator: Neil Smith); an excerpt from Zinaida Lindén's novel I väntan på en jordbävning (translator: Silvester Mazzarella); an excerpt from Robert Åsbacka's novel Fallstudie (translator: Henning Koch); an excerpt from Candida by Pirkko Lindberg (translator: David McDuff); plus further excerpts from works by Henrik Jansson, Erik Wahlström, Sabine Forsblom, Mathias Nystrand, and others. The list is too long to give here in full.

These authors represent four geographical areas of Finland: Nyland & Greater Helsinki; the Åland Isles; Ostrobothnia; plus the area around Åbo including the parts of archipelago. This is where what is left of the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland still live. Åland is still around 90% Swedish-speaking, but the percentages are far lower in the other three regions.

A couple of terminological matters are interesting. For this supplement, the editor decided to call Helsinki by its Swedish name Helsingfors, a name that was current in English too until the 1930s. Another word introduced - and a very useful one too - is the word Finlandic, which should be used much more in the English language. Using Finlandic gets rid of the eternal confusion, when using the word Finnish to describe the country as a whole, and the specifically Finnish-speaking majority. When speaking about matters that concern both language groups, Finlandic would be much better. This distinction is made in the Swedish language. But decades of English usage mean that it would be hard to introduce this term in Britain and the USA.

I really hope that British and U.S. publishers, critics, reviewers and comparative literature academics read this supplement, so that they become acquainted with a literature that has been going since about 1890, and is still alive today. During this short period for a literature, a lot has been achieved, not least, as Maria Antas points out because there is a Swedish-speaking hinterland, i.e. Sweden itself, that speaks the same language and will buy Finland-Swedish books. Plus the fact that history has been somewhat different in Finland than it has in Sweden.