Tag Archives: translation

The Rise of Christmas Books in Britain

Giving books at Christmas has been a long tradition with readers. In the early 19th century, plenty of books sold in the weeks preceding Christmas, but none of them were published for the season. Often people bought attractively bound collections of essays, poems, or classic novels that they knew they would enjoy.

In one of his books on the industry, publisher Joseph Shaylor writes, “Between 1820 and 1830 there came into existence a series of Annuals which caused quite a revolution in the sale of books for Christmas.” British bookman Rudolf Ackermann came up with the idea, publishing Forget-Me-Not: A Christmas and New Years Present for 1823. They were published every year through 1848, having a circulation of 18,000 at the height of its popularity.

Cover of 1823 annual, titled "Forget Me Not"

Another publisher released Friendship’s Offering in 1824, which found its way to America some years later as knockoff copies. Apparently, many volumes were hacked this way in America, even lesser works rebound and distributed under new popular titles (which sounds like clickbait to me). Friendship’s Offering may have published some higher quality literature than most. For example, Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s poem “The Armada” was printed in the 1833 edition. It ran until 1844.

Engraver Charles Heath launched multiple annuals, “such as the Picturesque Annual, in a guinea volume which contained engravings from the best landscape painters of the day,” and The Book of Beauty, edited by Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington and Irish novelist in her own right. Her social influence drew attention from many literary stars and would-be stars, including Disreali.

“The rise of the Annuals appears to have diffused a fashion for artistic and elegant pursuits, and helped to evolve a taste for literature and the fine arts. They were the principal publications of the year, and much time and consideration were given to their production.”

Booksellers have tried to inspire an Easter season of book-giving to no avail.

All right. What else we got?

Literary Translation: Joel Miller talks to Russian translator Lisa C. Hayden about the art of moving a novel into another language.

When it comes to translation choices, there’s not always a “right” choice, just the choice that seems best. How does literary intuition play into your work?

I rely a lot on intuition. It particularly kicks in when I’m reading the manuscript out loud. I’m listening for lots of things but particularly want to feel that there’s an ease to the reading and a rhythm to the writing. I know when they feel right but rarely know how to explain why they feel right.

Secular Morals: Seth Mandel writes the former director of Human Rights Watch “is what you’d get if Soviet ‘whataboutism’ were a person, a golem manifested by the chantings of Oberlin freshmen. . . . HRW and Amnesty International both had no idea how to handle a post-9/11 world because terrorism didn’t really fit into their worldview.”

Writing: “True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”

Books: “Books are men of higher stature, And the only men that peak aloud for future times to hear.” – Elizabeth B. Browning, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”

The Labors of Lars (plus a personal appearance)

I look like this, according to legend, when I lecture.

From time to time, events in what’s laughingly known as my working life mean I have to alter my habits on this blog.

Or, to put it less pompously, I’ve got work (some of it even for money) that may – occasionally – keep me from posting here, without notice, for a while.

This Thursday, at 7:00 p.m., for instance, I’ll be speaking on Viking Legacy to Sagatun Lodge of the Sons of Norway, Brainerd, Minnesota. I think they meet at Trinity Lutheran Church, though such information is surprisingly difficult to learn from online sources. (The reason I don’t have the address myself is because someone’s generously taking me to dinner beforehand, and we’ll drive from there. But I think it’s Trinity Lutheran.)

I expect that if you’re in the area you’ll be welcome, even if you’re not a member of the lodge. Or Norwegian. Or all that good-looking.

What else am I doing? Oh yes, I have an agreement to write an article on the new Norwegian Nobel Laureate for Literature, Jon Fosse. It’s for a periodical which I will not name at this point, in case they don’t want to be publicly associated with me. But I have to read Fosse’s Septology, which is a very long book. I have no idea what I’ll blog about while I’m working my way through that unusual (but fascinating) work. We’ll see.

Also, I have to learn how to use Adobe Live Desk so I can produce a newsletter for the Valdres Samband’s (an organization of descendants of immigrants from the Norwegian region of Valdres) newsletter. Also a paying job.

And I have some translation to do for the Georg Sverdrup Society. They don’t pay money, but I think I go to Hell if I don’t deliver.

I’ve been loafing all summer, trying to drum up work, and now the stuff is falling on my head in the manner of Burt Bacharach’s raindrops. I just translated 11 pages of Norwegian for an author on a two-day deadline, and I got paid for that too.

And someday, like King Arthur, the script translation work may return from Avalon.

First-hand Account of Russian Invasion Translated

A Russian paratrooper, who has sought asylum in France, wrote a lengthy account of experience in the invasion of Ukraine last year. Members of the Language-Enabled Airman Program, part of the Air Force Culture and Language Center, worked on translating the work into English.

“It was a difficult task: [author] Filatyev wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style filled with military jargon, typos, and colloquial expressions that do not translate perfectly into English.”

The account describes lousy equipment, lack of supplies, and poor communication.

“‘Who will be accountable for these lives lost and the wounded?’ Filatyev wrote about a suspected incident of friendly fire. ‘After all, the reason for their deaths was not the professionalism of the Ukrainian army, but the mess in ours.'”

He claims Russian is destroying itself with greed and envy.

The Avaldsnes festival 2022

I am a busy man. Busy, busy. Like a bee. Or a beaver. Or some other animal that starts with a “b.” Busy as a butterfly? Busy as a badger? Busy as Behemoth?

Anyway, I’ve got translation work today. Sweet translation work on a project which (as usual) I can’t tell you anything about. I will tell you (because it’s redundant) that it’s in Norwegian and I need to run it through the processors between my ears, extruding in the end an English script of rare beauty and grace.

It’s a good script, too. One I’m happy to be involved with. I will tell you that. I don’t think the lawyers will object.

Also, I’m only about a third of the way through the hypertrophied book I’m reading for review, so there wouldn’t be a review tonight anyway.

Instead, I found the video above. It’s by a guy I know nothing about, and my sharing it implies no endorsement of any kind. But he was at the Avaldsnes Viking Festival last summer when I was. So you can get the flavor of it. He missed a great opportunity, though, in not getting a shot of me in my Viking togs.

The face of Washington, in a time of snow

Today has been quiet for me – in a sense – and busy in another sense. I’ve not stirred abroad nor moved from my habitation this day, even to go to the gym. The gym is, in fact, closed, but I didn’t plan to go there anyway. We’re enduring the Great Blizzard of ’23 – or so the Chickens Little of the media would have us believe. What it’s been doing, in actual fact, is snowing. The winds haven’t been all that strong in Minneapolis, nor the snow especially heavy (thus far). What this storm is, is long. It started the night before last, and is supposed to drag on till late tomorrow.

But I have enough food to get me through, and I had some work to do, which brightens any day. I wish I could tell you about the latest project, which I just turned in. It contains elements that please me. I can’t say more than that. But it helped to warm the winter in my aged heart.

Above, a little video about George Washington’s face – since it’s still Washington’s birthday for a few hours as I write. The near-apotheosis of Washington in our early Republic was probably a political necessity, but it’s regrettable that the reaction to it – which has become malignant paranoia in recent years – has turned many people against him. Washington was (according to my reading) in fact a fascinating, complex man who worked hard at appearing one-dimensional.

I love historical reconstructions like the ones in the video above. But I happen to know that even this one is glamorized. The real Washington was (like a large percentage of his contemporaries) heavily scarred by smallpox. (Andrew Jackson was the same.) Blemishes as common as that were, I suppose, generally overlooked. Smooth complexions were much admired – especially in women, who made it a point to stay out of the sun – but you couldn’t insist on them.

Washington was also – or so I’ve read – very vain about his “figure.” He (like me, I must confess, though I’m not nearly as tall) was built rather broad at the hips. But he refused to believe it, despite what his mirror, and his tailor, told him. He insisted that his breeches be cut to the width he believed they ought to be, rather than what they were. Kind of like reverse anorexia. Thus his pants were always tight and uncomfortable.

But he had a purpose in concentrating on his appearance, in always being “in character,” in never relaxing in public. He felt he was setting a precedent for his nation. Nobody knew how the elected leader of a republic was supposed to comport himself. Washington had to make it up as he went along. As a schoolteacher makes it a point to be very strict during the first few weeks, to set a tone for the class that he can ease up on later, Washington established precedents for the presidency. Later chief executives, like Lincoln, were able to ease up on the dignity a bit, because Washington had left behind such a weight of reverence.

I fear the reverence is about gone now – it’s not all the fault of the present incumbent, either – but Washington did a pretty good job in his time.

‘Narvik’ coming to Netflix

I see now that the movie ‘Narvik,’ dramatizing the World War II battle, is coming to Netflix January 23. So I guess it’s okay for me to tell you that I worked on this project as a script translator. It was one of the very first I was involved in.

I look forward to ‘Narvik’ with great anticipation. Not only does it tell the story of a nearly-forgotten, epic moment in the story of the war, but it gives proper credit at last to the Norwegian General Fleischer, who had the honor of being the first commander to defeat the Germans on land in that conflict. And who’s story was tragically suppressed.

Netflix recommendation: ‘The Lorenskog Disappearance’

I have yet another opportunity to recommend to you (assuming you have a Netflix subscription) a Norwegian miniseries on which I did translation work. In actual fact, not much of my own work made it into The Lørenskog Disappearance in its final form – our team worked mainly on treatments and scene outlines (as far as I remember), and a lot of our stuff seems to have gotten cut. But I still think it’s an intriguing series, and I recommend it.

Tom Hagen (his having the same name as Robert Duval’s character in “The Godfather” is purely coincidental) was and is one of the richest men in Norway, an energy tycoon. He and his wife Anne-Elisabeth lived in a modest home in a community east of Oslo. Their security was minimal. On October 31, 2018, he came home from work early, having been unable to reach Anne-Elisabeth by phone. He found her missing, but there was a note on a chair, demanding a ransom through an obscure form of cryptocurrency and warning him not to contact the police.

He did contact the police though, and what followed has often been second-guessed. Worried that the kidnappers were watching the house, they did not send in a forensic team immediately, leaving time for evidence to disappear or be removed. They made a mistake in their text communications with the ransomers. Tom paid the ransom, in spite of the fact that he’d gotten no proof of life from the kidnappers.

Anne-Elisabeth was never seen again.

After time passed with no further breakthroughs, suspicion began to turn toward Tom. It was learned that the marriage had been strained. Anne-Elisabeth had contacted a divorce lawyer, who thought the couple’s prenuptial agreement, heavily weighted toward Tom’s interests, could easily be broken. Tom was arrested, but the case against him was weak. Eleven days later the court ordered his release, and the investigation has stalled ever since.

The Lørenskog Disappearance is a docudrama. Many of the characters are fictionalized. We view the story through the viewpoints of four different groups: The police, the reporters (two episodes), the lawyers, and the informers. This produces a Rashomon kind of story, in which the same people and events are viewed from different perspectives. Particularly interesting are two reporters – a man who may be biased against Tom by his experience as the child of an abusive father, and a woman who may be biased toward him by her experience as the child of a Soviet political prisoner.

I don’t think it’s a secret that The Lørenskog Disappearance does not offer any final solutions. What it does offer is a fascinating examination of how we view the stories we see on the news.

Though the trailer above is dubbed, the version I watched on Netflix was subtitled.

‘Ormen Lange’

And the translation work keeps coming in. If I were tired of it, I would not tell you. Because I have an international trip this summer to support. Plus inflation to cover. Also, it’s nice to be needed, when you’re me.

It’s cold, cold, and I have to go somewhere tonight. But tomorrow’s supposed to be warmer, and Sunday warmer still. Maybe this will be the turning point – just as Daylight Savings Time falls, clattering like a muffler off an old car. Maybe spring is coming. Or milder weather, with some consistency, at least.

The song above is an old Faeroese ring dance song, translated into Norwegian. I heard it first from a Norwegian folk group, but their version doesn’t seem to be on YouTube. However, this one isn’t bad, and they illustrated it with footage swiped from the 1958 film, “The Vikings,” starring Kirk Douglas. For its time, that movie made commendable gestures in the direction of trying to be kind of authentic. In some ways. Sort of.

It’s still better than the History Channel series, now metastasized to Netflix, they tell me.

The song is about King Olaf Trygvesson (whom you may remember from The Year of the Warrior), and how he built and launched his great ship, Ormen Lange (the Long Serpent). The chorus goes:

The dance is loud in the hall, when we dance in the ring! 
Gladly ride the men of Norway to the Thing of Hildar (a kenning for battle).

The full text is here.

What Can Be Gained from Translated Works?

Benjamin Moser talks about finding a somewhat old library of English books and how he began to change his opinion of translating world authors into English.

In recent years we have seen writers outside English become global phenomena: Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Haruki Murakami. But such a literary life, the popularity owed to translation, began to seem a little fake to me. And when I read Mizumura I found myself agreeing that, strictly speaking, literary universality does not exist. The books I loved were, after all, about something, not everything. But even in practical and commercial terms, the prominence of English created more losers than winners, favoring, like so many other forms of globalization, a handful of instantly recognizable and inoffensive brands. 

Translation — not the thing but the unquestioned emphasis on its virtue — started to feel to me like another philistinism masquerading as worldliness.

By worldliness, Moser means people travel the world–or read from around the world–and they start to think they own the place.

Micah Mattix discusses the essay in the latest Prufrock email, saying maybe readers or literary opinion makers should lighten up a bit. “A healthy curiosity is a virtue, of course, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying a work on its own.”

Basking in reflected glory

Big news for discriminating fans of historical drama – Atlantic Crossing, the Norwegian miniseries that ran on PBS Masterpiece last spring, and which (I think I’ve mentioned) I worked extensively on as a script translator, won the International Emmy Award for the best TV film or miniseries. The ceremony was last night. I am moderately elevated about this. My boss, Linda May Kallestein, who was a co-writer as well as translator, sent me a photo of herself holding the coveted statuette.

I wasn’t aware of it, but you can order it on DVD now – and it’s not prohibitively expensive.