I tell you, you turn your back for a minute and the parade passes you by. Case in point: the movie The Arctic Convoy, which apparently came out in July with my even noticing.
This film holds a unique place in my heart, as it was the first film script I ever worked on as a translator. (Looks like it may also be the last one to actually be released.) I had responded to an inquiry for translators in a Facebook group, and a chunk of The Arctic Convoy (then simply entitled Convoy, obviously an unhappy name choice for the American market) came to my email box.
I did my usual magic, and my boss seemed pleased with my work. So I was allowed to join the pool of subcontractors.
As I recall, my boss had another employee serving as a sort of vice-boss, and that employee critiqued my next submission. She wasn’t happy with my work. She told me the kind of “dynamic equivalence” I do (trying to produce equivalent idioms in natural English) wasn’t the right idea. What they wanted, she said, was a flat, literal translation. Basically AI stuff. This was disappointing, as I genuinely enjoy freer translation work, but I needed the money and complied.
The next critique I received, after I’d done another chunk, was from the main boss. Pay no attention to what the sub-boss says, she told me. Do that thing you did the first time. And I was happy, and our relationship flourished, with some ups and downs, until Artificial Intelligence Conquered the Earth.
Anyway, critical reviews of the movie haven’t been fervid, but it looks pretty exciting to me, and I know the story is strong. If you saw the miniseries The War Sailor (which I also worked on), this deals with the same topic, but concentrated on a single voyage.
I squandered more than an hour today, I think, fixing my laptop keyboard. And by “fixing” I mean af-fixing. Putting snazzy little high contrast stickers on the keys. Why did I feel I must do this thing?
I bought a laptop some years ago, and I liked it well enough except for the keys. The letters were inscribed in them so lightly, and in such a thin typeface, that they actually vanished in low light. So I sent away for stickers with big bright letters on a black background.
Then, one day I broke that laptop’s screen. I went in and bought a replacement, which turned out to be the exact same model (because I’m cheap and so was it). Then, also because I’m cheap, I pried the stickers off the old keys and stuck them onto the new ones.
But this apparently lowered the viscosity value of the adhesive, and the amount of typing I’m doing on this translation job seems to put too much pressure on the stickers. Some of them started sliding loose, and I knew this could not go on. So I splurged on a new set of stickers. Today I squandered potentially profitable time making the replacements. You wouldn’t think it would take long, but it does.
And that raises (not begs, I must insist) the question, why didn’t novel writing put the same wear and tear on the stickers? I do not know. Perhaps I’m not as intense when I’m writing a novel.
Formatting Hailstone Mountain for paperback has been a slightly bizarre experience. It meant reading it through, for the first time in more than a decade. I was prepared to find passages that I now felt could have been done better. Those I left mostly alone. I only fixed small and serious (in my opinion) errors. Like an odd letter “g” that sat wedged into in one sentence for no reason at all, apparently the result of a finger twitch on my last revision. The most radical change I made was to add three words to a setting description, because I thought the passage not as clear as it should have been, and possibly confusing to the reader.
This means that there will be slight differences between the e-book and the printed version. I don’t like to think about that situation, but I’m not OCD enough to go in and change the e-book at this point. And I’m comforted to remember that there were inconsistencies in various editions of The Lord of the Rings for quite a long time – and I, at least, never noticed.
But what’s really strange is to find oneself – to one’s astonishment and shock – moved by a few passages. It feels narcissistic to admire my own writing. But sometimes, I must admit, I do make the old jalopy run smooth. I once read somewhere that it’s impossible to tickle yourself. Bringing tears to your own eyes seems as unlikely. But it can happen.
So what’s going on, you’re no doubt asking. Any progress on The Baldur Game? How’s the translation coming? How do you justify your barren existence?
The Baldur Game is essentially ready for publication. I don’t think I’ll even give it another read-through. A man has to say “enough” at some point.
The hang-up remains the cover. It is being delayed due to circumstances I don’t know, but am confident are good and sufficient. No doubt it’s God’s will that we have a pre-Christmas release. Or a post-Christmas release.
So what am I doing with my famous writing time? I’m preparing my first Amazon paperback edition.
I chose Hailstone Mountain for this experiment. It would be good to do The Year of the Warrior, but there are certain technical problems with that book that I’ll feel more comfortable confronting once I’ve done a simpler book first. A paperback TYOTW does exist; I’m having it printed privately and I lug it around to Viking events and hand-sell it. But I’ll want to get it on Amazon eventually. Sooner rather than later, I hope.
Then there’s West Oversea, the second (or technically third) book in the series. That work has been published both as an e-book and as a paperback by Nordskog Publishing of Ventura, California. But I recently got word that Nordskog is going out of business. The publication rights will revert to me, and I’ve made a deal to buy their entire stock of the paperback. These I plan to hand-sell at Viking events, as I have been doing. But there will need to be an Amazon paperback too – perhaps with a new cover. Can’t get at that until everything’s nailed down with Nordskog.
That leaves Hailstone Mountain. That one belongs to me alone, and has been published for Kindle since 2013. I’m now working the manuscript over to fit Amazon’s requirements, and I’m nearing the end of those revisions. I may manage to make it available on Amazon before the end of the month (barring glitches, which are always possible. Even likely) except…
I’ll be out of town most of next week. Off to Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota, as I have done for so many years. Four days of living like a Viking – except for minor technicalities like modern plumbing, sleeping in a host’s bed, and fast food. Stop in and see me if you’re in the Minot area. It’s convenient to… Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, I guess.
The following weekend I’ll be (God willing) at the Midwest Viking Festival in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Which is entirely unreasonable in terms of miles driven for a man of my age, I think, but my book sales were really good last year, and they’ve invited me to be more heavily involved in the program. Which is flattering, because this involves high-level reenactors and genuine scholars.
I won’t get a break the weekend after that, either, as I have a meeting to attend on Saturday in northwestern Minnesota. Which will seem like a short drive after the others. Also, thank goodness, I’ll get to wear modern clothes. (You’d think Viking clothes would be comfortable, but I find they get old pretty fast.)
As for the translation job, I’m feeling good about it. My plan requires me to do 100 pages-plus each month for the next five months. I’m up to about page 85 now, and I’ve still got a few days to fill up my measure for September, even with time off for festivals and frivolity. It’s looking okay.
(Note to potential house robbers – my renter is at home pretty much perpetually now. My place will not be empty, and the booby traps will be set.)
Jesus Calms the Storm – Fresco by Silvestro Pistolesi in the clerestory of the Church of the Transfiguration at the Community of Jesus. Creative Commons attribution-Share alike 4.0.
And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8: 23-27, ESV)
My Heaven-sent translation work continues. I had a good day yesterday and got a little ahead of my quota. This is good, because I translated nothing on Saturday (and I don’t write for money on Sundays if I can help it). I need to translate 100 pages each month for the next five months to deliver on time. I’m 50 pages in now, and the month isn’t half over yet, so I’m doing just fine.
But it never hurts to run ahead of schedule. Impress the client, and if I finish sooner, I get my final payment sooner.
The laborer, as the Good Book says, is worthy of his hire.
Speaking of the Good Book, I was struck by the passage printed above during my devotions last week. I wrote about the Sermon on the Mount not long ago, and now I’m in the early passages that follow the sermon. I’ve read the Bible a number of times since I was a kid, but I never noticed until recently how much context means.
I wrote about it in my earlier posts – how counterintuitive Jesus’ teaching is (none of these thoughts are original to me, of course. I’m coming to them from the back of queue). The bottom line seems to be, “Build your house on a rock.” But what’s the rock like? It has nothing to do with a good job, or saving money, or investing in bonds or real estate. The rock Jesus is talking about seems to be solidly anchored in mid-air. Invest in Heaven. Step out onto the stormy waves – that’s your real security.
And Jesus demonstrates this in Matthew 8:23-27. Immediately after He delivers the sermon, He’s confronted with human chaos – he meets a leper, the very embodiment of disordered health. He heals the leper. He heals a centurion’s servant – the centurion, interestingly, doesn’t need to observe Jesus performing the miracle; he believes without seeing, earning approval. Then Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, and then he’s mobbed by a multitude of “many who were oppressed by demons.” That’s the disordered state of the world – exactly what He’s been preaching against; exactly what He came to fix. Then a couple of disciple wannabees show up, offering to follow Jesus, but with reservations. Jesus puts it on the line – it’s all or nothing. They can’t handle the apparent insecurity and back off.
And then what does Jesus do? He gets into a boat and starts across the Sea of Galilee.
I think I’ve written about this before. I allude to the theme frequently in The Baldur Game (it’s coming, it’s coming!). The Jews thought of the sea (any sea) as Chaos, as Sheol, as Hell. The place of maximum insecurity, maximum danger. The opposite of the Rock we’re supposed to build our houses on. And Jesus just sets out to sail on it. Not only that, but He’s headed for the Decapolis — pagan territory, where demons dwell.
And as they’re crossing the Sea (or lake), a storm blows up – which I understand is common on Galilee. And the disciples are terrified, and (one assumes) they’re running the sail down and bailing and rowing like mad…
And Jesus is sleeping like a baby. They wake Him, and He says, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” And he snaps His fingers (so to speak) and the storm turns over on its back like puppy wanting its belly scratched.
What Jesus is saying, I think, is “Buckle up, boys, this is what it means to build your house on a rock.”
The church, I think, is built by people who see faith as an adventure. It withers under people who see it as a job of work.
Speaking as an old man who has climbed a number of metaphorical mountains of the literary sort (and zero ones of the real sort), I know how to begin a massive writing – or translation – project. At least I know what works for me. The trick, in my experience, is not to look at the mountain.
If you think about the size of the mountain as you begin, you’ll soon grow disheartened.
You have to concentrate on today’s work. What will I do today? How much can I accomplish just today?
If you write merely one page every day, you can produce a 365 page book in a year. (It takes me considerably longer, though, when you include revisions. But you get the point. One step at a time.)
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” as the Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 6:34)
Anyway, I’ve ordered some orthopedic aids to help me sit for long periods at my laptop, and I’m on the case.
The video above troubles me.
Not because of the artist herself – Lucy Thomas, who apparently won some talent program and obviously has an astonishing voice. I like her singing very much.
And not the song in itself, in particular. Leonard Cohen was in some ways the archetypal Israelite, forever wrestling with God. And this song expresses his troubled world-view in transcendent fashion.
My problem is that somebody – as you can see from the captions – is promoting it as a worship song.
Dearly beloved, “Hallelujah” is not a worship song! (I’ve written some drivel about it before in this blog myself.) It’s a song about sex, couched in near-blasphemous biblical imagery. It’s a brilliant piece of work but it doesn’t belong in your church.
It’s disrespectful both to God (who is not being properly revered) and to the artist – whose work is being twisted in a direction he never intended.
I understand the Christian impulse to turn all things to God’s glory.
But art deserves respect for its own sake. Not to be hijacked, even by well-meaning worship leaders.
At least give it time for the copyright to run out.
A traditional Norwegian chest. Photo: Anne-Lise Reinsfelt, Norsk Folkemuseum. Creative Commons attribution Share-alike 3.0.
I wrote the other night about the glories of the English language, from the perspective of the creative writer. English offers lots of word choice options. Which can be overwhelming. I remember reading somewhere, long ago, about the odd psychological fact that if you’re looking for something to read – in an airport bookshop, for instance – it’s easier to select a book from a single revolving wire rack of paperbacks than from a wide array of shelves-full of books. In the second instance, the very quantity of your options paralyzes. You find something that might be interesting, but you can’t be sure there isn’t something better further along. You dawdle, paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of your options. With the small wire rack, you can quickly grasp the range of your choices, and grab up the best of what might be a mediocre lot.
New speakers of English face a similar problem, I imagine. They often have several choices (counting various word combinations) when looking for what the French call “le mot juste,” the precise, correct word.
In a Norwegian-related Facebook group the other day, a poster from Norway posted a picture of a chest they’d inherited. They described it, in all innocence, as a “coffin.” I don’t think anyone actually made fun of them for the word choice – in Norwegian, the word “kiste” serves for both ordinary storage chests and coffins. I suppose there are conceptual consequences – in Norway you put things away in chests, and you yourself are put away in a chest when you die. There’s a sense that they pack you up and put you in storage, like an artifact.
Not that Norwegian doesn’t have some challenging word options of its own. Long ago, I was corrected about the word for physical exercise. As I recall, I used “eksersis,” a natural guess for an English speaker. But “eksersis” refers to a drill, as in the military. What we call exercise they call “trening,” which is probably, I assume, a borrowing from English, but with the meaning slightly altered for local requirements.
The Norwegian who called a chest a coffin probably translated with artificial intelligence (I imagine). We hates AI around here, we does, for just such reasons. AI, though, is adequate for quick and dirty jobs (sadly, my lamented late side gig translating film scripts qualified as quick and dirty – not that I did it that way. But the quality I was able to offer in my work couldn’t compete, because quick and dirty is also cheap).
Ah well, the world of translation had its chance at my services, and they cast me out. Instead, I will soon release The Baldur Game to inevitable universal acclaim, becoming rich and famous in my declining years.
After which I’ll be packed away in a kiste.
That’s kind of morbid, isn’t it? Sorry. I had to tie the thread up somehow. Tying up plot threads with a death is one of the cheapest go-to tricks in the fiction writer’s bag. Or chest.
Our friend Dave Lull sent me a link to this article from Literary Hub. It’s about the work of Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse (whose Septology I reviewed for Ad Fontes). What particularly interests me about this article is that it’s written by a woman who has translated Fosse’s plays into “American” English.
I was particularly struck by the fact that Sarah Cameron Sunde, the author of the article, deals in particular with a translation issue on which I have views of my own. And her views are the opposite of mine. The difference hangs on how to translate a simple, two-letter word: “Ja.” (It means yes.) She writes:
One such word that appears again and again (over 150 times, in fact) in Natta Syng Sine Songar is “ja”—I had noticed that this repetition was missing in the British translation, and instead the translator had chosen to replace each “ja” with what he thought it meant in each given moment—which often meant “yes” and sometimes deleting it entirely, when it seemed like filler word. But the repetition felt critical to me for several reasons: 1) the everyday quality of the word as it is spoken, not written, 2) the way this “ja” could function to build tension between live performers, 3) and how it unites the characters despite the vast space between them.
In my Ad Fontes review of Septology (which was generally favorable to the translation by Damion Searls) I criticized his repeated use of the word “yes” to translate “ja” in the text. My own view is that the Norwegian “ja” serves multiple purposes in Fosse’s Nynorsk dialect. It can stand for “Well,” or “All right,” or “I don’t know,” plus a host of other expressions. For that reason, I felt it ought to be translated with several different everyday interjections. Sunde translates it “yeh” in every case, in her work. Perhaps that’s a good choice in the context of theatrical production, but I question it.
Nevertheless, Sunde’s article is an insightful and interesting one.
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.
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.
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.”
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”
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.
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.
