Pun based title, when I think of one

Moominsummer Madness and Vaarallinen juhannus ( 'Perilous Midsummer' - my translation!) are the same book, the first being the English translation, the other the Finnish. I've just read them together, in an exercise rather like that of a while ago when I read St Exupéry's Courrier Sud in French, English and Finnish. Note that while Tove Jansson was Finnish, she wrote in Swedish, and these two volumes are both translations of the original. Some day I'd like to chat to some one who's familiar with the original Swedish, because just like with Courrier Sud , I'm fascinated by how much translators can render the style, the tone, the nuance etc of their texts. I would like to know if the rich vocabulary of the Finnish translation in particular accurately reflects Tove Jansson's in Swedish. I fully expect a yes to that, by the way. I have no doubt of her genius. These may be 'children's books', but they tick all the boxes you want for literary...

Let me just say first that the picture below is indeed a really terrible picture . I'm not pretending for a moment that I'm providing a useful illustration of what these birds look like. The thing is, I was caught by surprise: I wasn't expecting to see any interesting birds at all when I walked up to the service area this morning, for a sandwich. The route passes the small pond where I used to see various species of birds, as written up (according to their Finnish names) in this ridiculous wildlife series previously. I only had my cheap smartphone on me, and taking bird pictures greatly exceeds the practical specs of its camera. You might want to check back through this absurd little series. Most of the pictures were taken at this pond, though any future pics are likely to be taken at the much larger fish pond over on the other side of the dual carriageway here. It just became a thing for me, when I began to spot interesting birds at the small pond now and again, other tha...

by Don Grooms and John Oocumma is at barely over 100 pages a basic down to earth introduction to speaking Cherokee in everyday situations. Superficially it seems to be a typical phrasebook as you might find for any language. Except that Cherokee isn't any language. Linguists would have to say it's in decline , mostly spoken by the older generation. Numerically the Cherokee would appear to be doing well, compared with other indigenous peoples, especially if you include all those who say they're part Cherokee. But they live entirely within the USA, they're extensively mixed with the general population, and few are inclined to hold on to their ancestral language. They exist as distinct communities in only two places: on the Qualla Boundary, the Cherokee reservation in the Smoky Mountains at the Western end of North Carolina; and around a couple of towns in the Eastern part of Oklahoma.  The plain fact is that any Cherokee you met would be a fluent speaker of US Englis...

Courrier Sud was St-Exupéry's first novel. It's known in English as Southern Mail , and sometimes published together with his next book Vol de Nuit / Night Flight , both books being quite short. A few years ago it received a translation into Finnish, as  Postilento etelään . The story tells of a French mailplane pilot who on a return visit to Paris, meets up with a childhood friend he has always loved, just as her marriage falls apart when her child dies. He tries to take her away from an urban world and a husband now inimical to her, but away to his own world, which is even more alien; before they ever get there she falls ill and the dream is seen for what it is, an impossible one. The central narrative is topped and tailed by the circumstantial scenes of resting and flying in the harsh environment of the Sahara . Short though the book is, I've been saving it up since finding, with great surprise and delight at the time, this Finnish translation . Who would have t...

Remember the fad for fridge poetry ? Quite a while ago now. I think you can still get packs of words here and there but you have to hunt for them these days. Well, I picked up 3 or 4 packs around ten years ago in Finland , not so much to create masterpieces in verse, as to help with learning the language . At first I got a board suitable for moving the words around on, but I quickly found trying to make sentences was a non starter . Although I had a lot of words, they were designed for use in verse which was too restrictive; and the packs I had were limited in theme - I think one was for children, another for romance, and so on. Furthermore, Finnish as a language doesn't easily lend itself to this activity. It's not just the 17 cases , affecting the word endings, but consonant gradation , which can massively change the internal spelling of words. Here's my fridge today (it may help to click on the image, if it's unclear) . As you can see, the front is entirely devo...

No, that isn't a spelling mistake. This really is about the Finnish in Blade Runner 2049 . There are a few spoilers in this, nothing big, but you may want to check out now. (NB - 2019 follow up comments in PS down at the bottom) I went to see the film a second time, primarily to immerse myself again in that world. Despite the intensely pessimistic vision it offers, its design and cinematography are wondrous and absorbing and I wanted it all again, while I could still get it on the big screen. And it was a big screen, a bigger and better one in Manchester. I went with a friend, which enabled some lively discussion afterwards. I'm glad to say she liked it too, and made several good points. The main one was about the 'glaring plot hole' towards the end (ie. how does so-and-so know how to find *cough* in order to effect a rescue): something's been cut out there, maybe only a bit of script, but something which might have explained it. There were other reasons t...