CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto Crime stories from the country of huopatossu and juhannusruusut — Translation strategies for Finnish cultural realia in the English translations of two of Matti Yrjänä Joensuu’s crime novels Master’s Thesis Department of English University of Helsinki 7 April 2008 Paula Kylä-Harakka 1 CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 2 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 3 2 MATTI YRJÄNÄ JOENSUU AND HARJUNPÄÄ CRIME NOVELS .................................................... 7 2.1 THE AUTHOR AND HIS NOVELS .................................................................................................................. 7 2.2 HARJUNPÄÄ JA POLIISIN POIKA (HARJUNPAA AND THE STONE MURDERS) ............................................... 10 2.3 HARJUNPÄÄ JA PAHAN PAPPI (THE PRIEST OF EVIL) ................................................................................ 11 2.4 THE TRANSLATORS AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS ....................................................................................... 12 3 REALIA ........................................................................................................................................................ 14 3.1 CULTURE ................................................................................................................................................. 14 3.2 CULTURE-SPECIFIC REFERENCES OR REALIA ........................................................................................... 15 3.3 CLASSIFICATIONS OF REALIA ................................................................................................................... 17 4 TRANSLATION STRATEGIES ................................................................................................................ 24 4.1 THE CONCEPT OF TRANSLATION STRATEGY ............................................................................................. 24 4.2 CLASSIFICATIONS OF TRANSLATION STRATEGIES .................................................................................... 26 4.2.1 Global and local level ..................................................................................................................... 27 4.2.2 Global level: foreignising and domesticating strategies ................................................................ 28 4.2.3 Local level: potential local-level strategies for realia .................................................................... 31 5 TRANSLATION NORMS ........................................................................................................................... 38 5.1 FACTORS INFLUENCING TRANSLATORS’ CHOICE OF STRATEGY ............................................................... 38 5.2 THE DEFINITION AND TYPES OF TRANSLATION NORMS ............................................................................ 39 5.3 FOREIGNISATION AS A NORM IN “ANGLO-AMERICAN CULTURE”? ........................................................... 41 6 ANALYSIS OF REALIA IN THE NOVELS AND TRANSLATION STRATEGIES IN THEIR ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS ........................................................................................................................ 43 6.1 THE METHOD OF ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................... 43 6.2 REALIA IN THE HARJUNPÄÄ NOVELS ....................................................................................................... 45 6.2.1 Personal names............................................................................................................................... 48 6.2.2 Geographical realia ....................................................................................................................... 49 6.2.3 Historical realia ............................................................................................................................. 51 6.2.4 Social realia .................................................................................................................................... 51 6.2.5 Cultural realia ................................................................................................................................ 52 6.2.6 Other realia .................................................................................................................................... 54 6.3 STRATEGIES USED FOR CULTURE-BOUND ITEMS ...................................................................................... 55 6.3.1 Direct transfer ................................................................................................................................ 61 6.3.2 Calque............................................................................................................................................. 64 6.3.3 Cultural adaptation ........................................................................................................................ 66 6.3.4 Superordinate term ......................................................................................................................... 67 6.3.5 Explicitation ................................................................................................................................... 69 6.3.6 Omission ......................................................................................................................................... 71 6.3.7 Other strategies .............................................................................................................................. 73 6.3.8 Special cases ................................................................................................................................... 76 6.4 SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS ..................................................................................................................... 78 7 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................................... 81 8 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................. 85 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................ 88 APPENDIX 1 2 List of tables Table 1. Classification of realia (Nedergaard-Larsen 1993). 20 Table 2. Names in the classification of realia. 22 Table 3. Potential translation strategies for realia (Leppihalme 2001). 32 Table 4. Types of realia in the two novels. 46 Table 5. Tokens of realia in the two novels. 46 Table 6. Personal names in the novels (types). 48 Table 7. Geographical realia in the novels (types). 50 Table 8. Social realia in the novels (types). 51 Table 9. Cultural realia in the novels (types). 53 Table 10. Translation strategies for realia in the novels. 56 Table 11. Translation strategies for personal names. 57 Table 12. Translation strategies for realia (names excluded). 58 Table 13. General trends of strategies used in the translations (order of frequency). 59 Table 14. Proper nouns versus common nouns. 62 Abbreviations ECR extralinguistic culture-bound references Source texts PA Harjunpää ja pahan pappi PO Harjunpää ja poliisin poika Target texts PE The Priest of Evil SM Harjunpaa and the stone murders 3 1 INTRODUCTION – Tee niin, Norri sanoi lyhyesti. – Tule sen jälkeen Pasilaan. Me irtaannumme täältä kohta. Harjunpään ilme muuttui elottomaksi; jossain syvällä, itseltäänkin salaa, hän oli elätellyt toivoa, että Norri olisi pyytänyt häntä tekemään jotain muuta. Sitten hän rykäisi, lojautti oven kiinni ja käynnisti – juhannusruusujen tuoksua ei tuntenut enää, ja jäähdytinsäleiköstä hyönteisiä napsineet varpuset pyrähtivät pois. (Joensuu 1983: 35; emphasis added.) ‘Yes, you do that,’ cut in Norri promptly. ‘You can go straight to the station from there, we’ll be finished here shortly.’ Harjunpaa’s face went blank. Unconsciously he had been hoping – against hope – that Norri would ask him to do something else instead. Then he cleared his throat, started the car and closed the door, shutting out the smell of roses and scattering away the sparrows which had been picking insects from the car grille. (Joensuu 1986: 15; emphasis added.) The above extract is written by Matti Yrjänä Joensuu, one of my favourite Finnish crime writers. I have always loved crime novels of all kinds. I spent my childhood reading such authors as Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. What appealed to me in Joensuu’s crime novels was especially their setting. All his crime novels take place in my childhood home town Helsinki and its surrounding areas that I know so well. One of the books – the book from which the above extract is taken – Harjunpää ja poliisin poika (Harjunpaa and the Stone murders), actually takes place right next to my old school. In this thesis, I wanted to combine my interest in crime novels and translation. It was not hard to find a suitable topic and focus for analysis of his books. As pointed out above, Joensuu’s books take place in a typically Finnish geographical setting. In addition, the books are set against