The Quiet Picture

För några år sen klagade jag om brist på fotomagasin för naturfotografer. Men nu till min stora glädje har det kommit ett som motsvarar mina förväntningar och det är dessutom helt gratis! Detta är möjligt tack vare Internet, så hoppa över till Naturfotomagasinet och läs och njut.

Läste i DN att “astronomer har tagit de hittills skarpaste bilderna på Betelgeuse” och var förstås jättenyfiken på att se bilderna. Och det visade sig att allt är relativt i rymden – tittar man på bilden i artikeln så förstår man att det finns nog ganska så många sätt att definiera “knivskarp”, LOL!

Käännöskirjallisuutta lukiessa mikään ei ärsytä niin paljon kuin käännöksen paistaminen läpi. Huono käännös harmittaa jo maallikkoakin, mutta itse kääntäämistää opiskelleet ja/tai tehneet huomaavat jo pienetkin virheet. Kaunokirjallisuudessa vaatimukset kasvavat entisestään, kun kyse ei ole vain tekstin merkityksen kääntämisestä vaan pitää myös huomioida kirjailijan tyyli. Itse havaitsin jo varhaisessa vaiheessa että sovellun paljon paremmin asiatekstien kääntämiseen kuin kaunokirjallisuuteen, joten en voi muuta kuin ihailla kääntäjiä jotka osaavat luovia kieltä niin hienosti että käännöstä lukee yhtä mielellään kuin alkuperäistä.

Ongelma on vain että taitavia kääntäjiä ei arvosteta tarpeeksi. Ihan kuin minkä tahansa tekstin kääntäminen on vain ylimääräinen kulu joka pitää saada mahdollisemman halvalla, ilman mitään käsitystä mitä kielen kääntäminen itse asiassa on. Turhaa ne kääntäjät viisi vuotta siellä yliopistossa opiskelee? Onhan niitä tosin luonnonlahjakkuuksiakin jotka osaavat ilman virallista koulutusta, mutta pointti on se että kääntäjien kuuluu saada oikeudenmukainen korvaus työstään, ihan sama mikä siinä on koulutus alla.

Siinämielessä on hieman ikävää lukea että kääntäjien työtä on arvostetaan aina vain vähemmin. Luulin että se oli jo silloin opiskeluaikanani 90-luvulla melkein pohjamudissa.

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Siinä se tuli sitten se ensimmäinen suomeksi kirjoitettu blogi-viesti! Ja taisi olla viimeinen… kyllä vääntyy vaikeasti nyt, vaikka tosin helpompaa oli kuin kuvittelin. 15 vuotta ulkomailla asumista tulee tänä vuonna täyteen, siitä on näemmä seurauksia.

Internetworld har gjort en webbhotelltest, och det visade sig att mitt webbhotell Cliche fick sämsta betyg. Jag har kanske haft tur då för jag har inte upplevt några som helst problem. Hur många år har jag haft minnak.net nu… fyra? Under den tiden har jag behövt kontakta supporten två gånger och fick snabb svar både gånger, först när jag behövde MySQL aktivering får att installera WordPress och sen när jag reggade en ny domän och ville peka om den. Fast ompekningen gick inte som jag ville, men det var mitt fel – det stod ju i klartext hur de kan peka om, och det jag ville göra var bestämt nånting annat. Så nu äger jag en domän som gör ingenting… tror inte jag förnyar den… Hursomhelst alltså, trots dåligt betyg från Internetworld så skulle jag ändå kunna rekommendera cliche.se. Kanske hjälper det att jag jobbar med IT så det här att man inte får något hjälp med att installera WordPress osv gör mig inget, och kontrollpanel har jag faktiskt inte saknat heller – jag tänkte inte ens på saken tills jag läste om det i testet. Uptime tycker jag får godkänt också.

Jaja, kanhända att har jag alldeles för låga krav då.

OBS! Jag har ingen annan knytning till cliche.se än att vara kund… tyckte bara att det var lite småroligt att se hur cliche misslyckades med nästan vartenda delmoment i testen. Your mileage may vary!

P.S. Titta jag lyckades med att skriva (nästan) hela inlägget på svenska, borde kanske prova på finska också nån gång får att se hur det känns!

I spent the Christmas week in Finland this year, came back last night. It was quite nice, photographically a bit of a downer but I was expecting it and only had the Canon G10 with me and it turned out to be the right decision.

I had been most anxious to see my mother. She had her spine operated two months ago and now she has to wear a special back support and walk with crutches and the doctor gave her a long list of other complications to normal life. I was happy to see that she was coping fine now, but she’s obviously frustrated with the situation and she’s only half-way towards recovery, provided there’s no setbacks. And we can still only hope that the surgery fixed the problem. Fingers crossed.

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This visit confirmed one thing that I’ve felt for a few years now. Every time I visit Lappeenranta, something has changed there. For one thing, the city is growing, and secondly, the Russian tourists are taking it over. There is very little left from the time when I lived there, it seems like our house is the only thing holding steady (minus a few trees in the garden). Everything’s changing – houses, shops, streets… it’s not my home town anymore. From now on, when people ask me where in Finland I’m from, I’ll tell them that I’m from Savonlinna. And it’s also true – I was born there, I spent all my childhood summers there, and it was also my home for five years when I studied there. The best part is that Savonlinna won’t change in any such extent that it would feel alien to me. Its geographic location makes it impossible! So Savonlinna will be my safe haven in Finland, unfortunately this time I didn’t have time to visit the town other than a quick cup of coffee at my aunt’s but she lives outside the centre and a visit to Savonlinna without seeing the Olavinlinna castle doesn’t really count.

All these years I’ve lived abroad are really starting to show. It’s not just Lappeenranta, but it seems like the whole country is changing. The most familiar thing left is the language, although some new words have cropped up of course, like the skräppääminen word monster (from “scrapbooking”) that I came across in a book title. The language is shaped by the people who use it… the Research Institute for the Languages in Finland can’t keep up anymore!

No, I can’t see myself moving back to Finland anytime soon. I’m proud to carry my Finnish passport, but moving to Finland would be like moving abroad all over again. I’m at home in Sweden now.

The linguist in me just loves articles like this. Be sure to read the comments to the previous article as well, I got many a good laugh reading the discussion going back and forth in defence of the English spelling. And don’t miss the reference to Finnish – although the thing about not having any spelling tests in Finland is not true (unless they’ve changed the education system since the 70′s and 80′s when I went to school).

My pet peeve with the apostrophe is that many people use the acute accent instead of the real apostrophe (Nit-picking? Oh absolutely, guilty as charged!). It makes a big difference – just compare it´s and it’s. In my eyes that extra space around the acute accent is a disruption to the natural flow of the language, it feels like a hiccup. In the English and Swedish and many other Western keyboard layouts, the apostrophe is even easier to reach than the accent. So why reach for the accent at all when the real thing is much closer?

P.S. In my defence, I’ve spent 6 years of my life studying languages at university and even a small mistake in spelling was a make or break deal. You have no idea how many times I proof-read these blog entries before I post them…! The word you’re looking for is “pilkunviilaus”.

P.P.S. No I don’t grade anyone else’s spellings. I was a student, not a teacher!

Some people have asked me why I write my blog in English. The short answer is that it’s just simply the easiest for me. The long answer will put you to sleep so I will spare you.

But this language thing, just because I write in English doesn’t mean that all the comments have to be in English as well. Finnish and Swedish are just fine, I’ll even manage Danish if I have to… so to this end, I’ve changed the “No comments” text to “Comments welcome in English / pÃ¥ svenska / suomeksi”.

Does that convey the idea or is there a better way to express it? Maybe put it in the sidebar or something? I didn’t do it now because it sounded like desperate fishing for comments…

Or maybe it’s not a language thing at all. I read a lot of blogs but there’s only one where I comment regularly, so I shouldn’t be complaining if the people who read my blog (all four of them) don’t want to comment here, LOL!

On a general note, I wish more people would write blogs. I’m useless at keeping touch by phone and mail, but my RSS reader keeps me up-to-date!

There’s a road in Loos called Kylätyevägen. The first and the last part make sense – kylä is Finnish and means village and vägen is Swedish and means road. But tye? Not a word I know, in either language. Then I said it out loud in my mind and it clicked. It’s Kylätievägen. Tie is Finnish and means… road. So it’s Village Road Road! Seeing such a mix of languages over here is not unusual. Some of the names are in Swedish, some in Finnish, and some in bad Finnish. Or a mix of them all. This is because Loos is on the border to a region called Orsa-Finnmark, the name being derived from the Finnish immigrants who moved here a few hundred years ago when Finland was suffering from a big famine. Only the Finns were tough enough to make a living in the remote forested areas where no self-respecting Swede would set their foot in, not even to collect taxes would you believe. Things have changed since then – now they collect taxes. But otherwise it’s still a largely uninhabited area with only small villages here and there, albeit with two major transportation arteries running through, the Inland Railway and Inland Road.

So of all the places in Sweden, I have ended up just right – a Finn in Finnmarken. Not that I go out of my way to seek people who still speak any Finnish, in fact I seem to have a tendency to go out of my way to avoid them (regardless of the language, actually). But one thing that does provide me endless entertainment is the legacy the old Forest Finns have left behind them, in the form of place names. The names themselves are such that you can find anywhere in Finland, but the entertainment value is really created by the Swedes who have had to adopt these names and create the maps and signs. The Swedes (or come to think of it, any non-Finns) just point blank refuse to believe that our language might contain such letter combinations as aa or uo or kk and liberally replace these with their own phonetics.

Porrohara had me going in loops for a while. It doesn’t mean anything in Finnish spelled like that, while at the same time it looks deceptively Finnish so it is acceptable to us. But then I used the same trick, I said it out like a Swede would say it, and it came out as…. Purohaara. Or take Amasou. It ain’t Swedish for sure, so it has to be Finnish. But it isn’t quite Finnish either… until you pronounce and spell it Aamasuo.

And then we have these cases where they just simply can’t decide how to spell the name so they keep mixing it, just to make sure they get it right at least once. Is it Pilkalampinoppi or Pilkkalampinuppi? Or Pilkalampinuppi? When you approach the place, the sign (correctly) says Pilkkalampinuppi. By the time you’re up there, they have dropped a k and changed a vowel so it’s Pilkalampinoppi.

At least they kept all the i‘s. Unlike with Korpmägg. Korpimäki sounds more familiar, but I have to concede that the trailing i is often almost silent (just almost, never completely!), so if you don’t use it in your language, it’s easy to ignore it. And here we also find out that the consonants are another source of confusion, with us Finns treating the soft consonants b, d and g (as in “go”) as foreign bodies and in the olden days we only used the respective hard consonants p, t and k. Except, we pronounce them somewhere in between soft and hard so sometimes it’s hard to tell which one we mean. As other languages started intruding in the old Finnish, we had to adopt the new letters as well. But we didn’t have to learn to pronounce them properly!

Then there are times I complicate matters too much myself. For example, Gethel-vete had me vexed. Gethel-vete? What’s that supposed to mean?

Oh you mean Get-helvete… But it makes you curious, why is this place a goat hell?

I may not officially be a linguist anymore, but once you get in the habit, it’s hard to shake it. I couldn’t have picked a better place to keep it up!