Viikon sana: hummustuhnu

Huononlaatuisen falafelannoksen seuraus: hummustuhnu.

Kauniita sanoja

Jostain syystä juuri mekaniikan alan sanat ovat minusta erittäin kiehtovat ja kauniit. Nyt satuin löytää Eero Aulan Englanti-suomi tekniikan sanasto. Omaperäistä on että kyseessäoleva tekniikka näyttää olevan metsäkoneisiin liittyvä ja ehkä sen takia löytyy ei ainoastaan sanoja kuten ”lattakaapeliliitin” ja ”tehonsiirtoketju” mutta myös ”kangassillihapero” ja ”variksenmarja”.

Lost in translation

Yesterday’s post on Finnish covers reminded me of a specific case of how things can change in translation. Sven Lindahl’s ”Mälarö kyrka” was soon translated into Finnish by Sauvo Puhtila and Lenne Broberg performed both Swedish and Finnish versions of it (with a heavy accent, but nowhere near as bad as that of Hootenanny Singers). In the Finnish version the setting of a church on an island in Mälaren (Adelsö church, to be precise) has been genericised to an “old vaulted church”, but there is a more subtle, not to say insidious, change as well. In both versions the song tells of a little boy, practising on the church organs, hoping to become an organ player in the church like his father, but in the Swedish version he plays both Bach and Beatles and both kinds of music are explicitly said to be equally beautiful. This was to some extent a controversial statement at the time (and still, over a decade later) and in the Finnish one it has been removed completely, only the Bach fugues and the continuity of heritage remains. Whether this is just an accident I cannot tell, but it sort of fits with Finnish society.

Music in Finnish

When I was young, hit songs were normally translated in every European country and artists on international tours sang in the local language of each stop as a matter of course, but at least in Sweden (Anglo-Saxon) music is hardly ever translated these days.

Now I stumbled on a treasure trove: FINNPICKS, where “DM” methodically goes through Finnish covers of popular music with comments in English giving bios of the artists, the history of the original version (and quite often the original artist is not the one who made the song famous) and full-length recordings of both the original and the Finnish version (or sometimes versions, when there have been notably different renditions of either). I grew up to this music.

Many covers are fairly straight-forward translations, or at least retaining the spirit of the original, but some have completely unrelated lyrics, which always makes for an amusing shock.

Veckans ord: enigt

Juhani Aho myntade uttrycket ”katajainen kansa” om finnarna. På svenska torde det bli ”ett enigt folk”.

Folk music

Lately I've been listening a lot to Hootenanny Singers. In spite of the name their thing was singing sugary harmonies of Swedish standards. Their heyday would have been when I was very small, so I don't consciously remember having heard them, yet they are well familiar, so I must have heard others hum the songs they had on Svensktoppen for weeks and weeks at the time.

Now I found a very rare piece, the Russian song Катюша performed in Finnish by the Hootenanny Singers, and while they're doing their best they have an utterly cute Swedish accent. :-)