A foreign country

I think I’m about to make myself unpopular again, but what the heck, I’m a big girl, I can take the flak.

 

Translated crime fiction seems to have been all the rage for a few years now, at least here in the UK. I keep finding well-known authors who list it among their favourite reads. The CWA found themselves in the awkward position of having to create a new Dagger award for it when it threatened to overwhelm the shortlists one year. Stieg Larsson keeps reappearing in the top ten bestsellers as yet more people discover him – or maybe give his books to their friends as gifts. Henning Mankell’s Wallander series is set fair to win all kinds of awards now it’s found its way on to TV with Saint Kenneth Branagh in the title role. (Sorry, Ken, no offence meant, I’m sure you’re a lovely guy – it’s just that your name in the credits does distract the BAFTA people’s attention from other stuff.)

 

And on a personal note, someone whose judgement I respect gave me a book called The Exception, originally in Danish, with the assurance that it was going to be the best thing I read all year, and would effect a Damascean conversion to the cause of translated crime fiction. It’s done brilliantly, I was assured; you won’t notice any difference.

 

Well, it wasn’t, it didn’t and I did. Best thing I read honours have to go to Phil Rickman’s Prayer of the Night Shepherd (I came to him late, and am only halfway through the series – that one’s the best so far), who just – and only just – had the edge over the new books by my own authors. And don’t ask me to name favourites there! And though it was a very clever story, I felt uninvolved, as if I was reading from a long way off. Which in a way I suppose I was.

 

The thing is, I simply don’t get translated crime fiction. I’ve tried, really I have. Larsson, Mankell, Andrea Camilleri… I even went back and had another go at Maigret. I met Hakan  Nesser at CrimeFest last year, and he’s a delight: seriously dishy, wonderful dry sense of humour, well-nigh flawless English probably more correct than mine. But I can’t seem to connect with his books. Any translated books, in fact.

 

I’m sure the fault is with me. I’m probably insular, set in my ways, unable to open my mind. But the fact remains that characters who didn’t speak the same language as I do in their original incarnation just don’t… speak the same language as I do. There’s something a little uneasy about the way the words flow, especially dialogue, which is where you connect with the characters. There are slightly too many of them, as if the translator wasn’t quite convinced the meaning was getting across, and tried too hard to make sure it did.

 

Fortunately American English, despite what cynics say about Britain and America being two nations divided by a common language, doesn’t touch, or fail to touch, the same nerve. If it did, I’d be missing out on two huge swatches of crime fiction instead of one, and that would be a pity. Americans figure strongly in my top ten crime writers (excluding my own authors for the moment) and every time I visit the USA I discover someone new.

 

Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a European.

Comments

[Maxine]

Interesting post, but how can you lump all "translated fiction" together into one group? I read a lot of it, and it is very varied indeed - it is like saying that all American or all UK authors are the same!
I could suggest other translated crime authors you might try, but I guess you would not want to. Anyway, each to her own, but certainly I have loved a great deal of the Asa Larsson,Liza Marklund, Karin Alvtegen, Gianrico Carofiglio, Deon Meyer and many others I've read in the past few years.

[Dana King]

The things you don't like about translated fiction are why I like it, assuming it's a good translation. I like that the dialog seems a little off in English; it makes it easier for me to imagine it's actually spoken in Swedish or Icelandic, much the same way I hear an Irish accent when I read Declan Hughes or Ken Bruen.

The translator is key. There was a fascinating panel at last year's Bouchercon on translations that made me aware of what's involved, and gave me a greater appreciation of the translator's art.

[Maxine]

I agree, Dana. I've attended two translation panels at two Crime Fests, including some of my favourite translators (eg Don Bartlett, Steve Murray and Tiina Nunnally), and it is very instructive to hear what is involved.

[Jersey Jack]

I'm reading Larson right now and enjoying it very much, but his craft makes the writing remote. Lots of authorial intrusion. POV hopping in the same scene. Passages of background like a magazine article. But the story's good, and "The Girl" is a fabulous character. Sometimes I think nobody notices craft but a certain kind of writer, but maybe these translations add to the remoteness, and that's what's been bothering you.

[Bernadette]

I do agree with Maxine that it's a bit disingenuous to lump all translated crime fiction under a single banner. I read a reasonable amount of it and, as with the stuff written originally in English, there is good and bad. But it's your loss that your crime fiction reading future won't include the other Larsson (Asa, also Swedish) or Deon Meyer (whose stuff is originally in Afrikaans) or Camilla Lackberg (yep another Swede) or Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Icelandic this time) as all of these have translated fiction that is outstanding - equal to the best stuff originally written in English (and better than a lot of the dreck that gets published these days) and no instances of reading their stuff did I ever once get that "oh I wonder what the author really meant" feeling.

[bookwitch]

I know where you are coming from, and I agree. Mostly. In reverse, possibly. I read English language novels, and mainly British ones, because I feel at home with them. And that's something I need to do. I'm not the type who travels well. I need to feel at home. Same with books and films, though I did enjoy that Japanese film I saw recently.

Some people enjoy travelling to far flung places, and some enjoy translated books. We are not all the same.

Then there is the hazard of knowing both languages involved in a book. You can tell the translator had no idea what a certain word or phrase means and made something up. It grates.

Sugar cake, for instance, which hubby found in an old Mankell. English speakers may well believe this to be a Swedish delicacy. I on the other hand know what it was before it got mangled.

[Lynne Patrick]

Good point, Maxine. I think I've sampled several styles - Camilleri and Mankell, for instance, aren't much alike. The problem for me seems to be the slightly stilted language of translation, and that's a common factor.

[Lynne Patrick]

Each to his/her own, Dana.
I can hear accents fine in writing originally in English; it doesn't seem to come across that way for me in translated work.

[Lynne Patrick]

Editors notice craft too, Jack. Thing is, I'm not entirely sure it's the author's craft I'm getting in a translated work.

[Lynne Patrick]

Good to know I'm not alone in this! Though I do love travelling, and actually seeing other countries. Not sure what that says about me...