When I started working as a translator of literature fifteen years ago, I thought like a typical language researcher. I had written my dissertation on language history and I had been working as a lexicographer, but I could not see the forest for the trees. I was enthusiastic about precision and nuances, and my English skills were better than average, but perceiving the whole was difficult. I learned from the job as I went along and the Finnish translators taught the inexperienced ones.

I think that the book always belongs to the writer, but language is shared by the writer and the translator, and the translator makes it their own. Or, if you stay in the woods, the translator navigates the writer’s work by making their own choices along the path. The publisher then checks to make sure the compass and the route map are pointed in the right direction.

In my philology studies, I only partly studied literature, which is probably an advantage and disadvantage to a translator of literature. The researcher in me would like to know how to analyse the literature through some frame of reference, but on the other hand it is good to try to be as close to the role of the reader as possible. Just being a casual reader is not enough for a publisher and I would like to tell young people that they need to think about whether they want to turn their hobby into a profession. A change in the relationship with reading is unavoidable.

It is the best when you get excited about something, you get into the story and you know that it works. That feeling is so rare that it must be followed up on, the translation right must be acquired, and a place for it in the publishing programme must be found. What is more difficult is that you can not get excited about everything. Not every book is for me, but that does not mean it would not have any readers.