Katuosoite
FI-00410 Helsinki 41
FINLAND
Professor Paul F. Bandia
Concordia University
Professor James Hadley
The University of Dublin
Professor Siobhán McElduff
The University of British Columbia
10 April 2024
Dear Professors:
I have read your recent anthology Translation and the Classic, published by Routledge. Unfortunately I have to criticize the way my work is discussed in this book by Professor Douglas Robinson within his chapter, “Translating Philosophical Classics, Canonizing Philosophical Translations.” In addition, I have to note a few instances of sloppy and ignorant editing in your volume.
As Professor Robinson explains, in 2001 I published a collection of essays by Charles S. Peirce, translated from English into Finnish, Johdatus tieteen logiikkaan ja muita kirjoituksia. The book received mixed reviews in the press, but especially the Peirce scholars at the University of Helsinki, who participated in the translation process, were critical of the Finnish philosophical vocabulary used in the book. For more than 20 years, they have now detracted the book and the translator, without mentioning their own participation in the process in 1998–2001, and without producing any anthology with better translations of their own.
As most of your readers don’t understand Finnish and therefore cannot assess the quality of my translation or the debate of 2001–3 themselves, they have to trust Professor Robinson’s opinions prima facie. However, his presentation of the case is not fully impartial. He has allied himself with my critics, apparently without reading my translation. Previously, he has mostly discussed the translator’s preface and the rejoinders published in Niin & näin magazine in his book Semiotranslating Peirce (2016) in a way that seemed biased and even libellous to me. After the second, revised and enlarged edition of my anthology was published in 2022, I addressed the problems and misrepresentations in his monograph in an open letter:
https://www.mlang.name/potku/robinson-semiotranslating-peirce.html
I never received a response. Unfortunately Professor Robinson still disseminates questionable views concerning my anthology in your volume. He refuses to acknowledge certain facts and ignores the appearance of a new, improved edition; he does not quote a single sentence from my translation to demonstrate the alleged problems; also, he does not consider at all how Peirce’s writings are translated into other languages, for instance into German and Swedish, and how the corresponding issues are dealt with there.
I will list the problems of his chapter in this open letter (most of those are dealt with more thoroughly in the open letter of 2022), as well as reprimand your volume for certain small but revealing editorial mistakes.
First, I will discuss the pages 150–3.
According to Professor Douglas, the Finnish Peirce scholars designate Peirce “difficult.” That is relative. I find him an excellent, innovative and fluent writer, and his style is admirable. This aspect of his writing must appear also in translations, especially in the popular and exoteric articles, like the series “Illustrations of the Logic of Science” from 1877–8.
Next, Professor Douglas endorses Sami Paavola and Mats Bergman’s view: “The important thing is to create a standardized philosophical vocabulary based on slight Finnicizations of Peirce’s English terms.” They refer specifically to Peirce’s article “The Ethics of Terminology,” which I translated into Finnish in 2003 and which is included in the second edition of Johdatus tieteen logiikkaan.
However, I find it fallacious to apply that article literally to any other language than English. One cannot manoeuvre the usage of Finnish language similarly as that of English. These languages differ greatly from each other, and Latin-based terms appear much more marked in Finnish than in English because in Finnish there is a tradition rather to derive new words from domestic and Finnic radices and to create compound words than to introduce Latin-based words as such, merely for the sake of introducing them (they might create a somewhat snobby, diverting impression). In his or her rendering, a translator should aim to maintain a similar level of unmarkedness (Merkmallosigkeit) in the target text.
Had Charles S. Peirce been confronted with the idiosyncratic nature of the Finnish language, he would probably have agreed more with me than with those zealous scholars of his who, by the way, have academic expertise neither in translation studies nor in the Finnish language.
Crucial terms in Peircean semiotics include, e.g., legisign, sinsign, qualisign, Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. These are English neologisms, and they cannot be “Finnicized slightly” – no, they must be translated, or, in this case, similar Finnish neologisms or compounds must be derived from Finnish radices, not from English or Latin or Greek ones.
Perhaps the most virulent attack by Professor Douglas can be found on page 151, when he refers to the so-called intentional fallacy. “He can translate Peirce any way he likes,” he claims about me because allegedly I have appropriated a “virtual carte blanche.” That is a malevolent oversimplification of the situation (“Because he’s not a Republican, he’s a Communist!”). Even if one cannot access the author’s intentions, he cannot and he mustn’t translate the author’s text “any way he likes” – such isn’t virtuous. On one hand, the text itself restricts him, on the other, the system of the target language checks him as well.
It feels absurd that Professor Douglas accuses me of organizing my translation “around the Finnish language.” That is what every translator of literature, fact or fiction, does here on a daily basis. Literal translations that aim at replicating the syntax and vocabulary of the source language in the target language are rarely used and most often for linguistic or educational purposes; one example are the hundreds of back-translations presented in volume II of the book Alice in a World of Wonderlands (Lindseth & Tannenbaum 2015), mentioned by Professor Emer O’Sullivan on page 85 in your tome. I was the acting editor for volumes II & III of that work in 2010–12.
One property of my critics has always been the narrowness of their perspective: mostly they have been nit-picking the choices of words and the neologisms. As mentioned in the open letter, while I prepared the new edition, I had to make hundreds of corrections and improvements in the translation. I had analyzed and translated certain long and complicated sentences incorrectly, but my critics never pointed out these severe errors in the book – they contented themselves with single words. Apparently they cannot see the wood for the trees.
I added several examples of such sentences and their amended versions in the errata list of the book, available on-line:
https://www.mlang.name/cssp-errata.html
A pompous instance of the nit-picking is the criticism aimed at the word tulkinnos. Professor Robinson refuses to acknowledge that tulkinnos is not my own invention. In Professor Eero Tarasti’s book Johdatusta semiotiikkaan (1990) one finds tulkitsin, and Aatos Ojala is credited as the inventor there (p. 29). A bit later, however, Professor Tarasti told in his lecture that someone had preferred the word tulkinnos and since then I have used it. So tulkinnos is not my “own coinage,” and interpretant is not “traditionally” translated as “interpretantti.” I merely use a word that had originated in Professor Tarasti’s school of semiotics at our university (not affiliated with the Peirce group) and was handed down to me. Also, some recent writers have used the derivative tulkinne.
In some Finnish dictionaries one can find the verb interpretoida ‘to interpret’, but it sounds quite ostentatious. I don’t remember ever having seen it in use.
On page 151, Professor Robinson makes a mistake: he claims that the word tulkinnos is derived both from tulkita and from tulkinta. That is not true. In reality, both tulkinta and tulkinnos are derived from tulkita. (See, e.g., Aarni Penttilä’s Suomen kielioppi, §§ 229.76 and 229.82, about the affixes in question.)
Relevant to the understanding of such words as interpretant and tulkinnos is of course the definition that the writer gives to them, as well as the actual use of them. In Johdatus tieteen logiikkaan, the word tulkinnos appears 80 (eighty) times; a definition can be found on page 24, and Peirce discusses the term further on pages 433–7 (2nd ed.). The new word feels no longer unintelligible when one reads the definition and sees how the word is utilized in language.
To label my translation “nationalistic” sounds odd. I’m not sure if it is mudslinging or conjecture or if Professor Robinson tries to make me seem like a provincial crackpot jingoist. I merely intend to cherish the Finnish language without any nationalistic agenda. As many people know, the Finnish nation is bilingual: we speak Finnish and Swedish. Perhaps Professor Robinson has confused nationalism with language planning, and has not understood my reference to George Orwell (“Politics and the English Language”).
In order to make me appear suspicious or even sinister, Professor Robinson describes very “exactically” when I added the word tulkinnos into the Finnish-language Wikipedia. However, as Johdatus tieteen logiikkaan is the only book by Charles S. Peirce available in the Finnish language so far, published by an established scholarly press, wouldn’t it be a bit odd not to mention it or quote from it at all in the Finnish-language Wikipedia? I have made about 30,000 edits in the Finnish-language Wikipedia, and many of them have been happily accepted by the community; among many subjects, I have improved articles about semiotics.
It seems to me that I touched a rather sore spot in the preface for the first edition of Johdatus tieteen logiikkaan. That has led to a continuing belittlement of my work and expertise; for instance, I wrote my doctoral thesis on epistemology and psychoanalysis, but Professor Robinson (who apparently has not read the thesis) writes about me of having “an amateur interest in philosophy and psychoanalysis” (Semiotranslating Peirce, p. 42). Now you have allowed him to use your book, too, as a platform for his one-sided polemic.
I do not intend to stop anyone from criticizing my translation; contrariwise, I have myself made hundreds of corrections into it and admitted the errors. However, the critique should be based on facts instead of malevolent or partisan fantasies.
Second, I will correct some errors in the bibliography (pp. 154–5). Unfortunately these errors are repeated in the general bibliography of the book (pp. 157–75). I do not quite understand why you have duplicated the bibliographies – perhaps you tried to make your volume appear bulkier than it actually is?
In the Finnish language, titles are not capitalized (cf. The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., ¶ 14.107), and the following titles are therefore incorrect: “Kääntäminen ja Käännöstutkimus Toivon Asiana”, Johdatus Tieteen Logiikkaan ja Muita Kirjoituksia, etc. Also, the translations for these non-English titles should use sentence-style capitalization (¶ 14.108).
Professor Robinson refuses pertinaciously to translate the title of the anthology correctly: Johdatus tieteen logiikkaan ja muita kirjoituksia must be “Illustrations of the Logic of Science and other writings” and nothing else in English. As all scholars know, Peirce’s article series from 1877–8 is called “Illustrations of the Logic of Science,” and this series is referred to in the book title.
The following title (Lång 2002a) is spelled and translated incorrectly: “Mielettömiä odotuksia eli filosofiaa sanasta sanaa?” must read “Mielettömiä odotuksia eli filosofiaa sanasta sanaan?” and the correct translation is “Mindless expectations; or, philosophy, word by word?” instead of “Sense Expectations, or Philosophy Word for Word?”
It is inaccurate at least to translate “Mielen merkillisyydestä” (Vehkavaara 2002a) as “On the Strangeness of Mind.” I would prefer “On the peculiarity of the mind,” although this does not convey the hidden, signatory meaning of merkillinen ‘something that consists of signs’ or ‘something that contains sign(s)’.
Also the following heading (Vehkavaara 2002b) is translated incorrectly: “Ideoiden selkiyttämisen puolesta” must read “In favour of making [our] ideas clear” instead of “In Favor of Clarifying Ideas” because a reference is made to Peirce’s article “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.”
The journal title Niin & näin must be written with one capital letter. All articles published in this journal are available on-line. Why didn’t you include the URLs in the bibliographies?
Finally, a few instances of sloppy editing.
In the Index, on p. 180, we find: “Lång, Markus 150.” This should be, “Lång, Markus 150–153.”
On page 13, you write about “Charles Sander Peirce.” However, the philosopher is called Charles Sanders Peirce. This particular entry is missing from the Index (p. 181).
According to the Index (p. 179), one entry for “Finnish” is to be found on page 78, but the Finnish language is not mentioned there. Instead, there is a grave misunderstanding. Professor Emer O’Sullivan tells about the publication history of the Moomin books by Tove Jansson: “Finnish/Swedish original from 1945 on.”
The compound “Finnish/Swedish” is ambiguous and unclear here. Most people understand that it means something bilingual (like a Finnish–Swedish dictionary or a book that contains the text both in the Finnish and the Swedish language) or a Finnish expatriate in Sweden, that is, a person who was born in Finland and later moved to Sweden.
According to the Chicago Manual (¶ 6.104), a slash can mean ‘or’ and ‘and’. Which one is it here?
Either Professor O’Sullivan has not realized that Tove Jansson was a Swedish-speaking Finn who wrote her books in the Swedish language, that is, in Finland’s Swedish variety of the Swedish language, or she imagines that Jansson wrote both in Finnish and Swedish (not true), or that the first Moomin books appeared both in the Finnish and in the Swedish language already in 1945 (not true).
Jansson wrote all her work in Finland’s Swedish language (also called the Finland-Swedish language). The first Moomin book appeared in the Swedish language in 1945, and the Moomin books were subsequently translated into many other languages; the first Finnish-language translation appeared in 1952, that is, not in 1945.
It may be difficult for foreigners to understand that a Finnish book (in this case, a book written by a member of the Swedish-speaking minority of Finns) needs to be translated into the Finnish language (i.e., from Swedish).
Believe it or not, there is even a Swedish-speaking minority in Estonia.
On page 80, the original German title of Bambi by Felix Salten is Bambi: Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde, not “Bambi, ein Leben im Walde,” as Professor O’Sullivan claims. Have a look at my preliminary bibliography:
https://www.mlang.name/felix/salten-bibliography.html
I don’t want to waste more time on your book. Can you get more careful with facts in the future, that is, pull your socks up a little bit? I may very well be a dimwit and a moron on a global scale, but in a scholarly book that should be shown with brute facts instead of fallacies and one-sided fantasies.
Yours sincerely, [signature]
Dr. Markus Lång
| carbon copy | Routledge, Abingdon |
| publication | https://www.mlang.name/potku/translation-and-the-classic-robinson.html |