Interlingual code-switching and the challenges

of the Finnish language

In all of the translations, most code-switched words are inflected according to Finnish grammar in situations where inflection is demanded by the surrounding sentence structure. A slight difference in convention can be seen between works translated prior to the 1990s and those translated after. In the older translations, whenever a code-switched word is italicised, it is only the stem that is italicised, and the added Finnish inflection is left without italics. For example, in the following passage from the translation of Naipaul’s Masseur, only the stem of the word koortah is italicised: “Hän ei ollut sonnustautunut dhotiin ja koortahiin, kuten olin odottanut”

(Masseur FI 1978, 14) [He wasn’t wearing the dhoti and koortah I had expected]. In the newer translations, on the other hand, the whole word, including the added Finnish inflection, is italicised. An example of this can be seen in the following passage from the translation of Danticat’s Bones, where the protagonist Amabelle’s employer asks her for a cup of coffee: “Amabelle, voisinko pyytää cafecitoa?” (Bones FI 2000, 26) [Amabelle, could I trouble you for un cafecito?]. In this particular example, due to the word cafecito having been inflected according to Finnish grammar, the indefinite article appearing in the source text is also omitted.

Items of interlingual code-switching where target language inflections have been used in the translations relate to the discussion on Gołuch’s (2011, 201) continuum of translation strategies and whether or not this should be called domesticating. She has categorised foreign words with Polish inflections under non-illusionistic domestication, as she argues that inflecting the foreign word brings it closer to the reader and leaving it uninflected would make it stand out from the text. My argument is for an additional category that can be considered both domesticating and foreignising at the same time, as the translator’s strategy contains both foreignising (maintained interlingual code-switching) and domesticating (target-language inflection) elements. As mentioned earlier in subsection 2.1.3, the categorisation of such items of code-switching where target language inflections are used has been studied by Myers-Scotton (1993, 32). Her argument, based on the work of Levelt (1989), is that the speakers of an agglutinative language process entries in their mental lexicon differently from the speakers of analytic languages. Levelt’s argument was that the speakers of an agglutinative language, such as Finnish, have a mental lexicon consisting of separate entries for the stems of words and their possible affixes. Myers-Scotton then argues that, due to this different type of lexical encoding, inflected code-switching, rather than being dismissed as borrowing, should be considered code-switching with added inflection. This would certainly seem to hold true for inflected code-switching appearing in the Finnish translations discussed in this dissertation. The separation can be seen most clearly in the older translations, where indeed only the part of the word that the translator has considered to be foreign has been italicised.

There are some instances where inflections have not been used in situations where Finnish grammar would demand them. These are, however, rather few. One such an example can be found in Sumari’s translation of Antoni’s Folktales, in a passage from Grandmother Domingo’s story about Blanchisseuse and Hax the Butcher:

Still crawling around like a newborn babe on he hands and knees – but with the same sad, oldman’s sigh dragging down he face – still searching in the weeds

beneath he oleander bush, two hairy huevos, and a cornstarch-plaster stuck up between he legs. (Folktales 2000, 42)

Siellä se vieläkin ryömii nelinkontin kuin sylivauva – naama venyneenä samaan surulliseen vanhan miehen irveeseen – siellä se vieläkin etsii ja tonkii ruohoa oleanteripensaan alla, kaksi karvaista huevos heiluen, ja sen reisien väliin on tungettu maissitärkkelyslaastari. (Folktales FI [2000] 2002, 49)

The word huevos [testicles] here is already in plural form, and Sumari has decided to leave it as is (adding italics) instead of switching to the Finnish plural suffix.

The cut-off point for the changes with regard to whether italicisation is used for the whole word instead of only its stem seems to be in the late 1990s. This can be seen the most clearly in the three novels translated by Tamminen. Two of her translations were published in 1999 and one in 2000, which means she was working on them in very close succession, if not simultaneously. In the translations of the two novels by Danticat (1999 and 2000), code-switched words have been italicised in their entirety, whereas in the García translation (1999), only the stems of code- switched words have been italicised. It can also be argued that a difference in style between publishing houses, or indeed editors within publishing houses, can be seen, as the García translation was published by a different publishing house (WSOY) to the two Danticat translations (Gummerus). Of the older translations, in which only stems of words were italicised, the Rhys translation was also published by WSOY, whereas the two Naipaul translations were published by Otava.

The issue of inflecting foreign words according to Finnish grammar also came up in the interviews with the translators. Most of them seemed to view this as a self- evident choice and could not think of any other solutions that they would choose to use in their work. Indeed, the use of Finnish inflections for items of code-switching did not seem to be a wholly conscious decision for some of the translators but something that is so deeply ingrained in their language use that no other alternatives were even considered during the translation process. The question of the influence of Finnish grammatical structures on code-switching also relates to the matter of what kinds of code-switches are most likely to be maintained in the Finnish translations. This topic will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4.