....actually, now I just read another post, it's four
Suomea ei ole vaikea kieli... or something to that extent.
This Latin lover ( author Jame Essinger ) says the same about Finnish :donald wrote:I read it. The article is good, BUT it misses the one point that makes finnish difficult for most foerign people to learn: Finnish has a vocabulary differnet from indo-european languages.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekl ... 63,00.html
You can read more about James Essinger and his time in Finland in his journal here : http://www.jamesessinger.com/journal.htm
I sent a short message to Mr Essinger and he told me that he is fluent in Finnish.
If I were not a native speaker I would probably say that the most difficult thing with Finnish are the conjugations of words and the consonant gradation.
>> ... it misses the point that makes Finnish difficult for foreign people to learn: Finnish has a vocabulary different from indo-european languages. <<
Memory techniques should make the memorizing of words much easier :
http://www.thememorypage.net/vocab.htm
Memory techniques should make the memorizing of words much easier :
http://www.thememorypage.net/vocab.htm
The best explanation I've heard is the following:
Finnish is hard to begin learning, but easy to finish learning (all the grammar is there, and it's quite extensive, but once you've mastered it, you shouldn't have too many problems).
Whereas, English is easy to begin learning, but hard to finish learning (its international presence should alleviate some of the pain in learning some of it, and it has areas in its grammar which are quite easy, but the amount of irregularities, its huge vocabulary, its crazy spelling and other factors make it harder to finish learning).
Exceptions do occur however I'm sure!
Finnish is hard to begin learning, but easy to finish learning (all the grammar is there, and it's quite extensive, but once you've mastered it, you shouldn't have too many problems).
Whereas, English is easy to begin learning, but hard to finish learning (its international presence should alleviate some of the pain in learning some of it, and it has areas in its grammar which are quite easy, but the amount of irregularities, its huge vocabulary, its crazy spelling and other factors make it harder to finish learning).
Exceptions do occur however I'm sure!
Hmmm....
I have read both articles at these two links. Neither of them really deal with the degree of difficulty of the Finnish language. One of them doesn't deal with it at alll, beyond saying Finnish is not difficult.
Actually, I could write an entire book of the linguistic aspects that prove Finnish is difficult, from its grammar, to its morphology, to its vocabulary, to the actual use of it by Finnish people.
Concerning the last point, in particular, with regards to those people who might feel they have mastered this language and now consider it easy, I have compiled an ever-growing text document full of Finnish phrases which I have found in my agonizing job of translating this language. Most of the Finnish phrases in this document are expressed in inane ways, incomprehensible to Finns, to say nothing of foreigners. In cases where you are even able to understand the words, when you put them together to try to understand the sentence, it makes no sense. Then, other times, you ask yourself if you have really understood this, or how can "air" have sides? (taken from an example of a Finnish text which referred to air or space as having physical sides on which an object was mounted)
In another example, a Finnish text that a Finnish friend of mine had referred to something as being "evenly multipliable by four." The remainder of that Finnish text was so bad, it cannot even be explained (my friend had asked me for help in understanding it, as she had to translate it to English).
I agree, though, that the language ends up being more difficult than it has to be, but not for any of the reasons cited in those articles.
Another falsity claimed in one of these articles is that the native language of the learner doesn't matter. It surely does. These articles seem just to be very superficial and written without any valid linguistic explanations or discussion provided for the claims made.
Otherwise, I can gratefully state that Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and many, many other languages, are "easy." Moreover, I can say why they are easy and why Finnish is hard by comparison. And while there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved, which everyone seems to forget, I am at least able to provide objective linguistic reasons for the difficulty of Finnish compared to other languages.
I have read both articles at these two links. Neither of them really deal with the degree of difficulty of the Finnish language. One of them doesn't deal with it at alll, beyond saying Finnish is not difficult.
Actually, I could write an entire book of the linguistic aspects that prove Finnish is difficult, from its grammar, to its morphology, to its vocabulary, to the actual use of it by Finnish people.
Concerning the last point, in particular, with regards to those people who might feel they have mastered this language and now consider it easy, I have compiled an ever-growing text document full of Finnish phrases which I have found in my agonizing job of translating this language. Most of the Finnish phrases in this document are expressed in inane ways, incomprehensible to Finns, to say nothing of foreigners. In cases where you are even able to understand the words, when you put them together to try to understand the sentence, it makes no sense. Then, other times, you ask yourself if you have really understood this, or how can "air" have sides? (taken from an example of a Finnish text which referred to air or space as having physical sides on which an object was mounted)
In another example, a Finnish text that a Finnish friend of mine had referred to something as being "evenly multipliable by four." The remainder of that Finnish text was so bad, it cannot even be explained (my friend had asked me for help in understanding it, as she had to translate it to English).
I agree, though, that the language ends up being more difficult than it has to be, but not for any of the reasons cited in those articles.
Another falsity claimed in one of these articles is that the native language of the learner doesn't matter. It surely does. These articles seem just to be very superficial and written without any valid linguistic explanations or discussion provided for the claims made.
Otherwise, I can gratefully state that Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and many, many other languages, are "easy." Moreover, I can say why they are easy and why Finnish is hard by comparison. And while there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved, which everyone seems to forget, I am at least able to provide objective linguistic reasons for the difficulty of Finnish compared to other languages.
Well - check out this video called Iliman pielet (edges of the air/weather)Bitsy wrote:how can "air" have sides? (taken from an example of a Finnish text which referred to air or space as having physical sides on which an object was mounted)
(mind your eyes, though... you're supposed to look at it in a certain way so it becomes three-dimensional)But yes, I'd also like to see the original. Could it be the word "tila" (space) that you're talking about....? Just guessing - another option is, of course, that the original text was written by a genuine Finnish eejit
The world view of ancient Finns :
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... aailma.jpg
[ Taivaaseen kuuluivat myös "ilman pielet" eli ilmeisesti taivaankannen reunat, mahdollisesti lintukodon luona. ]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... aailma.jpg
[ Taivaaseen kuuluivat myös "ilman pielet" eli ilmeisesti taivaankannen reunat, mahdollisesti lintukodon luona. ]
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Hank W.
- The Motorhead
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Yeah, well translating that kind of old mythology text is really challenging. But after all the idea is according to Aristotelian cosmology, so if the earth is flat and the heavens are solid, like so many cake covers then it is quite logical. I mean Finns still talk of taivaankansi while not believing it is solid.
Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
To this day, I have no idea. I have nobody to even ask. However, based on the times I have asked the people at my office, I am fairly sure there is a good mix of both.trentti wrote:Bitsy - I'd be interested to know some of the more common phrases.
Are most of the difficulties you have as a translator mainly due to plain poor text or that it is difficult to translate certain standard Finnish phrases?
This sentence comes to mind:
Kampanjan vastuuhenkilö seuraa myös kampanjan aikana täydentyvästä tietokannasta esille tulevia toisiaan vahvistavia viestejä esim. koulutustarpeista, joihin voidaan reagoida suhteellisen nopeasti ja huomioida heti ainakin koulutussuunnittelussa.
I tried to get help for it (not from my office, for reasons too involved to explain) and any time I ask a Finn who does not have a stake in this company for help, they seem to go "uuuuuhhh...." (meaning it seems like they look at the sentence and their mind goes blank or something) or else it seems like they sort of smile with this feeling of "thank God I don't have to do that..."
It's an old sentence and I have deciphered it now, but it is an example of a sentence I can spend an unlimited amount of time on, deciphering, stressing, getting angry over and/or marveling at why...
The word used in the example I mentioned was, indeed, tila. It was a patent. I had only been in Finland for a year and a half or so and translating for about a year, with no previous knowledge of or classes in Finnish and no Finnish people - just the people at my office to ask. I would have to dig into my files to find the exact sentence, but if I remember right, what the author meant to say was not on the sides of the space, but that there was something mounted on the sides of the pontoon walls. It had nothing at all to do with space, but the person who wrote it saw the space between the pontoon walls as having a side, when it was actually the pontoon walls that the thing in question was mounted on. When I have time, I'll try to dig it up.
To this day, every time I run into sentences or phrases I don't understand, I chalk it up to my stupidity and the fact that I should not be translating Finnish. It has eaten away at my confidence in this language through all these years (and that is just the writing, nevermind the speaking). I don't know how often it is my stupidity about the language or how often it is awful writing, but there have been some Finnish texts that I have done and felt, now this is well-written and I can understand it, and I felt good, like I can do this job. (I think Finnish written in the newspapers is a good example of the kind of good Finnish I could understand). The fact that I can count the number of such texts on one hand, in 8½ years of work, is what makes me think I should not be doing this job. Eventually I will quit, too. Swedish, French and German are much easier to translate (even if at the moment I have little to no experience translating French and German
).What's so difficult about that sentence though?Bitsy wrote:Kampanjan vastuuhenkilö seuraa myös kampanjan aikana täydentyvästä tietokannasta esille tulevia toisiaan vahvistavia viestejä esim. koulutustarpeista, joihin voidaan reagoida suhteellisen nopeasti ja huomioida heti ainakin koulutussuunnittelussa.
My main pet peeves when translating are people who can't figure out
how to use punctuation in Finnish:
"puhe ja televiestintä" and "puhe- ja televiestintä" are definitely not the
same things. I figured out a long time ago that the worse they write
in Finnish, the more likely they are to start complaining about the
translation or the fact that I end up having to ask them so many
questions.
Can I ask how and why you got started translating if you didn't know
Finnish at the time? Or why you don't try to find a different job if
translating is not for you? I didn't stay in interpreting because it was
definitely not for me and caused me too much stress, no matter how good
the pay was. And my feelings were exactly what you describe when
talking about translation.
-enk
Hmm... nothing inherently difficult in that sentence, but I'd say it is an example of sorts of "kapulakieli" i.e. somewhat bureaucracy-inspired Finnish. Longish sentences and fairly complicated structures. In translating texts like this, I've noticed that it is usually easier to divide the sentence into two separate ones.Bitsy wrote:Kampanjan vastuuhenkilö seuraa myös kampanjan aikana täydentyvästä tietokannasta esille tulevia toisiaan vahvistavia viestejä esim. koulutustarpeista, joihin voidaan reagoida suhteellisen nopeasti ja huomioida heti ainakin koulutussuunnittelussa.
Not aware of the original context, I'd translate somewhat like as follows
The person responsible for the campaign should also single out messages with recurring themes from the database created during the campaign. These messages may include information on e.g. educational needs that can be reacted to within a reasonable time, and which can be immediately taken into account, at least in the planning of education.
Any good?
I'm not a translator by profession (but still need to tackle sentences like that occasionally), nor am I a native speaker of English, so I must say this was not exactly "a piece of cake" (meaning that I actually had to think a bit more than usual
) But while I said -echoing Enk- that the sentence wasn't all that difficult, from a the point of view of translation I do acknowledge that it is definitely not your everyday Finnish and in fact most Finns would react just as you said... uuuuhhh... But what do you think of this?
http://deski.fi/page.php?page_id=24&tie ... =108&aihe=Osaamisklusteri agendalle!
Suomi on maailman kilpailukykyisin maa. Tämä ei silti tarkoita sitä, että voisimme jättäytyä ilman markkinasensitiivistä herkkyyttä ja tahtotilatta kehityksen painopistealueisiin panostamisessa. Globaalistuva markkina pakottaa re-evaluoimaan joustamattomia ja alhaisen tuottavuuden segmenttejä, erityisesti niitä osaamisklustereiden erikoissektoreita, joissa tehokkuudelle ja tuottavuudelle asetettuja kehitystavoitteita ei ole saavutettu.
Onko näin pienellä maalla varaa resursoida 12 ministeriön toimintoja? Ovatko ministeriömme pystyneet vastaamaan markkinan tehokkuushaasteeseen?
Meillä tarvitaan huippuministeriöitä. Niitä voidaan tuottaa vain uudenlaisella osaamisajattelulla. Ministeriöiden on profiloiduttava, panostettava ydinosaamisalueeseensa ja kehitettävä itse-evaluaation ja innovatiivisten kehityskeskusteluiden tuottaman markkina-analyysin luomien puitekehysten avulla ydinosaamistaan ja havaittava uusien toiminta-alueiden suomat mahdollisuudet.
Miten esimerkiksi opetusministeriö on innovoinut yliopistosektorille kohdistamaansa vaatimusportfoliota? Onko sen tuotekehityspanostus ollut koulutuspoliittisen divergenssin asettamien vaatimusten tasalla?
Opetusministeriössä on toki paljon osaamista, mutta myös uusia osaajia tarvitaan. Onko ministeriö tutkinut ulkopuolisen rahoituksen hankkimisen mahdollisuuksia? Veikkaan, että ei. Ministeriö on tukeutunut kerran omaksumaansa, virkamiesmäisesti ajateltuun julkisen sektorin ministeriöpolitiikkaansa eikä ole havainnut vaatimussortimenttinsa markkinoiden hiipumista. Entiseen segmenttiajatteluun ei ole paluuta.
Tarvitsemme uutta, tulosvastuullista ajattelua myös opetusministeriön vaatimusportfolion painopistealueiden kohdentamisessa yliopisto- ja korkeakoulusektorille. Opetusministeriön tulostavoitteessa on jo ainakin kahdeksan vuosineljänneksen ajan ollut tavoitteena, että 70 prosenttia suomalaisista suorittaisi korkeakoulututkinnon.
Näin staattinen kehitystavoite ei ole nykypäivää. Entä jos vaatimusportfolion osa-alueita kilpailutettaisiin? Uskon, että tästä maasta löytyisi yksityiseltä finanssisektorilta luovaan ajatteluun pystyviä tiimejä. En ihmettelisi, vaikka jokin sisällöntuotantoon erikoistunut, globaalin markkinan tuomat haasteet sisäistänyt sisällöntuotantotiimi uskaltaisi pistää paremmaksi: 85 prosenttia suomalaisista on saatava suorittamaan korkeakoulututkinto ja koulutusjärjestelmämme on virtaviivaistettava tuottamaan siihen tarvittavat palvelut sekä koulittava 0,7 prosentista korkeakoulututkinnon suorittaneista huippuosaajia.
Opetusministeriössä on YT- ja UPJ-neuvottelujen sekä evaluaation, tulosneuvottelujen ja kehityskeskustelujen aika. Kriisi on aina myös uusi mahdollisuus. Tehkäämme yhdessä kova tulos seuraavan vuosineljänneksen aikana!
Lasse Koskela - Hiidenkivi 1/2005
1. I think its difficulty is obvious. It contains a super-extended adjective.enk wrote:What's so difficult about that sentence though?Bitsy wrote:Kampanjan vastuuhenkilö seuraa myös kampanjan aikana täydentyvästä tietokannasta esille tulevia toisiaan vahvistavia viestejä esim. koulutustarpeista, joihin voidaan reagoida suhteellisen nopeasti ja huomioida heti ainakin koulutussuunnittelussa.
-enk
2. Perhaps you didn't read my previous post, but I specifically said that some of the difficulties I have are due to my inability to understand Finnish structures.
3. It is not translating per se that I have a problem with, as I implied in my post, it is translating Finnish, and I also mentioned in my post that I am going to be changing that.
and,
4. If this and other sentences I have trouble with are so simple for everyone except me to understand and explain, then the only explanation remaining as to why Finns don't help me with them is simply that they don't want to help me out of spite, which gives me an even worse feeling than I already have.
5. Thank you for unnecessarily taking a superior attitude which has made me feel even worse and more inadequate. Now I and everyone else will know that you could reproduce that Finnish sentence in great English form in no time at all. Soon I will tell my office to find another translator. The reason they hired me, you can see, was because they were desperate.
No, I don't think this is the case. Language like that is (relatively) easy to understand if you're a hard-boiled native Finn who's accustomed to read any kind of official ministry texts (mostly spawning in ministries etc.)Bitsy wrote:4. If this and other sentences I have trouble with are so simple for everyone except me to understand and explain, then the only explanation remaining as to why Finns don't help me with them is simply that they don't want to help me out of spite, which gives me an even worse feeling than I already have.
but as said, your average Finn -even if they speak fairly fluent everyday English- would run to the hills if he/she had to TRANSLATE that kind of sentences into English. Trust me, this is the reason for the Finns to retreat in horror.It may be easy for enk to say - excuse her, she seems to know about a gadzillion languages back to front, including Swahili, Klingon and that peculiar lispy accent they speak on Thursdays at the Upper Volta asparagus carnival.
Edit: and oh, it seems you actually addressed me in your last point... sorry, I did not mean it that way. Only tried my hand because I thought that the example of dividing the sentence in two might have helped you in the future. Plus the fact that it DID take me some time, I definitely did not write the sentence in a minute or two. Please do not be offended
