It was a pleasure for me last week to hear two experienced translators of nonfiction. Pertti Ranta has translated Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle and On the Origin of Species. Scientific texts require accuracy, and Pertti amused the audience by describing his disputes with the publisher. The editor firmly intended to change the scientific name of the Sally Lightfoot crab from Grapsus grapsus to Graspus graspus – because the latter got more Google hits. On the other hand, when the Finnish edition appeared, the cover included a frigatebird and an iguana, as well as the Strait of Magellan, a place with neither frigatebirds or iguanas.
Heikki Eskelinen, who has translated nearly 40,000 pages, urged us to be careful when translating approximate figures, directions, and place names (Ventimiglia, not Ventimille). Information about Finland, especially, often needs correction by the translator – Heikki has often had to send requests for fact-checking to authors he was translating. The History of Translated Nonfiction in Finland tells us that Eskelinen’s translations include Clausewitz’s On War, Fukuyama’s The End of History and The Last Man, as well as the Toffler’s Powershift.