It was a pleasure for me last week to hear two experienced translators of nonfiction.\u00a0Pertti Ranta<\/em>\u00a0has translated Darwin’s Voyage\u00a0<\/strong>of the Beagle<\/a> and On the Origin of Species<\/a>. Scientific texts require accuracy, and Pertti amused the audience by describing his disputes with the publisher.\u00a0The editor firmly intended to change the scientific name of the Sally Lightfoot crab from Grapsus grapsus\u00a0to Graspus graspus<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 because the latter got more Google hits.\u00a0On the other hand, when the Finnish edition appeared, the cover<\/a> included a frigatebird and an iguana, as well as the Strait of Magellan, a place with neither frigatebirds or iguanas.<\/p>\n Heikki Eskelinen<\/em>, who has translated nearly 40,000 pages, urged us to be careful when translating approximate figures, directions, and place names\u00a0(Ventimiglia, not Ventimille).\u00a0Information about Finland, especially, often needs correction by the translator \u2013\u00a0Heikki has often had to send requests for fact-checking to authors he was translating.\u00a0The History of Translated Nonfiction in Finland tells us that\u00a0Eskelinen’s translations include Clausewitz’s On War<\/a>, Fukuyama’s The End of History and The Last Man<\/a>, as well as the Toffler’s Powershift<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was a pleasure for me last week to hear two experienced translators of nonfiction.\u00a0Pertti Ranta\u00a0has translated Darwin’s Voyage\u00a0of the Beagle and On the Origin of Species. Scientific texts require accuracy, and Pertti amused the audience by describing his disputes with the publisher.\u00a0The editor firmly intended to change the scientific name of the Sally Lightfoot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-english-en","7":"category-wordoftheweek-en","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2404"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2415,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions\/2415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}