The empire and the Other - The outline of the novel

4.2 The outline of the novel

4.3.2 The empire and the Other

Kutzer (2000:48) argues that The Secret Garden reflects the omnipresence of the Empire and especially India in England. In many cases India and Indian people represent the Other in the book. Other is a concept which refers to the socially constructed representations of cultures and people that are different from the white, western norm. Other is something deviant and it is a part of constructing the idea of “us”, or in this case the west, as its opposite. Representation as

a concept refers to the definition of a phenomenon as well as the meanings, or judgements, connected to it. This means that representation is a not a neutral description, as it partly creates the object it describes (Gordon 2002, 39–40). The Other is often exoticized and racialized. Ra-cialization means that a people who differ from the white norm are considered to represent a

“race”. Race in its turn is a social construct with which stereotypical features, habits and traits are associated (Hall 1999, 139–140).

Mary was born in India and lived there until she was ten, and she constantly com-pares England to India. When Mary first arrives in England, the surroundings and habits are unfamiliar to her as she does not understand, for instance, what a moor is and she does not know the local birds. Eckford-Prossor (2000:242) describes The Secret Garden as travel literature in reverse. This means that Mary, a child of English parents, is a traveler who moves to England, to “home”, which is at the beginning strange place to her.

In addition, the empire is present in the way artifacts from India are presented in the manor, particularly in a room that Mary visits: “Mary had seen carved ivory in India and she knew all about the elephants. She opened the door of the cabinet and stood on a footstool and played with these for quite a long time. When she got tired she set the elephants in order and shut the door of the cabinet.” (Burnett 1911:46).

Kutzer refers to Phillips (1993), who describes the room as a place where Other-ness is displayed, framed and controlled (Kutzer 2000: 60). In this case, India and Indian people represent the Other. Moreover, Kutzer (2000:59) interprets that Mary’s work in the garden mir-rors the actions of colonial explorers: Mary has found the garden and starts to modify and col-onize it. Kutzer further suggests (2010:59) that while the ideas of the unknown and representa-tions of mysticism characterize the image of the new, colonized lands, such as India, they also characterize the secret garden. However, according to Nikolajeva (2005:88), Mary’s explora-tion of the mansion and the garden is also possible to interpret as a self-discovery which leads to a moral and spiritual improvement. As Nikolajeva (2005: 135) describes, from this perspec-tive the discovery and looking after the garden reflect Mary’s psychological development and maturation. Similarly, the blooming of the garden reflects the blooming of Mary’s personality.

Thus, as the texts by Nikolajeva (2005) and Kutzer (2000) illustrate, the book can be studied and interpreted from multiple perspectives.

52 4.3.3 Class differences

Differences in social status and class are evident in the book. The high status and wealth of Mary’s family is implied, as it is told that the father, Mr. Lennox, holds a position in the British Government and has local people as servants. In addition, Mary’s mother, Mrs. Lennox, can enjoy social life and attends parties. In Yorkshire, Archibald Craven lives in the manor and has staff that includes, for instance, maids, a housekeeper, and gardeners. Mary has the luxury of food, weekly money, new clothes and space indoors and outdoors and she has been taught to read and to write. The maid, Martha and his brother Dickon Sowerby come from a poor, rural family. The large family lives in a small cottage, and the children do not always have enough food to eat. As Nikolajeva (2005: 80) points out, Mary becomes aware that she has more money than Martha and her family. This becomes apparent as she realizes that Martha has used her money to buy her a skipping rope: “Mary put on her coat and hat and took her skipping-rope over her arm. She opened the door to go out, and then suddenly thought of something and turned back rather slowly. ‘Martha,’ she said. ‘they were your wages. It was your twopence really.

Thank you.’” (Burnett 1911: 58). In addition, when Martha’s and Dickon’s mother helps the children smuggle food to the garden, Colin and Mary understand that they should give money in return: “They actually awoke to the fact that as Mrs Sowerby had fourteen people to provide food for she might not have enough to satisfy extra appetites every day. So they asked her to let them send some of their shillings to buy things.” (Burnett 1911: 191).

In addition, it is described that Dickon cannot write well, whereas Colin has many books to read. The social status is also shown in the way different characters speak. The back-ground of the gardener Bean Weatherstaff as well as Martha and Dickon is indicated by their Yorkshire dialect. Martha’s speech is even ridiculed by other members of the staff: “she found it dull in the great servants’ hall downstairs, where the footman and upper-housemaids made fun of her Yorkshire speech and looked upon her as a common little thing and sat and whispered among themselves” (Burnett 1911:40). Moreover, when Colin gets jealous of Dickon, he re-minds Mary that ‘[h]e’s a common cottage boy off the moor!’ (Burnett 1911:130).

4.4 The Finnish (re)translations of The Secret Garden

The version of source text that I used in the study is published in 1986 by Michael Joseph Ltd and it is illustrated by Graham Rust. Other works by Rust include illustration to books such as A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy by Burnett (Illustrated by Graham Rust 2018).

The initial Finnish translation Salainen puutarha by Toini Swan was first pub-lished in 1920 by WSOY. A search from Fennica, the National Bibliography of Finland, shows that the latest, 13^th edition of Toini Swan’s translation is from 2007. According to the search, editions have been taken in 1947 (2^nd), 1951 (3^rd), 1961(4^th), 1965 (5^th), 1971 (6^th), 1982 (7^th), 1985 (8^th), 1990 (9^th), 1994 (10^th), 1995 (11^th), 2000 (12^th), 2007 (13^th). In addition, the text has been published in 1977 as a of publications of the book sales club Suuri nuorten kirjakerho.

In this study, I have used the 10^th edition from 1994 published by WSOY. What is particular about this book is that the pictures on the cover and the back cover are from the film adaptation of The Secret Garden from 1993¹. In addition, the book has an attachment which contains 16 pages of images from the film. These images function as an illustration for the story.

Interestingly, Salomaa (2013) used the first edition of the initial translation from 1920 in her study, and she mentions that Swan has domesticated the name Martha as Martta.

However, the name is in its source-text form in the 10^th edition of the book. In addition, Sa-lomaa (2013) notes that the first edition of Toini Swan’s translation, which she used in her material contains footnotes. However, there are no footnotes in the 10^th edition.

Sari Karhulahti’s translation Salainen puutarha was first published in 2006 by Art House and its second edition was published in 2012. A search from Fennica provided infor-mation only of the 2006 edition, although the page had an image of the cover of the second edition. The Finna.fi database, however, contained information about the second edition. Ac-cording to a brief introductory text included in the second edition (2012), the cover picture as well as the two pictures at the beginning of the book and the two pictures at the end of the book are the same pictures by Maria L. Kirk that were used in the original impression of Burnett’s text in 1911. The first edition of Karhulahti’s (2006) translation does not have illustration apart from the cover picture.

1 The Secret Garden 2018 April 2. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108071/

Emilia Numminen’s translation Salainen puutarha was published in 2008 by Eg-mont kustannus. According to Fennica, no new editions have been published (in 2018). This translation of the book has a comprehensive illustration. In fact, the illustrator Inga Moore is also marked as an author and her name is also placed on the cover of the book. Thus, it can be assumed that Emilia Numminen’s translation is based on the English version with Inga Moore’s illustration from 2007. Moore is a renowned artist who has illustrated other several classics during her career. Her work includes classics such as Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Wil-lows and Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost (Inga Moore 2018). According to the infor-mation provided by the British National Bibliography, The Secret Garden with Moore’s illus-tration was initially published as Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden in London by Walker in 2007 and it is marked as a new edition. In addition, the English book also has Moore’s name on the cover.

Numminen’s (2008) and Karhulahti’s (2006) translations could be regarded in Pym’s (1998) terms as rivaling translations as they share the same cultural location and time.

Karhulahti’s translation was published in 2006 and Numminen’s translation in 2008. In addi-tion, the 13^th edition of Toini Swan’s translation was, according to Fennica published in 2007, which means that a Finnish retranslation or a re-edition of the book has been published in three consecutive years.

In addition to the (re)translations by Swan, Karhulahti and Numminen, Janet Brown’s (2001) retold version of the story has been translated in Finnish by Pirjo Mäkinen (2004) and published by Gummerus. According to the information provided by Fennica, Meri Starck has also translated an abridged version of the book into Finnish, and it was published in 1983 by Mestarikustanus. The version is short as it contains only 30 pages.

The copyrights of The Secret Garden expired 70 years after the death of the author Frances Hodgson Burnett. The bibliographic information in Project Gutenberg shows that the book was been released in 1994 (The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 2018).

55 4.5 The (re)translators

In this study, translations are viewed as products of their time, and the purpose is not to criticize the translators or their choices. The translators are next introduced very briefly in order to acknowledge their work.

Toini Vellamo Swan (September 24, 1870–November 29, 1949) was a language teacher, writer, and a translator. She worked occasionally as a teacher in the Lappeenranta re-gion, and since 1894 had miscellaneous jobs, for instance in in a law office. Toini Swan became qualified as an English teacher and taught English in Helsinki from 1905 to 1932 and travelled several times to England, for instance, to study (Arjava 2007: 258). Toini Swan wrote texts to magazine Sirkka, initially called Nuorten Toveri (Manninen 1995:30). Among Toini Swan’s Finnish translations are Kadonnut prinssi in 1918 (The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett originally published in 1915)², Keltaisen talon lapset in 1921 (Mother Carey by Kate Douglas Wiggin)³, Marcella⁴ in 1910 (Marcella by Mrs. Humphrey Ward in 1895), Pikku prinsessa in 1912 (A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett 1905⁵), and, of course, Salainen puutarha in 1920 (Swan Toini March 27, 2018).

Swan had eight sisters, and the correspondence between them has been published in books Yhdeksän mustaa joutsenta (Manninen 1993) and Mustat joutsenet ja heidän jälkipol-vensa (Manninen 1995). Among the sisters is Anni Swan, an author and translator, who trans-lated Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Finnish as Liisan seik-kailut ihmemaassa in 1906 (Oittinen 2007:579).

Emilia Numminen is a Finnish translator whose extensive work include the trans-lations of children’s books such as Höristä korviasi, Eino in 2007 (English source text Little elephant’s listening ears by Susan Hood and illustrated by Nascimbeni, Barbara)⁶. In addition,

2 Information regarding the name of the ST and the year of publication from the British National Bibliography (2018 March 27)

3 Information regarding the name of the ST from Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin (2018 March 27). Retrieved from https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10540.

4 Information regarding the year of publication of the ST from Marchella. (2018 March 27) Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/marcella01wardh#page/n7/mode/2up

5 Information regarding the name and the year of publishing of the ST from Frances Hodgson Burnett (2018 March 27) retrieved from https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/frances-hodgson-burnett/28501/

6 Information regarding the name and years of publication of the translation and the name of the ST from Höristä korviasi, Eino. (2018 March 28). Retrieved from

http://www.kir-56

Numminen has translated fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood to a collection Satujen taikamaailma (Emilia Numminen, March 28, 2018).

Sari Karhulahti (b. 1963) has translated both children’s and adults’ literature (Kääntäjä Sari Karhulahdelle 2017). In 2017 she was awarded with the Finnish State Prize for Literature (Kääntäjä Sari Karhulahdelle 2017). Karhulahti has translated works such as Peter Pan in 2002 (Originally Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M Barrie in 1911)⁷ as well as Bridget Jones:

elämäni sinkkuna in 1998 and Bridget Jones: elämä jatkuu in 2000 (Bridget Jones’s Diary in 1996 and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in 1999 by Helen Fielding)⁸.

jasampo.fi/fi/kulsa/http%253A%252F%252Fdata.kirjasampo.fi%252FphysicalWork_9789512845262. Infor-mation regarding the name and the year of publication of the ST from Little elephant’s ears. (2018 March 28).

Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Little-Elephants-Listening-Ears-Susan/dp/0794412300

7 Information regarding the year of publication as well as the ST from Peter Pan and Wendy (2018 March 28) Retrieved from http://www.kirjasampo.fi/fi/kulsa/saha3%253Au71eea7a0-8f44-4ebb-b000-8a1e9ecc6b84

8 Information regarding the publishing year of the ST and TT as well as the translator from Helen Fielding. (2018 March 28). Retrieved from https://otava.fi/kirjailijat/helen-fielding/

5 Material and method

As mentioned in the introductory chapter, the research questions of this thesis are:

• How are features of racism, violence, and disability translated it the (re)transla-tions of Secret Garden?

• Are there differences between the translation strategies of the different elements among the (re)translations and if so, what are the differences? What do these changes imply?

In this chapter, I will describe the methods used in the collection and analysis of the research material. Firstly, I will discuss the methodological background of my study. Secondly, I will explain how the material was collected and then I briefly discuss how the analysis was con-ducted. It needs to be stressed that the collection of the material as well as the structure of analysis were closely connected as the collection of material determined the way it was later analyzed.

5.1 The general aim of the study

Narrowing down the topic and selecting the material was a process. The initial, broad topic of my study was translation of elements considered inappropriate in retranslated children’s litera-ture. I chose to focus on F. H.Burnett’s The Secret Garden, as it is a book that has been trans-lated in Finnish more than once. The idea behind studying retranslations was to compare pos-sible differences in translation strategies and then make suggestions about how they have been influenced by possible changes in norms or views about what is appropriate in children’s liter-ature.

After an initial skimming of the English source text I intended to focus on the translation of racist elements. However, a closer and more rigorous reading of the book drew my attention to the way violence and disability were presented in the story. I then decided to include those themes to my research. The aim, therefore, was to study how features of racism, violence and disability are translated and whether there are differences between the translation strategies of the themes in each translation and whether there are differences in the strategies

between the translations. As the closer reading of the book affected the research question, this study is partly material driven.

In this study, I compare the source-text expressions and their translations with one another. As Kujamäki (2013:357) argues, comparing textual features is a typical method among Translation Studies, much because the central purpose of translations is to reproduce the mean-ings of the source text. Therefore, possible differences and similarities can be indicative of something.

Considering the scope of a master’s thesis, I decided to focus on three themes and thus the aim is to compare how features of racism, violence and disability are translated. These themes were selected because I found them interesting and topical. In addition, Salomaa (2013) has studied the Finnish (re)translation of The Secret Garden in her master’s thesis. The central theoretical approach of Salomaa’s (2013) study is skopos, and she focuses on dialect, appear-ance as well as gender in her analysis. Therefore, these themes are not discussed in detail in this study. Salomaa (2013) analyzes her material on a syntactic, grammatical and semantic level whereas I mostly focus on the semantic aspects. There are, however, some similarities between Salomaa’s (2013) and my material and analysis, as Salomaa (2013) also discusses racism and racist parts briefly. In addition, Salomaa (2013) discusses some of the racist elements in con-nection with religion, whereas I do not discuss religion.

Since studying the entire textual material of several books would be impractical if not impossible, parts that are relevant for the research topic were selected. The selection of the passages that were later analyzed was based on a rigorous reading of the source text accom-panied by my initial understanding of the topic and the theoretical background. Therefore, the study is partly material-driven and partly theory-driven. As the passages were ultimately chosen by me, the process is to some extent subjective. It should also be noted that especially in such a qualitative study, the process of narrowing down the topic partly defines and creates the phe-nomenon. This means that choosing to study expressions of racism, violence and disability in The Secret Garden, and by selecting parts of the text for a detailed analysis, I take part in con-structing and naming the phenomenon. The selection of the passages formed the basis for or-ganizing the material into themes that are discussed in detail in the chapter 6, in which I present the result of my study.

As the focus of this study is on the elements of children’s literature that are or may be inappropriate, the discussion is linked to norms. However, since the material consists

only of one book and its (re)translations, it is difficult to make claims about the direct impacts of norms, or to identify the norms that possibly have affected the translations. Similarly, as the study focuses on one source text as well as the initial translation and two retranslations of one novel, it is also difficult to make broad assumptions or generalizations related to the retransla-tion hypothesis.

Choosing (re)translations as the material allows a discussion of the possible im-pacts that context and time have on the translations: has the idea of appropriateness changed and affected how certain parts are translated? The initial translation Salainen puutarha by Toini Swan was published in 1920, and the edition used in this study is from 1994. The two retrans-lations are from 2006 by Sari Karhulahti and from 2008 by Emilia Numminen. The second edition of Sari Karhulahti’s translation was published in 2012. This second edition has also been read for the purposes of this study, but it has not been included as a separate version as its content did not differ from the first edition. The retranslations are almost the same age whereas

In document Racism, violence and disability in the Finnish (re)translations of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (sivua 55-0)