New Voices in Self-Translation: Cristina Sandu (Finnish-English)

Finnish author Cristina Sandu (*1989) was born in Helsinki to Finnish-Romanian parents. She currently lives in the UK and is signed with the literary agency Rights & Brands. Sandu grew up bilingual and speaks six languages, however she only self-translates between Finnish and English:

"I grew up in a bilingual family, speaking Finnish with my mother and Romanian with my father. In Finland everybody needs to learn Swedish too, as those are the two official languages of the country. In addition to that, I learned French and English at school, and Spanish by myself mainly out of passion for Latin American literature." (Loughran 2021)

Sandu wrote her debut novel Valas nimeltä Goliat (Otava 2017) in Finnish. While it has been translated into several languages and got nominated for the prestigious literary Prize Finlandia, it is not yet available in English translation. Her second novella Vesileikit (Otava 2019) / The Union of Synchronised Swimmers (Scribe 2021 (UK,USA & Australia); Book Hug 2021 (Canada)), however, Sandu wrote in both Finnish and English. She was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for literary translation for the English version (see https://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/oxford-weidenfeld-prize). So why did Sandu started self-translating? Like Itäranta, Sandu start self-translating early on to get feedback on her drafts:

"My closest writer friends don’t speak Finnish, so when I needed readers, already while writing the Finnish draft, I started working on the manuscript in two languages. It was more writing in two languages than translating, really." (Sidal 2021)

The bilingual writing process resulted in "dozens of drafts in both Finnish and English." (Sidal 2021) While the initial impulse to self-translate was reader-orientated, Sandu soon became aware of the potential of translation to improve the draft:

"But then I also realized that translating is a very useful tool for editing, because as I moved from one language to the other, I got some distance with the text and I could see more clearly my own excesses, repetitions, clumsinesses, and so on." (Book*hug Press 2021: 01:42-02:04)

Sandu feels that the English version has lost some clarity and dynamics compared to the Finnish version:

"In Finnish there are no genders, nor articles or prepositions (Finnish has cases). I sometimes feel that these details make the English version less dynamic and clear. This is probably because I still approach English from the outside, and translating/writing happens slowly, with the help of dictionaries. (Siddal 2021)

The novella is still trying to break through to the international market, but translation rights have been sold for Dutch in April 2022.

References:

Book*hug Press. 2021. "Cristina Sandu Introduces The Union of Synchronized Swimmers". Published on June 21, 2021 on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3khKnApJFw&ab_channel=Book%2ahugPress 

Loughran, Sean.2021."In conversation with Cristina Sandu". Published on September 16, 2021 on the book review platform Avocado Diaries: https://www.avocadodiaries.com/2021/09/in-conversation-with-cristina-sandu.html

Rights & Brands. 2021."Finnish-Romanian author Cristina Sandu navigates between two cultures in her narrative". Podcast Episode 7 on: https://rightsandbrands.com/news/rights-brands-podcast-episode-7-finnish-romanian-author-cristina-sandu-navigates-between-two-cultures-in-her-narrative

Siddal, Lizzy. 2021. "Meet The Author/Translator: Cristina Sandu". Published on June 10, 2021 on the blog Lizzy's Literary Life (Volume One) – Celebrating the pleasures of a 21st century bookworm. URL: https://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2021/06/10/meet-the-author-translator-cristina-sandu/