I met him at the Leipzig Book Fair…he is a reserved man, but from the start you can identify him as an author or translator. Where he originally comes from is hard to guess. I don’t really know what a typical Finn looks like, but he could fit the picture. He might as well be German. When we greet it seems like he is considering, at least for a moment, which language is the most appropriate. We agree on German and on a small table, in the middle of the fair, right at the stand of calendar publishers.
Stefan Moster, born in 1964, is from Mainz (South-West Germany), has been living in Finland for over 10 years and is probably one of the most sought-after Finnish translators on the German market. Our Guest of Honour Finland is planning on releasing one hundred German translations and new editions until October. Many will pass through Mosters desk, situated in Espoo, Finland. He is the exactly the right person to ask about the Finnish language.
Mr. Moster, if the Finnish language were a house, what would it look like?
Moster: It would look like a public building in the 70s. At first you’re irritated by the timber struts, the strange proportions and the many adjoining rooms. It is almost like a labyrinth. But as soon as you get used to it, it’s easy to find your way around. It would look like our libraries and just like those it would always be in a very central spot in the community or town. In Finnland, libraries are more like centres, places where people come together – not only to read but to play Playstation for example. These public buildings generally have the best location in town. That’s how important they are. Just like the language itself.
The type face with its many letters and dots looks like ants doing a tarantella dance.
Moster: True, but there is a system behind it. It is just a different arrangement than what we (Germans) are used to. There is the issue of strangeness that plays a huge rule: Finnish is not an Indo-European language but an “agglutinating” language*. It is not easy to recognize the noun and the case because the marking happens through affixes. There is no gender for example. Which means the words “he” or “she” simply do not exist. Here an example:
TALO = Haus
TALOSSA = In the house
TALOSSANI = In my house
Furthermore, it is a very vowel rich language with many doublings. This makes the type face so black and rich.
Will you tell us your favourite vowel rich Finnish word?
That would be KAAMOS. It means „winter darkness” and I like the sound and the fact that it is a very Finnish phenomenon, this winter darkness.
Is that the most appealing about Finland? Or what do you like most about your adopted home country?
On the contrary: The most beautiful thing about Finland are the lake areas on a bright, windless summer day.
Thank you for the interview.
Questions by Raphaela Sabel
*Agglutinative language (source wikipedia): An agglutinative language (derived from the Latin verb agglutinare, which means “to glue together”) is a type of synthetic language. The term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836. In agglutinative languages, each affix is a bound morpheme for one unit of meaning (such as “diminutive”, “past tense”, “plural”, etc.), instead of morphological modifications with internal changes of the root of the word, or changes in stress or tone. In an agglutinative language stems do not change, affixes do not fuse with other affixes, and affixes do not change form conditioned by other affixes. Non-agglutinative synthetic languages are fusional languages; morphologically, they combine affixes by “squeezing” them together, drastically changing them in the process, and joining several meanings in a single affix.
** Selection of current titles translated or written by Stefan Moster:
