My TV-show inspired reread of Outlander confirmed few things I thought I remembered about this book. Namely, that I liked it, but also found it almost silly at times. An enjoyable read, but not a great one.
The good: inventive take on time-travel. Great female character in Claire. Historical milieus well realized and intriguing. Jamie. The cheerful abandon with which Gabaldon treats genre conventions. Is it science fiction? Is is romance? Is it supernatural romance? Historical fiction? Who knows? Who cares? It’s all that and more.
The bad: the Finnish translation is not great, and it makes Jamie come off as a bit of a simpleton. Furthermore, Finnish might just not be the language for epic love. My cynical side can’t let it go when the declarations of love are told in the same language I use to talk about cleaning the toilet. I need the distance of hearing them in a (to me) foreign language to be able to take them seriously.
The ugly: over-reliance on shock value and melodrama. Gabaldon just loves cranking things up to eleven, even when just making ten louder would be more effective.
The verdict: for all its faults (pacing issue, the at times redundant and clunky voice-over) the adaptation has so far been better than the book. Blasphemy, I know, but what can you do?
Maybe that’s why I have yet to have an epic romance. I really only speak one language other than English, and that language is Sarcasm. Grand statements of love sound stupid in Sarcasm, and I definitely discuss toilet cleaning in English.
“I will, like totally love you trough all time, in this world and the next, or whatever.”
You are my sun, moon, and stars. Really. I am transported.
Is that English or Sarcasm? They sound so remarkably similar sometimes. Although if I’m telling you to clean the toilet, then I’m always serious, no matter what the language.
It’s all in the delivery, which is what makes it so unsuitable for epic love.
I was totally serious.
I hadn’t realised that you were Finnish, Berry. I suspect I would feel the same way if I were to read Outlander in Norwegian. I only really read books in translation now if they are translated from languages I can’t read myself, such as Spanish or Russian. I do occasionally amuse myself with paging through translated versions in bookstores or the library just to see if they’ve captured the tone of the original. Sadly, they often don’t.
I actually read a lot of books in translation, partly because they’re more readily available to me that way (our library has a lot of books in English, but not everything I want to read, and I have to severely restrict the books I buy), partly because I enjoy the idea of translating something. Plus I have this rule that if it wasn’t originally written in English, I’m not allowed to read it in English, because I want to read as many things as possible in my own language. I run into trouble with that rule when it comes to some classics though, where a Finnish translation either doesn’t exist, or it’s so dated it’s practically unreadable. And of course, bad translations exist. Like here, the way the Scots speak in translations is… not good.
Also, hello neighbor! My husband worked two summers in a hotel in Norway, and we’ve visited the country twice together, in Kirkenäs, Vadsö, Narvik and Vesterålen. It’s beautiful.