Yakub Lapatka 2015

Yakub Lapatka (b. 1944) is a Belarusian translator, who has translated several Finnish pieces of literature, for example, Sinuhe egyptiläinen (Sinuhe the Egyptian). Lapatka has worked as a teacher of the Belarusian language at the University of Helsinki. Nowadays he lives in Finland.

When Yakub Lapatka was a child, his mother and his stepfather lived in White Karelia. However, Yakub lived with his grandparents in Belarus, but he visited his parents and siblings in Karelia. As a result of this he also learned the Karelian language, although he later almost totally forgot it.

In the 1980’s, people in Belarus started to use the Belarusian language again and the state-owned publishing company for fiction began, in support of this, to translate foreign literature into Belarusian. Yakub Lapatka had graduated from the department of foreign languages at the university in Minsk with a degree in Spanish, but because of his childhood background people came to think of him when a need for a translator of Finnish literature arose.

‘Thus, I became interested in the Finnish language”, says Lapatka. “It was not easy, but despite many hardships, I managed to find a textbook in Finnish and I started to work. I fought with it for two years and, finally, I was the one who won, and not the academic text book that I used. For some reason it was sold as a self-study guide.”

 

Kalevala is the translator’s Hamlet

In the same way as many actors wish that they, at some point, would have the chance to play Hamlet or some other big classic role in a play, translators also have their own big dreams, says Lapatka. His dream was to translate the Kalevala.

“I proceeded towards it during many years. When I was pondering the work with translating it, I had the chance to compare it to other European epic tales: the Song of Roland, the Beowulf and the Song of the Nibelungs. I immediately noticed the differences between them. I have to make the following remark of the purpose and birthplaces of the European epics. They were created and performed in the castles of the knights, the palaces of the aristocrats and in the estates of noble families. The folk poems in the Kalevala were sung in rural homes, in other words, in the houses of ordinary people. The difference between the heroes in the epics is also noticeable. In the aforementioned there are emperors, noble aristocrats and knights. The heroes in the Kalevala are part of the peasants from the distant lands in the north.

In Yakub Lapatka’s opinion, the heroes of the knight epics were more or less one-dimensional: either good or bad. Lapatka compares this lack of nuances to social realism.

“Some of the individuals were unconditionally positive, others were equally unconditionally negative. There was some diffuse character in the middle between these. It had to become either completely positive or negative. … The European epics that I mentioned seem to be related to this. The heroes in the Kalevala, on the other hand, feel like living human beings. They have substance and edge. They are wise but at the same time the things they do are far from being wise. They are virtuous, but also behave contradictory. In other words, they are human beings with all virtues and vices. They are alive and warm.”

“Not there, Lemminkäinen!”

Yakub Lapatka sees the heroism in the Kalevala as an everyday heroism and he has fallen in love with the complex characters who have good and bad traits, weaknesses and strengths. Väinämöinen is wise, but at times he lacks common sense. Lemminkäinen is handsome and happy, but his personality is so fierce that he gets into trouble. Ilmarinen is a master blacksmith but he is not a good fighter.

According to Lapatka, a translator has to feel, at least, compassion towards the characters in the book that he or she translates in order to make the characters comprehensible for the readers.

“However, everything has its limits. I have translated, for example , Don Quixote, this book of the century, but I did not finish more than 12 chapters. And just because I grew tired of worrying about the doings of the unlucky hidalgo, I was tired of feeling sorry for him. I experienced similar emotions when I translated the Kalevala. Sometimes I wanted to warn Väinämöinen: “Please, do not get involved with that girl! Nothing good comes from this!” I felt the same way with Lemminkäinen: “Poor boy, do not get involved in that!” And still, they got life in them, both ordinary and comprehensible.”

When Lapatka, as a translator, began to understand the world of the Kalevala and the people who live in it, they started to speak Belarusian.

 

 

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Yakub Lapatka: “Everyday heroism.” A lecture at the Belarusian State University in 10 Dec 2015.