Profiles

A few words about interpreters and other matters.

If one had asked a couple of years ago which province was best represented in our military interpreter organization, the correct answer would paradoxically have been Ingermanland. Now the reader probably wonders: How can this be possible? Or if he is of the more ignorant type: Where the devil is Ingermanland?

Let us start with the answer to the latter question. Ingermanland is the historical name of the ancient homeland of Finno-Ugric tribes, stretching on both sides of Leningrad, from the Karelian Isthmus in the north to the middle course of the Luga River in the south, from Narva in the west to the southern tip of Lake Ladoga in the east. It was once the land of the Izhorians, but a massive influx of primarily Karelians made it a Finnish-speaking area. It remained so in essence until the October Revolution, despite pressure from Russian-speaking Petersburg, whose janitors, by the way, at the turn of the last century were largely Finnish-speaking. Over the Ingrian countryside spread a network of more or less prosperous villages, some with genuine Finnish names like Valkeasaari, Puttila, Kukkola, Kullankylä and Järvisaari, others Slavic-sounding like Koprina, Volosova, Toksova, Spankova and Begunitsa, a telling testimony to the region's character as a meeting place for two nations. And the remarkable thing is that a long list of these villages have contributed not just one but several entries to our interpreter association's membership roll. Yes, I would dare to say that it would be difficult to imagine our interpreter organization without these sons of Ingermanland.

How they ended up with us is a dramatic story, best heard from their own mouths. It is the story of the 1930s persecutions in connection with the collectivization of agriculture, when one-fifth of the Ingrian population, numbering just over 200,000, was deported to the White Sea region, Siberia and Turkestan. It is the story of the Second World War's German occupation, when the front line outside besieged Leningrad ran straight through Ingrian villages. It is the story of Ingrians fighting in the Finnish army on some of the most exposed sectors of the front. It is the story of an almost always dramatic and sometimes miraculous escape to Sweden from the threatened extradition to the old homeland, which sternly demanded its lost sons back. And it is, last but not least, the story of a precarious adjustment to the new homeland and a return to normal life. To manage all this and still have the strength to actively engage in a new and for most unfamiliar task, that of the military interpreter, speaks eloquently enough of the Ingrians' vitality and sisu.

It is indeed such a remarkable story that I believe it should be a matter of honor for the Defense Forces and the Interpreter Association to record it based on eyewitness accounts. I also believe the right time for such a work is now, as our Ingrian comrades are beginning to leave our ranks and the subject has lost most of its political charge. More than one episode in such a narrative would shine with a brilliance that no textbook possesses.

What could better illustrate the senseless brutality of the deportations than Albert Kronberg's story of how he as a young boy was deported to the apatite mines on the Kola Peninsula. They arrived there in winter cold. There were hardly any barracks completed, only a board with the name Apatity suggested that this was a settlement. Gradually, of course, a settlement grew up, but the price paid is best seen in the gigantic children's cemetery on the outskirts of the settlement. Albert himself saved himself from there to Ukraine and life. But most remained. And what war history account can better illustrate doomsday at Tali during the Soviet Army's decisive offensive on the Karelian Isthmus than Antti Nordberg's description of how he was buried in a gravel pit during the massive air attack, when planes flew so densely that the sun only had a chance to flash through between attack waves, and how he then, crawling and wounded, made his way back to the Finnish lines.

But let us not, for our Ingrians' remarkable life stories and great merits, forget that among the ranks of the old interpreters there are also other large groups with an almost equally dramatic background and equally great willingness to make a contribution. The most colorful of them are probably the older generation of exiles from Russia, who for natural reasons gladly took on the role of guardians of the great seal of the Russian language and knights of pure Russian par preference, which did not prevent them, or rather stimulated them, from occasionally getting into each other's hair over more intricate linguistic issues. Above all, we remember them as a series of colorful and sometimes somewhat unruly personalities.

How many of us do not fondly and gratefully remember the now retired "Cossack" Boris Palasoff's dynamic acting as a captured general or colonel or even, albeit under disapproving murmurs, lieutenant colonel. If you will, one can see something symbolic even in this. In contrast to our Ingrians, who have their roots in a peasant environment, a strikingly large number of our older exiles from Russia are at home in high-status environments and come from tsarist Russian officer and civil servant families. This more aristocratic branch of the interpreter stem has probably never been particularly strong. But it is still a pity that it soon seems to wither completely despite such a young and above all sap-rich shoot as Alex Potocki.

One by one, the old "Russia Swedes" also disappear from the picture, sons of Swedish businessmen and engineers who had based their activities in Tsarist Russia. Some of them were in temperament and lifestyle almost more Russian than the Russians themselves. Some may still remember Rurik Thermaenius' virtuoso displays in matershchina (the art of swearing). As a young boy, he had learned in Baku's back alleys all the common "round" words in Russian and then some. And of all round words, as is well known, Russian's are the roundest. It was festive as a linguistic performance, but it certainly got rather sparse on military terms in that fresh flow from the gutter.

Also dying out is the Baltic exile generation, even though Hans Kimberg's imitative art is still "like green youth". But happily, there is a not inconsiderable regrowth of young Estonians and Latvians among the interpreter school cohorts. One of them, Andres Küng, has even had the courage to actively take up the fight against the ruling and the writing Sweden's frightening indifference to the fate of the Baltic peoples.

Also the older generation of our Poles, led by their gentle and learned nestor Josef Trypucko, is on its way out of the organization. But here too, the Interpreter School provides a gratifying new recruitment. And this year, for the first time, a Polish military interpreter exercise was held in Ånn, a remarkable event in the history of our interpreter service and a telling testimony that we are still engaged in Poland's affairs despite the cautionary words in Fredman's Epistles.

The gaps are also growing ever larger in the ranks of language-interested Swedish academics who were once involved in building up the new organization. Out of active interpreter service are the learned giant Björn Collinder and with him a number of kindred spirits, who saw in the interpreter role a welcome opportunity to give vent to their linguistic passions even in uniform.

Who then will take over the inheritance? Well, the answer to that question was given by the defense leadership as early as 1957, when the Army's Interpreter School was founded and began its activities. A few years later, the first "young interpreters" appeared on voluntary courses, followed by mistrustful and, it cannot be denied, often somewhat disdainful looks from the old guard. Part of the criticism was probably more emotional than rational, as when it was claimed that these new ones would never be able to learn to empty the vodka glass in competition with Ivan, that they probably knew the parts of the sentence well, but could not tell the difference between khuj and pizda, other important insights to keep silent about. In fact, the Interpreter School students experienced their real examination in those first meetings on the "battlefield" between titanic actors of the type Palasoff or scarred front veterans like Antti Nordberg on the one side and half-terrified interpreter school students as interrogators on the other. When all the word fireworks had died down and all the verbal battles had fallen silent and it was time to report results, it turned out that the greenhorns had nevertheless managed to obtain a reasonably sensible picture despite linguistic shortcomings and a demeanor anything but authoritative. Only a few years later they were generally accepted, and today very responsible tasks are placed on their shoulders without any of the old ones protesting.

That is not to say that the "interpreter school Russians" are without fault or defect. That it is possible to learn even a relatively difficult language like Russian within the framework of a year of military service I consider to be fully evidenced. But it is equally obvious that this forced learning process cannot provide the same natural feel for the language that a longer stay in the foreign language environment with constant use of the language for practical purposes can. For someone who has learned the language purely intellectually, the god of embarrassment is always lurking.

It would be easy to illustrate this with a long series of more or less tragic examples. Let me confine myself to one more than usually drastic one! The interrogator, in this case the officer himself, asks if they have received any reinforcements. The interpreter unthinkingly translates:

"Have you received any fresh corpses (svezhie trupy)?" "

The prisoner, who is a joker, gratefully accepts his necrophilic role and replies:

"No, we have old corpses for another two weeks.

The interpreter: "No, they have old troops for another two weeks.".

The interrogator: "How are they deployed?"

The interpreter translates correctly and the prisoner replies: "They are buried in three rows in the fields on both sides of the road."

The interpreter: "They have dug themselves in in three defensive lines in the fields by the road." "

The interrogator: "That was interesting. We must immediately put that on the map."" Whereupon he and the interpreter began to plot a buried enemy, while a pleased smile spread across the malicious prisoner's face.

Otherwise, military terminology is naturally the interpreter school students' main trump card, not least against their sparring partners the old interpreters, who now and then take refuge in old honorable expressions from anno dazumal. I can therefore understand and sympathize with the poor young interpreter who, after a literature history exam at the Slavic department in Uppsala, had to endure much scorn for having translated Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment with "Nastuplenie i prikazanije" instead of "Prestuplenije i nakazanie". It may be that he was not a great Dostoevsky interpreter. But his endeavor to give tactical thinking access even to the highest peaks of Parnassus must earn a full approval from an old military terminology pedagogue.

One can think what one wants about our young interpreters, but it is obvious that it falls to them to carry the interpreter activity forward. It is a dramatic generational shift, because in many cases it means that interpreters born in distant lands, often with deficient school education, but in return knowledge based on firsthand observation and long combat experience, are replaced by Swedish academics. That this will entail great changes is inevitable. The most devastating will probably affect the social life at our training camps, which will lose many of their most colorful elements. The Swedish welfare state for all its glory, but it will hardly be able to produce a Palasoff or Korpelainen. Never again will song ring out as full-throated over the rocks by the western sea as when it rose from Ingrian throats as something of a tribute to the home village far in the east. Circus Källviken with all its attractions and exotic creatures will soon be a thing of the past. We must content ourselves with showing our own "grim Elling" to a wondering world, but the interpreters will nevertheless remain and, above all, the grammar will endure, despite all brave attempts by interpreters and the National Board of Education to demolish it.

Sigge Lindqvist

With Words as Weapons. Excerpt from the Armed Forces' "Interpreter School for Forty Years 1957–1997"