The Unlikely Harmony Between Finnish and Scots: An Evening with Donald Adamson

Poet and translator Donald Adamson held a guest lecture on writing and translating in Scots. Afterward, MA students from a poetry course in the English Studies sat with him to discuss his creative process, common themes for Finnish and Scots poets and the role of AI.

Donald Adamson is a translator and poet mostly working between Scots and Finnish, though he sometimes lets English serve as a bridge for those who do not understand either of these. Adamson, however, is adamant that Scots, his first language, suits him much better, and that can be seen in the way he reads the poems during the lecture —with full understanding and straight from the heart.

Two months into our Contemporary American Poetry course, Adamson’s guest lecture was a unique chance to look at poetry as a discipline that’s alive beyond the classroom, and to touch on themes and languages that exist outside the usual canon. Afterward, we had the opportunity to sit with the poet and translator and further discuss his approach to the writing and translating processes.

The “Northern spirit” of Finnish and Scots

The nature of Scots is quite hard to pinpoint. In the beginning of the lecture, Adamson poses a question: is Scots, like some say, a dialect or even slang? He rejects the word “dialect” for its connotations of inferiority. This dispute causes a lot of bitterness, the poet explains, but what cannot be taken away is its recognised status as a minority language. 

Scots is currently spoken in Scotland and in some parts of Ireland. Even though both Scots and English descend from Middle English, they differ from one another in significant ways and sometimes are not mutually understandable. Monosyllables are predominant in Scots, whereas in English diphthongs abound —for Adamson, Scots has “a richer spectrum of sounds”. When asked, he reveals that his poetry comes to him in Scots most naturally. With a twinkle of amusement in his eyes, he even claims that he rarely finds poetry to work better in English. 

When it comes to translation, Finnish and Scots might seem like an unusual pair, but Adamson finds cultural similarities in the “Northern spirit” of the poetry written in the two languages. The Scottish mountains, hills and seas of “home”, like Adamson puts it, parallel perfectly the bittersweet nostalgia of the Finnish landscape of lakes and never-ending forests. Mentioned very briefly by Adamson, yet a remark that bears much truth, is that both cultures place great importance on class aspects – on the working class of the city and on the small farmers, travelling around for work. Another defining similarity is the national sense of melancholy. And that doubtlessly translates well within words of poetry, especially between Scots and Finnish. 

Inspiration from familiar topics

“The world is not in a very good place,” sighs Adamson when asked about his sources of inspiration. Although normally he gets it from what is around him and what he reads, the recent political and social landscape has been uninspiring, something we understand very well. Still, he seems enthusiastic when talking about his creative process. One important tool for Adamson’s work are dictionaries. Quoting a past controversy about “whether one should or can use dictionaries” when writing poetry, he finds that looking up one word often suggests another, leading him in a journey of linguistic chance that requires time and leaving behind preconceived ideas.

On the subject of time, Adamson says it “is great for getting new ideas or revisioning what you’re doing.” Upon hearing some of us enjoy writing as well, he suggests scribbling ideas on notes, sticking them to the fridge and leaving them overnight. With a laugh, he remarks that when reading his own notes in the morning, he often finds he has had a better idea.

AI translation: “It doesn’t have feeling”

Adamson mentions machine translation in his lecture, and as students, we find his perspective as a professional writer is of particular interest for the discussion on AI’s creative potential. He expresses his surprise at the quality of machine translations from Finnish, something he hadn’t expected to advance so quickly. Still, he doesn’t seem worried about losing his job, something that concerns many humanities students. For Adamson, it’s just a tool: “[AI] doesn’t give you poetry, but it gives you meaning rather well.” He offers an example of how he has used it: to simplify remarkably difficult translations, like Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu).

Translating poetry is a creative endeavour

Translating a poem could be seen as writing a completely new one because of the creativity involved in finding metaphors and images that work in the target language. There is, as Adamson says, “a lot of anger” in discussions of translation. He understands how some believe translators should “stick to what’s there” and leave creativity out of the process, but he doesn’t share that belief. In poetry especially, considerations of beauty and musicality require a certain degree of creativity.

Translating metaphors seems particularly demanding in this sense. Adamson admits to not being very keen on this literary device, something he attributes to his linguistic preferences. The poetics of English, he explains, are much more focused on metaphor than Scots’. Personal preferences aside, what drives Adamson’s translations is Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s principle: “a good poem shall not become a bad one.” 

Final thoughts: solidarity carried within texts

From the start of the lecture, Adamson’s enthusiasm towards the differing meanings of national spirits, cultural traditions and images, all of which languages hold, has been a prominent and carrying idea. His unique perspective into translating and writing poetry resides in the languages he is most familiar with, and in the spaces between those languages. The similarities and differences in grammar, sounds, and metaphors hold great value even when “just” reciting a work of poetry, but they are also the space for creative thinking and composing.

Adamson admits that he doesn’t know how much interest the young generation has in Scots, but he assures us that plenty of people use “different regional varieties of Scots, for different situations”. As we say our goodbyes, we are left with a curiosity to discover other writers that work with this language. His words expand on topics we have touched on during our studies, and they have given us something to ponder beyond the linguistic alchemy involved in translation: the solidarity that can grow between two peoples with vastly different languages and histories. Empathy, it seems, lies at the core of both translation and poetry.