How We Are Translated

by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE

People say ‘I’m sorry’ all the time when it can mean both ‘I’m sorry I hurt you’ and ‘I’m sorry someone else did something I have nothing to do with’. It’s like the English language gave up on trying to find a word for sympathy which wasn’t also the word for guilt.

Swedish immigrant Kristin won’t talk about the Project growing inside her. Her Brazilian-born Scottish boyfriend Ciaran won’t speak English at all; he is trying to immerse himself in a Swedish språkbad language bath, to prepare for their future, whatever the fick that means. Their Edinburgh flat is starting to feel very small.

As this young couple is forced to confront the thing that they are both avoiding, they must reckon with the bigger questions of the world outside, and their places in it.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Scotland, Scandinavian Literature

173 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 2, 2021

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now longlisted for the 2021 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction

This debut novel is written by a Bookseller at one of the UK’s leading independent bookshops (Mr B’s Emporium https://mrbsemporium.com/– the type of shop I wish existed in Surrey – a home of opinionated and passionate bookselling) who is also a climate change/ecological activist (and one of the leading figures of the now-dissolved Birth Strike movement - https://www.theguardian.com/commentis..., https://qz.com/1590642/these-millenni...).

Further the author grew up with two first languages (Spanish and Swedish) and writes in a third – English and I think has spent time in South America before a Literature degree in Gothenburg and a MSc in Edinburgh.

The book is set in Edinburgh and features a young couple – Kristin and Ciaran and is predominantly written in the first person by Kristin but addressed to Cairan.

Kristin is a Swedish immigrant. She works at a immersive historical exhibition at a fictional Museum of (Scottish) Immigration in Edinburgh Castle – in which different people groups play the roles of their original forbears (for example a group of Lithuanian miners and Italian restauranters). Kristin and some fellow Scandinavians play Vikings – Kristin plays a character Solveig (and at one stage in the book the narrative briefly changes to a third party viewpoint of Solveig voiced by Kristin).

“We are examples. Joanne Tarbuck says, here to symbolise one of the many Peoples who made Scotland what it is, and to celebrate its rich cultural multiplicity”

The quirk of the exhibit is that the employees are required to speak only in their native language and pretend not to understand any questions from tourists in English – they are even meant to spend 20 minutes before starting work in isolation in a personal Translation Room (often say a small office or even a toilet cubicle) to leave their English speaking behind and mentally revert to their native language. This is course picks up on ideas of language barriers, and assimilation or language ghettos.

Ciaran was born into a Brazilian orphanage but adopted from there in Scotland as a child. He is a care worker doing home visits to the elderly – but also a passionate activist for climate change (and related causes) and with a hobby as a preserver of animals.

The situation of the book is that Ciaran suddenly decides to learn Swedish in reaction to the news that Kristin is in the early stages of pregnancy – and throws himself at it in a fully immersive way (watching and listening to Swedish radio and television, seeking Bergman films, putting post it notes on household objects) – and this immediately introduces tension in the relationship as Kristin, seeing Swedish speaking as her job, wants to only speak English at home which takes away a key part of the immersive experience for Ciaran.

Cairan’s enthusiasm for Swedish – and the mapping of his interest in the preservation of animals and his views on the extinction rebellion, to the preservation of language ….

A question for you: in the great range of Great danger, how high do you think an endangered language ranks, especially if it’s not really endangered, only its ego.

… leaves him, ostensibly a left wing activist, naively (and to Kristin’s disgust) voicing the views of (what she realises are extreme right-wing) Swedish groups on the preservation of Swedish from American/English influences. And to watch documentaries “about the fifteenth century, when Sweden was a European super-power” – again ironical from someone you know (without being told) would be much more attuned to misplaced nostalgia for British imperialism.

Ciaran’s studies though does cause Kristin to reflect on the quirks of English (with a particular emphasis on expressions she finds misleading – for example being sick which she sees as expelling sickness) and to reexamine her native Swedish (with a particular emphasis here on the etymology of compound words – as with all native speakers the make-up of these is far less obvious than it is to non native speakers).

The text often features Swedish and English side by side as Kristin puts the languages and her own response to them alongside each other – interestingly sometimes words are missed from the translation – particularly towards the end. Those I Googled seemed mainly about mothers and children (which I think draws on the ambiguity of both Kristin and Cairan to parenthood – the latter voices some of the ideas behind the author’s Birth Strike) although I suspect other omissions pick up different themes.

At work tension exists between the different people groups – competing for example over the popularity of their exhibits and who gets to lead the annual parade through the festival. Kristin proposes that her character becomes pregnant which leads to her manager buying a convincing “fat suit” and some of the other groups stealing the idea albeit with knock-off versions of the suit – and again the ideas of parenthood and conflict over it come out as well as the ideas of cultural identity and rivalry.

So as I hope the introduction shows this is a book that brings a myriad of admirable opinions and influences to bear on its writing. And I hope also how my review gives some ideas on how these map to this unusual book and how the novel explores issues such as language, communication and cultural identity.

Conceptually then the book is excellent – but I felt the execution was lacking. I simply did not enjoy reading the book anywhere near as much as reviewing it (as an aside that also went for half the Booker shortlist this year).

The issue for me here is that the ideas simply did not coalesce into what I found a convincing or coherent form – I felt like the novel was always slipping away from me. Further Cairan feels an undeveloped character (particularly his heritage) while the interactive exhibit which comes to dominate the book felt to often somewhere between far-fetched and farcical.

Nevertheless a fascinating if flawed debut novel from what I think will turn out to be a very interesting author.

My thanks to Scribe UK for an ARC via NetGalley

[Roman Clodia · Rating 2 out of 5]

No, sorry, this just didn't work for me at all, I'm afraid. The writing is rambling and chatty, the day headings make it sound like a diary but it's not really. This feels incomplete, striving to say something about language, understanding and misunderstanding, the bridges and spaces between people even when they love each other - but it's all fluff, lacking precision and substance. I get a sense of a voice circling around but unable to pin down what it wants to say. *Great* cover design, though.

ARC via NetGalley

[Violet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did in the end. I loved the premise, loved the writing, loved the idea. I liked how Kristin, a young Swedish woman in Scotland, observes so many minute details about her life; how she works in Edinburgh castle as a reenactor, playing a Viking woman, Solveig. I loved her boyfriend Ciaran who throws himself into any new project completely and decides to learnSwedish, refusing to speak any English - I loved, loved, loved the writing of the book, with so many Swedish sentences and words thrown on the page, with comments about how things are translated differently, how you think differently in a different language. The secondary characters deserve a mention too - they were good. But ultimately I found the plot... lacking. There was very little going on (apart from the Project - no spoiler here - but that seemed more like a pretext to make something happen), and I found myself getting a bit bored. It's not often I end up preferring the tone of the book rather than the plot, but although I loved the idea, I ended up wishing it would end faster than it did.

Free copy from Netgalley.

[Fern A · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that is hard to review and rate because there is nothing else quite like it to compare it too. One of the most bizarrely quirky books I’ve read in a long time. I think it’s a bit like marmite, you’re either going to hate it or find you just can’t put it down. It definitely drew me in.

The book takes place inside the mind of a Swedish woman living in Edinburgh. It is hard to tell how much of a reliable narrator she is as there are quite a lot of contradictions. She has a job in which she must translate but also pretend to not understand English, her partner decides to put in himself on a personal intensive Swedish learning week shut inside his own home and collects animals in jars and she may or may not be pregnant. While there is not much of a plot- there is quite a lot of intrigue and I enjoyed some of the use of language and the idea that there are things that are cultural specific and just don’t translate or might translate as something else.

This is really a book of themes. Themes of belonging, connectedness, language and the things that unite or divide us, making the reader question how arbitrary these are? Can they be overcome or not? Are we separated entirely by being completely in our own heads and individual consciousness? Can we ever truly understand each other and what is it really that prevents barriers to this?

Not sure how much I liked this book but I did thoroughly enjoy the experience of reading it and found myself repeatedly drawn to pick it up and read on. Very interested to hear peoples reactions to this one and any further work by the author.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Ionarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this, but I don't think everyone will.

It's really a book about choices, and journeys, and the fluidity of separation and communality and... a whole lot of other wanky things that are still very human. It is a pretty literary book, which is very much my style, but I know other people will find slow and possibly a little navel-gazey. I really liked the translations, the playfulness with language and the comparisons between English and Swedish; it made the book interesting, different, but also very approachable. I also liked the dry humour scattered throughout, although if you don't have the slightly reserved, off-beat sense of humour it fits, then you aren't going to find this funny.

It isn't my favourite example of this style of writing, although it's very much a book you enjoy because of the writing as opposed to being character or plot driven. I also think I enjoyed it a lot because I personally found a lot in it to relate to - the setting in Edinburgh, the feeling of being a transplant, of not connecting with family, the confusion over choices, the way emotional reactions are portrayed and worked through, the politics and even rough age of the protagonists. It meant I kept going when I wasn't sure how much I was enjoying the book, and it did take me a solid 50+ pages to really get in to it. However I'm glad I did keep going and I'm glad I read it. I think this will continue to be a slow burn now I've finished it, and I expect it will be floating around in my mind for while. I might even re-read it. I would recommend it but if be very careful who I recommended it to.

3.5 stars, but rounded up because I like that it's a bit different.

[SueLucie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get into the swing of this book and I almost abandoned it, but about a quarter of the way through (certainly when we see Kristin/Solveig at work in The Castle) it began to come alive for me. I enjoyed her interaction with her colleagues and the whole concept of ‘living history’ using exclusively native languages kept me turning the pages - her relationship with her Brazilian/Scottish partner not so much. I kept hoping there would be some more meaningful insights into the immigrant experience but was disappointed there. A confusing read, particularly in the dialogue, and if nothing else I’ve taken away some interesting ideas about the Swedish language and how it does and doesn’t always easily translate into English.

With thanks to Scribe UK via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC. My thoughts follow soon.

[Marie (UK) · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is very little of this book of which I am certain - here is what i do know
1. It is set in Edinburgh
2. The MC has a job in a museum which celebrates Scotland's immigrants. For her job she has to speak her native language (Swedish) at all times
3. Her boyfriend who is a male nurse has decided to learn her language by immersing himself in it during a 5 day period off work.
4. She is pregnant - she thinks she wants to go ahead with the pregnancy - he is Certain that he doesn't
5. There is unwarranted and un useful use of Swedish within the text - it serves no purpose and is simply annoying.

Nothing else in the book makes any sense at all, it has minimal narrative, absolutely no flow and there is no reasoning that I can think of that would merit it's publication.

[Dibz]

DNF at 63%

A short book written in an interesting, experimental style. The narrator Kristen is a Swedish immigrant living in Edinburgh with her boyfriend, a Brazilian man who was adopted as a child and raised in Scotland. The narrative begins with her boyfriends seemingly random, intense desire to learn Swedish.

The author explores communication in all its forms and how at times people can be receptive to what we communicate, and at other times it can be ‘lost in translation’. Communication from the way sheets in bed are ruffled, to the way we understand a foreign language are all written about. As other reviewers have written about, the author packs in a lot of subjects into this short book - about the climate crisis, immigration, motherhood, nationalism and probably some other stuff too.

I did feel this book was a bit too ‘literary’ for me. The fragmented writing and the sudden shifts in setting ( from her home to her work) was ruining the flow of reading. This is a plotless book with ( in my opinion) very flat characters that remain detached from the reader, which means all I was left with was the ideas and opinions the writer was trying to communicate - which admittedly I didn’t find that interesting.

‘How we are Translated’ has been long listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize. If you’re interested in reading something a little bit different and quirky in style you might enjoy this a lot more than I did.

[noemi]

i can’t bear to finish this. it’s just so boring. other than some clever remarks/reflections about language and translation, it’s just utterly boring.

[Spadge Nunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this book is absolutely bloomin lovely! The writing style is my absolute favourite. It’s the tiny details and fascinating observations. So many quirks! Oh, the quirks. I’ve genuinely never loved characters more than this couple. (Even the acknowledgment page is lovely, that’s how far I wanted to keep reading!)

It’s written from the perspective of 24-year-old Kristin, a Swedish immigrant living with her Black boyfriend, Ciaran, in Edinburgh. It’s written almost as her diary to him. She writes “you said” and “you were” when talking about him, and she dissects the languages of both English and Swedish throughout. This somehow highlights their differences, struggles and harmonies perfectly, as they try to navigate through their thoughts and feelings to each other.

When we meet them they are 4 years into their relationship and they’re so different yet so in love. It’s beautiful the way Kristin studies Ciaran’s actions and his body, you can feel the love seeping from the pages, even when she’s talking about his knobbly knees. It’s the way she hopes she’ll see his beard turn grey one day and that his creaky sinuses are nothing serious. They drive each other nuts, they overthink constantly, and I love them so, so much.

Picking a single favourite quote is impossible here. For the first time ever I’m doing 3:

“At about eleven pm I set about looking up all the old school friends I could find online to check if any of them had died or become neo-Nazis. You were getting ready for bed.”

“The end of July has always been my least favourite time of year anyway, because it sits in the throat of summer and refuses to be swallowed.”

“It’s a shame we don’t write emails to each other anymore. I liked re-reading the best things you say. I’m up for being a grown up with you, you wrote once. As if I’d asked you to give ficking pottery a go.”

Please let there be a second book coming. I need more of this!

How We Are Translated is out on the 2nd February 2021, thank you so much to Scribe UK for the arc!

[Kimberly Ouwerkerk · Rating 2 out of 5]

How We Are Translated is an intriguing title – especially to those interested in languages – and it makes you consider the narrator’s actions in a certain way throughout the book. A well-chosen title that says something about how the main character perceives her boyfriend’s obsession with learning Swedish, but also about how she feels stuck in – but can’t escape – her work life.

Kristin feels like a different person depending on the language she speaks and the language that is spoken to her. When she is Solveig, the character she impersonates at work, the visitors of the living history exhibit take her words and actions in a certain way and translate her in a way she is not. The same thing happens at home with her boyfriend, though in this case, it is obvious that they mistranslate each other.

When a question comes up in either her work life or private life, the situation is mirrored in the other. Both Kristin and her boyfriend are stuck between worlds, trying to find out who they are alone and together, but also who they should be in the future. The perfect translation is still a long way off.

What I appreciate about How We Are Translated is how their struggles are subtly shown in the way Kristin describes her days. It is in the soft and loving thoughts she has about her boyfriend, but also in the small gestures that they both make. Jessica Gaitán Johannesson wrote a multi-dimensional character that is struggling with her identity. Who is she? Who will she be in the future?

Unfortunately, I have to continue this review by saying that I didn’t enjoy reading this book. This is mostly because of the way the story is told. The unpredictable narrative is refreshing at first, but gets tiresome after a while when you’re looking for something ‘whole’. When you can finally pinpoint what a certain paragraph is about, it switches to the next topic before you know the outcome or the next steps of the previous topic.

The narrative felt too shattered to me. Kristin addresses her boyfriend and not me, the reader. Perhaps if her boyfriend had read this book, they would have understood each other better. For me, there is no point in following her thoughts. A shorter glimpse would have been enough.

I feel neutral about the frequent use of Swedish words and sentences (all with English translations) in the book. I learned some Swedish, which is fun, but because of its frequency, I expected a stronger impact on the story. After a while I started to share Kristin’s sentiments about Swedish: “I do adore Swedish sometimes (as long as it stays where it is).” I do hope this was not the intended impact.

I finished the book with my thoughts as shattered as Kristin’s, and a strong hope for her to find a way to say hello to the future, especially if it happens today.

Many thanks to Scribe UK and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

[Sarah Eli]

I really wanted to get it, but I did not get it

[Priya · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had known going into the book how difficult it would be to get through it, I would never have picked it up. Which of course would have been a terrible thing and I'm glad it didn't happen. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I really liked it. Which is also what the book does - say things in a roundabout way I mean. I'm not going to be recommending this book to anyone anytime soon. But here are a few of many, many quotes I dog-eared and book-marked.

~
As someone haunted by the Duolingo owl, I found this particularly funny -
Fifteen minutes after that you turned the lamp on again, sat up, and reached for your phone. ‘Smör,’ you hissed into it. ‘Smöööööör!’
‘Is this what you’ll be doing (this week), shouting “butter” into your phone? I thought you were taking the week for course stuff.’

~
hudlös skinless
one of my favourite Swedish words, incidentally. It’s used to mean exposed, vulnerable, but doesn’t that give way too much credit to skin? As if skin is armour and not the first thing to go.

~
On losing languages...
My grandmother died last year. She came to Glasgow from Texas when she was nineteen. She had pretty bad dementia and in the last few months of her life she lost her Scottish accent and began to say ‘y’all’ and ‘darn’ to us when we tried to feed her biscuits. They were her favourites. I wonder if this means that we could both lose English one day. How young do you think you have to be when they give it to you, for a language to be yours forever? So that it can’t be taken away?

Reading back, I wonder who ‘they’ are. ‘They’ must have some pretty spectacular powers. If it’s not a ‘they’ at all but our own brains, it could mean we were never meant to try to understand so much.

[Kitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

üks neid raamatuid, mille idee meeldis mulle kõvasti rohkem kui raamat ise. ta on veidi segamini rootsi ja inglise keeles ja kogu see lugu sellest ongi - ühest rootsi preilist, kelle šoti peika otsustab, et ta hakkab nüüd intensiivselt rootsi keelt õppima (osaliselt inspireerituna sellest, et preili on vist veidike rase ja keegi täpselt ei tea, mis nüüd juhtuma hakkab ja igaüks reageerib oma veidral moel). samal ajal on preili enda töö selline, et ta tohib seal ka ainult rootsi keelt rääkida. see rõhuv õhkkond, mis sellest kõigest ta ümber tekib, on mu meelest päris hästi edasi antud. jah, see on ta emakeel, aga lõpuks jäävad tal nii ikka kõik olulised asjad rääkimata, sest keegi eriti millestki aru ei saa.

kahjuks ei saanud mina ka päriselt aru millestki. või oli see kogu loo ja plaani osa. aga suur osa peategelase tegusid ja mõtteid jäid mulle mõistetamatuks ja isegi see polnud päris selge, kas see peika talle tegelikult meeldis või ei meeldinud enam eriti. tööga natuke sama lugu. lõpuks lahvataski see keelevimm hoopis töö juures ja pigem teistel inimestel ja see oli justkui huvitavam kui see suhtedraama. aga siis sai raamat läbi.

(mis sellest rasedusest lõpuks sai, jäi mulle ka arusaamatuks.)

aga lõpuks ikkagi huvitaval moel kirjutatud, just nende keelevõrdluste ja -mõtiskluste osas. ma ei tea, kas rootsi keele oskamine mängib siin mingit rolli. inglise keelde tõlkimata pole eriti midagi jäetud, mida tõlkida saab. ja siis lõpuks jällegi natuke on (tõlkimata jäetud) ja see ajab mind närvi, sest kuigi ma rootsikeelsest tekstist sain aru, siis sellest ei saanud, mida tahtis autor meile nende ingliskeelsesse teksti jäetud lünkadega öelda. liiga diip minu jaoks, noh.

[MJG · Rating 2 out of 5]

bear with me here, please! this’ll all make sense soon. it’ll (hopefully!) all translate correctly.
and so it begins.
i love the title of this book.
i love the idea of language it (halfheartedly) [sorry] tries to explain. “because need and knowing what someone needs do exist beyond language, and that’s the part of language that bothers me the most.” delicious, elaborate. give me more. “she wondered in which language ingrid had been sick and recovered. she decided to ask her soon, because she could now.” delectable, elaborate. give. me. more!!
i love so many lines in this story. like the ones above. like the two i am about to copy down in here to be trapped in cyberspace for eternity. i don’t know why i said that, it doesn’t matter. “a few years ago, we made our first preservation together. i was possibly still drunk from having discovered lagavulin the night before. its accent was still all over my tongue.” exquisite, elaborate. give me more. “your body was a color which makes some people ask where you’re from and others wonder what you’re doing here, your hands pretty square, a tattoo behind your left ear, suspicious with the what and the who and the where. everything everyone else has made you was there, chucked in with the misunderstandings, the wrong words and the almost-right ones.” yum, elaborate. give me more.
i love the change of perspective between different sections of this book. that shift to third person was REJUVENATING. it gave me exactly what i needed, because honestly, i was ready to give up. that last page before the point-of-view transition certainly did provide a little jolt, though. yum. maybe it’s because i’m a haruki murakami fanatic, but even a terrible book just reads so much more smoothly in third person. i’m a big fan of the omniscient narrator. and this shift gave me the story i wanted to read, in a way, at least, which you’re about to read about here. i don’t think this is a spoiler. right? oh well. sorry?
i don’t know who i’m apologizing to. nobody who’s reading this really cares, i assume. i’m not thing to make an ass out of you or me, but this is goodreads. i’m making it more serious than it has to be. this is getting rambly fast, similarly to this book. if you can make it through my review, how we are translated probably won’t be too tough for you. especially because i know how to use commas.
anyways. more things i loooove.
i love kristin’s work persona, (which is not an accurate descriptor, but i can’t seem to find the words) solveig, who quietly motivates her to be better. what solveig’s life could’ve been, would’ve been, that’s what drives her. she’s always thinking about this little character that she’s technically created. i adore that. i would so read solveig’s story, provided it wasn’t written like kristin’s. additionally, i value how kristin speaks in second person in reference to her complicated love, ciaran. that was a nifty detail that certainly spiced things up- i’m a sucker for the pronoun you, which i am italicizing as i write this, but goodreads doesn’t like my quirky format tweaks. just know that the grammar is correct here. i am about to get so damn picky about that. buckle up. here we go! i appreciate the way swedish is folded into the phrases of this book, ribboned between english that is missing a few too many commas and periods for my liking, but at least it’s better than sally rooney’s grammatical choices. sorry. that was probably a bit too harsh. but SO MANY of these authors i’ve been reading recently appear as if they skipped the commas, dashes, and (semi)colons day in what was probably fourth grade.
those are some of the things i truly loved about this rambly little book.
i do not love how nothing is explained or introduced. so much is left up to the reader, but not in a ‘use-your-imagination-and-create-a-world’ way, more in a ‘i-think-it-sounds-cool-to-make-my-character-live-in-a-never-ending-stream-of-consciousness’ way. which, respect. i want to tag my forehead into kristin’s forehead for that. i totally just stole a line. not sorry. anyways, this oddball stream-of-consciousness thing is so factually accurate to what it looks like inside most of our heads. no grammatical conventions, switching back and forth between languages and personas, some given to us, some we’ve made up ourselves, and not explaining anything because we’re the ones thinking it, of course. but i despised reading it.
i think what it comes down to is maybe that this book scared me. it challenged my comfort zone just the tiniest bit. i read to escape, to go explore a world i can’t get to without a plane ticket or immediate death, probably, to be somewhere new and different and exciting because i haven’t been there before. but to be inside a character’s mind was slightly too relatable for me, especially when i was seeking escape. maybe the title should’ve been a warning. maybe i misinterpreted it. or maybe i also just clash with the way this author writes or the way this specific book was tailored and that, ultimately, is a me problem.
i bet this book is perfect for a lot of people. without a doubt, this is somebody’s favorite book. it has all the markings of such. however, it was probably one of my least-favorite books ever. usually i blame the author, and i can’t help but give her a portion of the responsibility. but if i learned nothing else from this story, it’s that we all translate one another differently- their thoughts, their feelings, and of course, their writing- so perhaps this story just got lost in translation for me.
i hated it. but i recommend you give it a try, translate it on your own terms. maybe the words will fit together for you in a way they never could in my own little mind. after all, no two humans are exactly alike for greater reasons than identity theft: we need to be different to survive.

[Trang Tran · Rating 2 out of 5]

The most boring book I’ve ever read. It’s like reading about people rambling and complaining all day. She did have a purpose with this book to illustrate the miscommunication. But the execution was simply horrible.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whilst I liked what the author was trying to do here - examine the links between language and identity, and how these change those who are bilingual switch between different languages - the novel itself was far too slippery and disjointed for this reader to work out if anything insightful was actually being said.

This topic of identity differing through using one's second language is of particular interest to me, and one I've discussed at length with friends who I studied Mandarin with, and it is also one which has a lot of potential for a novel. Unfortunately the way this was written was a bit too experimental and kooky, which made the narrative hard to connect with. Not for me!

Thank you Netgalley and Scribe UK for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

[Joe Tristram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Splendid. Quite strange, and through its strangeness feels real, about early pregnancy and young relationships. Also worth reading twice (there's a lot going on and the language(s) is/are good

[Kiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot to read into in this novel. It was a bit confusing at times, but I kind of enjoyed being confused. I wish I read it for class so we could have a discussion. A pleasant experience.

[Austėja · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was such a lovely surprise. with echoes of ali smith, it really tapped into some of the most important questions for me of identity, language and belonging.

[holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

wanted so much to like this but like ..it made no sense? it had like 10% great writing mixed up so much that i baso couldn’t follow it. probs should have dnfed

[Meg Scarbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

i loved the writing but I have no idea what actually happened

[Jemima Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

fine ! got into this more towards the last third. rambling ! and confusing at times but a good story. much much prefer her collection of essays tho!

[Chiara Pistillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

How We Are Translated by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson is all about incommunicability.

This topic is presented on multiple levels. Let’s start from the title.

If we need to be translated it means that whatever we say has no meaning for who receives the message unless our words are transferred into another language. We coul be able to successfully convey the meaning but there is always something lost in translation from language A to language B.
In the novel the main character is Swedish and her partner was born in Brazil but grew up in Scotland. One speaks Swedish, the other speaks Portuguese, and they meet in the middle ground that is the English language until he decides to stop using English to start an immersive learning of Swedish, being unable to properly communicate in that language.

Stepping into the novel, the first thing we learn from the voice narrating us the story is that she is not speaking to her partner, or that he is not speaking to her anymore. We are faced with a lack of communication between them, the key component in a fully functioning relationship.

Our protagonist works in the fictional National Museum of Immigration in Edinburgh, where all the peoples that have come to Scotland and have left a mark across the centuries are on display. She is one of the Vikings who have come to the Scottish shores in the 15th century. While on shift, the employees are forbidden from using English with each other so they end up saying things in their own languages but they are left unable to understand any of it.

Johannesson touches other topics as well, such as migration, xenophobia, relationship issues and parenthood.
The museum should celebrate the arrival of different peoples to Scotland as they brought innovation and contributed to the cultural canvas that we can now find in the country; instead, the same employees have rivalries and are ready to suspect certain groups based on stereotypes and prejudices; they fear the arrival of new peoples in the museum to be represented with their own installation as they would take up some of their space.
Two young people with stable jobs, although not great, are able to become a family? To become parents? Will their languages always be a barrier between them, preventing to fully understand each other?

Moving on to the style, How We Are Translated is a pleasant novelty that explores linguistics in different ways.
We can find some experimentalism where the author tries to show a parallel between English and Swedish but we also have some thoughts expressed by the protagonist that could easily be relatable for anyone coming to the UK from a different country:

“People say ‘I’m sorry all the time when it can mean both ‘I’m sorry I hurt you’ and ‘I’m sorry someone else did something I have nothing to do with’. It’s like the English language gave up on trying to find a word for sympathy which wasn’t also the word for guilt.”

Don’t we all feel like the things we say sometimes lose part of the meaning we give them when we speak them out loud? Why is it so? If not answers, this book will spark some brilliant considerations in the reader’s mind.

[E.The.Bookworm.World · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do sięgnięcia po tę książkę przekonał mnie następujący cytat: „People say ‘I’m sorry’ all the time when it can mean both ‘I’m sorry I hurt you’ and ‘I’m sorry someone else did something I have nothing to do with’. It’s like the English language gave up on trying to find a word for sympathy which wasn’t also the word for guilt”.
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Kristin pochodzi ze Szwecji, pracuje na zamku w Edynburgu, gdzie odgrywa rolę „wikinga” i posługuje się tam jedynie językiem szwedzkim. Dlatego, gdy wraca do mieszkania, które dzieli ze swoim szkockim partnerem, chce mówić po angielsku. Ciaran zaś pragnie nauczyć się szwedzkiego, co bardzo negatywnie wpływa na ich relacje. Dodatkowo dziewczyna dowiaduje się, że jest w ciąży, w pracy pojawiają się problemy na tle narodowościowym i nie otrzymując wsparcia ze strony bliskiej jej osoby, Kristin stara się jakoś ułożyć sobie to wszystko w głowie.
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Cytat przekonujący, zagadnienia lingwistyczne i kulturowe były, choć dużo mniej niż bym sobie tego życzyła, ale niestety pozycja ta mnie nie zachwyciła. Wielokrotnie pojawiały się zdania i słowa w języku szwedzkim, wraz z wytłumaczeniem jak przekładają się one na język angielski i to było ciekawe, ale poza tym nie znalazłam w tej książce żadnych elementów, które wzbudziłby we mnie emocje. Bardzo chciałam, by mi się spodobała, jednak zupełnie do mnie nie trafiła i ostatecznie jedynie strasznie mnie wynudziła.

[Reisse Myy Fredericks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel feels a little like what might happen if Nathan Fielder wrote literary fiction—fastidious, deadpan, and steeped in absurdism. Its deliberate fogginess, where even names blur, mirrors its preoccupation with form, and this choice may not welcome every reader. Challenging and unusual, it enacts theory of signified/signifier, demonstrating the very slippages it interrogates as both subject and structure.

The Nordic narrator, living in Scotland, shares her life with a naturalized Brazilian partner who painstakingly studies Swedish while practicing taxidermy as a hobby. Their relationship—tender, comic, and portrayed with realism on the brink of transformation—centers around “The Project,” their shorthand for trying to conceive. Yet this private language is constantly disrupted by broader questions: which tongue to raise a child in, whether the future is even survivable, and how migration, race, and shared vulnerability shape the limits of belonging.

She works at a Kafkaesque immigration museum governed by absurd rules: English is forbidden, staff are known only by their historical roles, and the reenacted past begins to bleed into the present. When she’s assigned a pregnancy suit, her physical and emotional disorientation intensifies. Her grip on language falters. Meaning loosens. Coworkers become uncanny figures rather than peers. Even as protests attempt to safeguard the museum’s purpose, it becomes harder to tell whether anything inside—or outside—can still be called real.

Her boyfriend, a nurse, speaks of the need to preserve boundaries between his caregiving self and his inner life. That contrast becomes a quiet ballast, even as she begins to dissolve into the institutional role she’s been asked to embody. What might have been played as parody instead becomes a form of radical empathy: an unraveling that insists the fear and wonder of being human—and of keeping something alive—has echoed across generations, across words.

In this light, conservation and preservation are not only concerns for culture or ecology, but also for couples, families, and futures. What do we protect? What do we carry forward? What must we release in order to endure?

Slyly funny, disorienting, and deeply humane, this is a novel of fractured language and tender dislocation—where intimacy, history, and ideology collapse into something unspoken and yet urgently felt. An astounding, monumental work.

[Jodie Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quiet, quirky and contemplative debut, How We Are Translated exceeded my expectations.

Books that play with language and form always have a special place on my heart. Throughout, author Jessica Gaitán Johannesson plays with language, in a way that makes it so fun to read.

HWAT tells the story of a 24 year old Swedish woman called Kristen living in Edinburgh, in ‘the world’s best hovel’ with her boyfriend. Kristin’s boyfriend was adopted at the age of three, something he won’t often talk about. Whilst he sees his culture as wholly Scottish, he becomes fixated with Swedish—mainly, the fact that he has never learnt to speak to Kristin in her native language.
Throughout the novel, we see language in translation, with occasional passages split into two columns as Kristen breaks down translations and meanings.

HWAT explores themes of relationships, identity, immigration, loneliness, exploitation, history and (of course) translation, and what is lost in between.

Kristin works at an historical tourist attraction- the Edinburg Museum of Immigration in which she has to dress up as a Viking and speak only in Swedish for her entire working day. Other exhibits include groups of Italians, french and Lithuanians. Other groups, such as Pakistanis, though they campaign, aren’t allowed any representation at the museum. Whilst a lot of the book remains insular to Kristin’s specific problem, Johannesson lets the wider world filter through.

How We Are Translated is out now on kindle and is published by @scribe_uk in hardback on 11th February 2021. Thank you to @scribepub for the gifted review copy – this is an easy five star read for me.

Here’s the blurb:
Swedish immigrant Kristin won’t talk about the Project growing inside her. Her Brazilian-born Scottish boyfriend Ciaran won’t speak English at all; he is trying to immerse himself in a Swedish
språkbad    language bath,
to prepare for their future, whatever the fick that means. Their Edinburgh flat is starting to feel very small.

As this young couple is forced to confront the thing that they are both avoiding, they must reckon with the bigger questions of the world outside, and their places in it.

[Amanda Rosso · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not a full 4 stars, but I'd rather round it up, because I think this book is great and deserves more than the score it's getting.

Set in a contemporary Edinburgh, How We Are Translated looks like the story of an interracial couple who also speaks different native languages. He is a Black man who was adopted as a child and she is a white woman who moved to the UK from Sweden and works in a very strange place called the Castle, where workers from different countries reenact scenes of everyday life of peoples from the past. All the "immigrants" that made Scotland Scotland.

It is indeed a book about language, and how it makes us who we are and how it takes central stage in all our interactions, but it's also a book about racism, inequality, climate change, parenthood and Existential Insecurity related to becoming parents in a world that is falling apart, with the serious threat of climate disasters and economic and social instability.

It's a book about the sort of incommunicability that predates language, the impossibility of understanding one another in spite of our feelings and mutual respect. It's a book about the paradoxes of communication, the authenticity of our linguistic bonds and our emotional openness.

It's also a bitter reflection on the current climate in the UK post Brexit, a sort of conglomerate of misunderstood superiority and xenophobic insulation, and how it mirrors even our most basic relationships, where immigrants from Sweden are a precious rarity and others from non white countries are a plague. The narrative of usefulness and "integration" - used to mask intolerance and fear - live in the rooms of the Castle, where workers are on 0hrs contracts and powerless, forced to speak only their native languages to "maintain the realism", and where we see acting out the same prejudiced system that engulfs the real world.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book after participating in an online translation summer school, where the author led a creative writing workshop and did a reading from this work.

This is a quirky book that plays with language and identity, as well as the conventions of storytelling and even book design (there are many passages rendered in both Swedish and English, with the different languages in columns side by side). It has a kind of surrealness to it, almost as if it's an alternate universe, one in which Edinburgh Castle has become a Museum of Immigration where the employees dress up in costume and role-play different groups of people who have moved to Scotland. They can only converse in the language of the characters they're playing, and to prepare for each day they spend some time in a Translation Room, where they cast off their actual personas and slip into their new ones. It's a funny and somehow unsettling concept. Equally unsettling is the home life of the Swedish/Scottish narrator, whose Brazilian/Scottish boyfriend suddenly insists on speaking to her only in Swedish so that he can learn the language, upsetting the established identities in their relationship and causing a rift between them.

The book feels fragmentary on many levels, but that's not necessarily a criticism. The narrative is fragemented, personalities are fragmented, society is fragemented. This kind of personal literary fiction isn't my usual fare and I can't say that I whole-heartedly loved the book, but I did appreciate it for its interesting ideas and experimental approach, and certainly for its intriguing musings on (and use of) language.

[Laurie Keech · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LOVE reading books by non-native speakers of English and for me this was the strongest element of the book, the language was richer for being borrowed and learnt but also claimed and enjoyed.

I loved her collection of colloquialisms, Gaitán Johanesson executed them convincingly and sweetly in her own speech which made it a pleasure to read. She also captured her Scottish boyfriend’s idiom (and cultual attitude) extremely well, and with affection. As a language learner, there was so much that was familiar to me here, the hours of dedication and affection which you put into another language and the deep relationship you have to it.

However, this book was way too hetero for me to enjoy. A mother-child dynamic defined the protagonists’ relationship, like 95% of straight couples. Also like 95% of straight couples, it was the emotionally exploited woman who dedicated herself systematically to adoring and celebrating her boyfriend, while he in turn behaved with complete selfishness and then chastised her for not supporting him enough. Snooze, I’ve seen this everywhere in real life and fiction. The boyfriend was an absolute arse, and to put the nail in the mother-son coffin, he refused to communicate to her in anything other than his very basic Swedish, which the protagonist identified as child-like but chose to frame as endearing.
A lovely piece of writing about second and native languages, marred for me by the aggressive and unoriginal hetero-worshipping.