The Deleted World [Paperback]

This is a very annoying book. It is neither fish nor fowl, and Mr Holden would appear to have been misled by the publisher's "product description" referring to "Robin Robertson's magnificent translations". Not only are the reviewers quoted as praising this book unfamiliar with the Swedish language but Robin Robertson himself knows very little Swedish so cannot be relied upon to supply accurate translations.

The book's front cover and title-page calls these "versions by Robin Robertson", not translations, and when the book was first published in 2008 Robertson explained what this meant in an article for the Guardian (which anyone can read online), quoting Robert Lowell quoting Boris Pasternak saying that "the usual reliable translator gets the literal meaning but misses the tone. I have been reckless with literal meaning , and laboured hard to get the tone." Robertson then writes: "In my relatively free versions of some of Tranströmer's poems I have attempted to steer a middle ground between Lowell's rangy, risk-taking rewritings and the traditional, strictly literal approach. I have kept the shape of the poem, opened out its sense more clearly, and tried - as Lowell rightly insists one must try - to get the tone." So by his own admission these are not accurate translations but "relatively free versions".

In his acknowledgements at the back of the book, Robertson writes: "The English versions would not exist in this form without the encouragement of Dr Karin Altenberg; I am indebted to her for her invaluable help with the original texts - though any infelicities of translation are mine alone." A line by line comparison with the Swedish reveals many such infelicities which initially I took to be howlers or misreadings but which I now understand from his pronouncements to be deliberate rewritings by the so-called translator. Therefore what the reader gets are not accurate translations of Tomas Tranströmer but this Scottish poet's versions or distortions of our Nobel Laureate. For example, Swedish critics have written much on the subject of Tomas Tranströmer's particular way of writing about trees, so I was surprised to see that in one poem Robertson had translated (or should it be "versioned"?) "granskogen" as pine forest instead of spruce forest. It matters which tree, so why has Robertson taken such liberties? I cannot understand this and many other changes he has made to the meaning of Tranströmer's poems.

This book does a disservice to English-speaking readers who want to know what Tranströmer wrote and not what Robertson thinks he ought to have written. And since he knows very little Swedish, how can he possibly produce what he thinks is Tranströmer's tone in English? In my opinion this book has only received the attention it does not deserve because Robertson is a famous poet in the UK and an influential person in the literary world. Also, why is Dr Altenberg not credited as co-translator on the title-page or cover as is normal with co-translations? Is it because Robertson does not want his limited knowledge of Swedish to be apparent to the reader?

There are much better translations of Tranströmer available by translators who know Swedish and who are also poets themselves. They also give the reader far more than just 15 poems. In making the Nobel Prize announcement Peter Englund recommended in particular those by Robert Bly (The Half-Finished Heaven) and Robin Fulton (New Collected Poems), both of whom worked closely with Tranströmer on their translations over many decades, and indeed Tranströmer's detailed correspondence with Bly has been published in Sweden under the title "Airmail".

I give this book a one-star rating not for the translation but because it does contain 15 poems in the original by Tranströmer, so it has to get at least one star for including the Swedish originals.

The Swedish reviewer who dealt so harshly with Robertson is wrong. Robertson should not be judged as translator when he clearly states that is not his intention. These, then, are versions in the true sense - not laboriously carrying over phrases and ideas which are paricular to one leanguage, but faithfully re-casting the poem into English skins. Robertson should be seen as treading the same paths as Transtromer, but telling what he found there himself.

Robin Robertson has achieved more than what a train spotter with a Swedish-English dictionary could achieve with a wet afternoon and a sense of peevish malice. He has written poems.

These long lines sing and sound beautiful. I have compared translations of the same poems and Robin Robertson's achieve a taught, clear vision that ring on after you have finished reading this short collection.

He is our best poet and this collection is highly recommended highly!