(Gör denna recension på engelska, då den postats på en utländsk lista där JHH
är med också och han har översatt den. Räkan har också en del
översättningskommentarer. Jo, han sade faktiskt att han på 15 månader översatt
14 böcker... --AE)
Kodknäckartnas hemliga liv i Bletchley Park - historien om de män och kvinnor
som dechiffrerade den tyska koden under andra världskriget, by Sinclair McKay
(Fischer & Co, 2015, translation by JHH, original title: "The Secret Life of
Bletchley Park: the WWII Codebreaking entre and the Men and Women Who Worked
there")
John-Henri Holmberg mentioned (April 8th) that he the last 15 month had
translated 14 books. This book must be one of these. I'll say something more
general about the book, and then something about the translation. After all,
I've read more about WWII than could be healthy...and also about quite a lot
about Alan Turing and Bletchley Park. It will be interesting to see how 14
translations in 15 months affects a translation. Though I'm not too worried
about JHH's capacity in general, I've often found that non-experts may stumble
upon both military and information technology lingo.
This book describes the life among the up to 18 000 men and women who worked at
the British cipher cracking facility Bletchley Park (BP), north of London,
during World War II. It does so by going to interviews, accounts, documents,
letters etc from these persons. Their fascinating exploits didn't become known
until the mid-70's due to the extreme secrecy around BP. The people working
there thus received their recognition very late, in some cases too late. Alan
Turing for instance, died in 1954 after eating a poisoned apple (following a
conviction for homosexuality, which was illegal at that time).
The legacy of BP is by now well known. It shortened the war with a year,
perhaps two (even three years, some speculate) since the cipher-cracking let
the Allied read the enciphered German military telegrams, which was of
particular importance for the battle against the U-boats. While doing this,
Turing and his associates also made important leaps in information technology.
The biggest advance was building the first generally programmable computer,
called Colossus, which was so top secret that all copies of it and all
documentation was destroyed after the war. For several decades the Americans
thought their ENIAC was first. Turing gave some input to Colossus - and had
earlier developed the theoretical background with his virtual "Turing Machine"
- but the real designer was Tommy Flowers from the Royal Mail, which at the
time also was Britain's telephone/telecom operator (which meant having much
electronics expertise).
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park doesn't dwell too much on technology (there
is some, though) but tell about the ordinary life of the Bletchlians. The whole
setup at BP was quite improvised, at least in the beginning. A whole town of
barracks grew haphazardly around the old Victorian mansion and the local
population for many miles around had to take thousands of lodgers. The
accommodations were very basic, usually an outhouse for toilette needs,
rationed food (with a shortage of meat, sugar and fats), cold in the winter due
to rationed coal, and all this while working three shifts, around the clock. If
you missed a telegram it might mean that a convoy was attacked by a U-boat wolf
pack, and ships and precious supplies would be lost.
But it's amazing how well most people took this pressure and stress! We learn
that attending to the "bombes" took a particularly heavy toll, and this was
usually done by girls from the different women's auxiliary military services.
Some women would get totally exhausted after a shift since it was a work that
required total concentration and an eye for minute details. But they rested,
came bak, and did it without much complaints. (The "bombes" were code setting
permutation checking machines, of which BP in the end had several hundreds. The
basic design came from Poland's successful pre-war code cracking and it was
further developed by the British. Turing gave a lot of input to improvements.)
It may be that most of the witnesses when a number of decades have passed have
acquired rose-tainted glasses. Hardships of the past tend to be forgotten and
you remember the golden moments.
Another amazing thing is how this huge operation could be kept secret. It was
so secret that outsiders had no idea about it up to a quarter of a century
later. All staff was of course "screened" and had to sign the Official Secrets
Act Everyone was told not to discuss their work with any outsider (ever, not
after the war, not with eg spouses) or even with anyone from another department
of the BP operation. There were a bit of watertight compartments between the
different barracks, with messengers shuttling papers back and forth in sealed
envelopes. If asked a Bletchlian would claim to do only boring secretary work,
administration, typing and things like that. BP was, in Churchill's words, the
goose that laid golden eggs but didn't cackle. (Compare it to the Manhattan
Project, which the Soviets managed infiltrate with doezens of spies.)
So, the work was ungrateful, secret and often very demanding. But still there
was time for some fun. It is probably the case that when you work hard under
stressful conditions, you appreciate entertainment and happy moments much more.
There were a theatre society at BP, music bands, dance evenings, movie
evenings, different sports clubs (tennis was popular; Winston Churchill himself
recommended building tennis courts after a visit; rounders was also played),
beer clubs, a library, a swimming pool. Field artists of different kinds (eg
famous soloists in classical music) would visit the site and have concerts. We
don't learn how common it was, but there were several examples of how men or
women met their future spouse at BP (the book doesn't say much about sex).
Another aspect is how much of the "class system" broke down. Daughters of
lords worked side by side with working class women. It was easiest to use first
names or nicknames. Titles meant very little. What you did was everything.
There are some interesting observations about the excentric Alan Turing.
There was a shortage of tea mugs and porcelain, so Turing would chain his
favourite mug to the wall so it wouldn't be stolen... That he'd cycle around in
his gas mask had a natural explanation: he had a tendency to catch hay fever.
He'd sometimes turn up clothed in parts of a pyjamas and was seen as a bit of
an introvert, but all in all he seemed to get along well with people. During
the BP period he was for instance selected to go to America to exchange cipher
cracking information with his US counterparts, where he made a lot of contacts
and got work done.
If you're interested of the everyday life inside a big secret project, this
is a very interesting book. The only thing I miss is photos. Even if everything
was top secret, there must exist many pictures (and surely pictures of the
people involved). A map of the site and it's surroundings would also be nice to
have.
The translation is on the whole very good. I didn't expect anything else, so
while reading I concentrated more on how JHH may have stumbled upon special
words.
On page 11: "Enigmachiffreringsteknik" ("enigma ciphering technology") isn't
formally wrong, but clumsy. Swedish is notorious for being able to construct
endless compound words, but I think it should be avoided if possible. An
alternative could be something like "Enigmas chifferteknik".
Page45 "förste sjölord (politiskt tillsatt ordförande för
amiralitetsstyrelsen)", ie "first sealord (politically appointed chairman of
the Admirality)". It seems the the translator has added the parenthesis, but my
main point is that "förste sjölord" usually is translated as "marinminister" in
Swedish, ie "minister of the navy", which also is the de facto function.
Page 50: "instickskorttavlan" ("plug-in card table") is both clumsy and
wrong. The Enigma didn't have plug-in cards, but plug-in contacts on a small
front panel. "Pluggpanel" or "kontaktpanel" would have been correct.
Page: "badbassäng" is an unconventional word for what would usually be called
a "simbassäng" ("swimmingpool).
Page 77: "kanonvärnen längst kusten" ("gun dugouts along the coast") would
be more successfully translated as "kustartilleriet" ("coastal artillery").
Page 190: "en förstklassig hockeyspelare" ("a first class hockey player")
would be more unambiguous as "en förstklassig landhockeyspelare".
("...land-hockey player"). A Swedish reader would assume that "hockey player"
refers to an ice-hockey player. The sport played on grass and also called
hockey is virtually unknown here, but is called "landhockey" ("land hockey")
and I believe the book refers to that sport here.
Page194: Talk about the importance of the German battleship Tirpitz as a
"flotta i vardande" (approx "a fleet in the making") is wrong in a subtle way.
In naval theory at the time there was talk about the importance of strong naval
units - even if they lay in port and didn't do anything! They would still force
an opponent to keep his own units ready. A fleet in being would tie enemy units
down. Tirpitz was a threat by simply existing, in being (but not as "in the
making").
Page 220: I would take the leap and translate "kippers" as "böckling" (a
Swedish smoked-fish dish which is practically the same).
Finally (oh yes!) I found a grammatical error in this sentence, top page 263:
"Man kan lätt föreställa sig hur ungdomarna i Bletchley Park ivrigt kastade
sig över de sorters intellektuellt krävande underhållning som ett sätt att
glömma deras** livsviktiga men i övrigt ofta mycket monotona och utmattande
arbete".
I won't give the English translation here, but the point is that the "deras"
("their") at position ** is the wrong pronoun. It should be the reflextive
pronoun "sitt" (a construction English lacks; se below). As it stands now it
says that said "crucial work" is performed by "intellectually demanding
entertainment" (not the "youth of Bletchley Park").
In Swedish you say "Carl tar sin sko" ("Carl takes his shoe") when you mean
"Carl takes his very own shoe". But if you say "Carl tar hans sko" (also: "Carl
takes his shoe") it means that Carl takes the shoe of someone else.
But overall, these were only some marginal translation comments. The book was
well translated. 14 books in 15 months can obviously be done. Pebbles in the
shoe can't be avoided in language matters and here they are tiny.
--Ahrvid
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