Helsingin Sanomat International translates a rundown of the summer's news originally in their Finnish language monthly supplement, that had taken July off. It shouldn't be funny but is:A lot has happened in Finland this summer, much of it while we were away. Firstly, at the beginning of June a 20-year-old man in Suomussalmi shot his sixteen-year-old former girlfriend and then himself. Then a 19-year-old man used a crossbow to kill two women of 22 years and 26 years of age while they slept in his apartment in Pori. And a 26-year-old man assaulted and killed a 50-year-old man at his home in Rauma. Another 26-year-old man killed a 45-year-old man on the victim's doorstep in Espoo, such that the victim's aged mother was a witness to the event.And that's just the first paragraph. It goes on. And on.
That is a seriously strange piece of news if you read the whole article. I mean in the context of journalism. Is this some new and wonderful form of journalism that encourages free thinking and actually lets the reader to fill in the blanks?
ReplyDeleteIn this case the journalist, Joanna Palmen, was apparently trying to communicate that men are murderous drunks who kill and rape women before shooting themselves or suffocating into their own vomit.
My question is: is that actually news to someone? :)
I bet Joannas week was ruined by that mother of three that killed her kids...
I suspect more her point is that Finns are murderous drunks, rather than men in general or Finnish men in particular. I thought it was a slightly bizarre thing for HS International to translate without any context. In Kuukausiliite people kind of 'get it' - it's like the post midsummer's body count, but for someone new to Finland or reading abroad it would just sound like a list of random grisly crimes!
ReplyDelete"Summer news about Finnish men at work", I don't think it gets any clearer than that.
ReplyDeleteOK - good point! I think you win that one. ;-) Does "Men at work" work in Finnish? I wonder if that was the original title in Kuukausiliite...
ReplyDeleteToby, if you think that piece is strange, have you ever seen the murder map the Baltimore Sun keeps on it's website? You can choose to display by age, race and/or cause of death! They have had 200 murders in Baltimore so far this year so it's definitely not on my 'must visit' list!
ReplyDeletehttp://essentials.baltimoresun.com/micro_sun/homicides/
I'm surprised this hasn't caught on in other U.S. cities mind you.