Hippy Hippy Gumbo Millennium Shake?

I just finished reading a book in English, "The girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. Some of my older, say 'advanced', readers may remember my personal challenge of reading through the whole Millennium trilogy. Not only that but in 3 different languages. Last year I finished the second book of the trilogy, not knowing about the other two when purchasing it. It was in Swedish, the original language. Not a good way to read in that order, I don't recommend. The first one was equally exciting, and now I'm beginning to chase the third one, in Finnish. Basically any Finn could do the same challenge, but I doubt if anyone has ever done it before.

I must admit that reading in English was much easier. Unfortunaly, the English used in this book gave me pain. It was mostly poor. The translator, Reg Keeland, must be a Swede who thought that he knew English. There's no other way. I can find dozens of small errors and a few gross ones. First of all, why were 'herr' (mister) and 'fröken' (miss) left untranslated? The same with 'tunnelbana' (subway). In addition, there were sentences that didn't seem to make any kind of sense. If herr Larsson were able to read this, I bet he'd roll over in his grave. Then again, there were quite a many strange words to me - making me wonder what they were doing amongst all this pigeon-English. I was content with the Larsson's Swedish, as much as I could cope with it, so I really can't blame anyone else but the translator. Though I must admit that I surely couldn't have done a better job myself. But someone could have. Should have.

One interesting point came to me while reading this. In one section some character mentions The Finnish War, which happened in 1808-1809. However, the character claims as a fact that it began in 1940. Of course the character could lie or remember incorrectly, but normally these historical facts are always true. And no other character at the scene suspected it to be an incorrect year. Global disinformation, eh? Instead of Finnish War he must have referred to The Winter War (1939-1940), but still the starting year is erroneous. Either the author didn't know the real starting year, or he made a silly little mistake. The Continuation War took place in 1941-1944, it can't be that either. I don't remember any writer to have made a character give falsified information on true events on purpose. Although in real life many characters do.

I don't want to spoil the fun by telling about the content of the book. All I can say is that it's more captivating than the Da Vinci Code I also read last year. This really ties you up on a chair (read: sofa), so be warned. That's why I might take a long break before continuing with the third part of the trilogy. All of a sudden my wife agrees with me on something. I must do something else too. For example blog.