Pääsuke

An Estonian male who has been living in Finland since 2006. My Finnish proficiency is C2, or native-like proficiency. Of course, I will probably never reach the same level of knowledge of small nuances and stylistic meanings that a Finnish-born speaker has, but I'm working on that all the time.

I study English Language and Literature, but make mistakes in English like any other mortal.

My first account, which I created in 2016, was called Translationist. I renamed it to Pääsuke, or Swallow. I left LT in 2018, deleting my account. It had around 360 translations. But I couldn't stay away from LT. I've been back for a while now and do not intend to leave any time soon.

I like calm ambient, chillhop, EDM (mostly chillstep), indie, pop, rock, and occasionally some punk. And of course all the random songs that I stumble upon and think sound good. Did I mention I like Irish music? Well, I do.

Personal quote: A mediocre translator thinks they know a language, a good translator knows they cannot ever fully know a language.

Unlisted languages I have learnt (in the order of proficiency): Swedish (in school), German (in school), Chinese (two courses in the uni)

My relationship with music

For some time now I have been buying the music that I listen to, as opposed to streaming it from Youtube or Spotify or some other service. Youtube is free of charge, but you pay by having to watch ads. Spotify has tens of millions of songs, but I know I won't be needing that many songs and chances are, you won't either. The amount of songs a person can discover during their lifetime is much less than a million. I instead buy my music from online music stores, as music files. This way I can support the artists more directly and I get to really own the music I pay for.

The stores I use are:

Bandcamp (most songs pay-what-you-like, multiple music formats)
7digital (MP3 and FLAC)
Qobuz (store) (CD quality, FLAC)
iTunes for Windows (as a last resort, lowest quality of all)

About my translations

Some of my 'poetic' translations may sound silly, but at least they are somewhat singable. So when my translations say 'Poetic', it usually means they are singable as well. Most of the translations aren't equirhytmic, but the total number of syllables per line usually adds up. I find that translations like that make more sense, because all a literal translation does is tell the content of the lyrics, but the translation itself is not a work of art, like the original lyrics are. So my aim is to try and create something at least resembling art.