Celebrate the holidays with NEaT

The NEaT annual holiday party will be in Helsinki on the evening of Friday, 5 December. This year we’ll have a pizza bar and an evening of pure drama! You bring your favorite pizza topping, and we’ll supply the pizza bases to build on.

Bring yourself, your favorite pizza topping and your own beverages. NEaT will provide a welcoming drink and dessert and an evening at a theatre casting. 

A note for our party-goers from the casting director: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to ‘Casting Kvetch’! The popular game show featuring a bunch of linguists trying to make a movie about a bunch of thespians trying to make a movie! I am your genial host, the Casting Director. Using the script of ‘Kiss Her, Kate’, and appointing Director, Producer, and aspiring actresses, we shall attempt to cast this show. Don’t worry, everyone gets a go. First prize is a promise of a lead role in my next play.

This is an open event so bring a friend or colleague you would like to introduce to NEaT.

5 December at 5 pm

PAM Office, Säästöpankinranta 4 C 21, Helsinki, push the buzzer and we’ll open the door

Free for members, five euros for non-members

RSVP here.

In the news – Don’t miss out on the Anthropic settlement

Are you a published translator or author? You might be entitled to compensation from Anthropic.

The American AI company Anthropic has put $1.5 billion in a settlement fund following a class action suit about copyright and training AI models using Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi). If you are a copyright owner of a work included in the Anthropic Copyright Settlement you could be paid about $3,000 per work minus costs, as long as you file your claim(s).

There is a settlement website where you can check for your works and file claims (deadline March 2026). The American Authors Guild has an explanation of the case. (We had news about LibGen earlier in 2025.)

NEaT deep dive: Sensitivity in language

Mia Spangenberg

Join Mia Spangenberg in Helsinki on 7 November 2025 for a talk about language sensitivity and what counts as acceptable today.

Fresh from translating Mika Waltari’s 1939 novella Sellaista ei tapahdu (This Kind of Thing Never Happens), Mia will explore how to handle historical texts that have ambivalent or discriminatory attitudes towards women and minorities.

⌘ Friday, 7 November 2025, 16.00–17.30 EET
⌘ Room Kielikeskus sh.106
⌘ University of Helsinki Language Centre
⌘ Fabianinkatu 26, 00100 Helsinki
⌘ what3words location ///recoup.doormat.bonkers
⌘ Please register here. Free for NEaT members.

We caught up with Mia for a sneak peak:

Finland’s famous author, Mika Waltari (1908–1979) is still widely read in Europe. One recent example is his 1939 novella Sellaista ei Tapahdu (This Kind of Thing Never Happens) which has recently been published to acclaim in France, Spain, Denmark, and Ukraine, and which I am now translating in the hopes of finding a publisher.

Written and set on the eve of the Second World War, the novella is deliciously dark and wrestles with the absurdity of existence. At the same time, however, it is very much of its time, and Waltari’s ambivalent and discriminatory attitudes towards women and minorities raise key questions in my own reading of the novella.

What does it mean to be faithful to views that are opposite of my own? Should I even be translating something by a dead, white, male, canonical author? Emily Wilson, the first published female translator of the Odyssey, says such ambivalence is indicative of ‘intimate alienation’, which calls on translators to make visible the morals and values of a particular time and place.

I be talking about ‘intimate alienation’ and my strategies as a female and feminist translator embedded in the publishing ecosystem – itself an exploitative enterprise that continues to silence translators and aims to render us obsolete. Participants will join me in analysing key passages, and together we will discuss how we can translate problematic historical works.

Collaborative theatre translation at ELN2025

Join us at ELN2025 for a workshop with Paul Russell Garrett, acclaimed translator from Danish and Norwegian. Paul has translated plays, novels, and poetry, and he leads a mentoring programme for aspiring theatre translators. Don’t miss his insights about theatre and collaborative translation – there are only a couple of spaces left.

Paul is one of the inspiring voices you’ll hear at ELN2025. The Human Touch, our exclusive programme on Friday 3 October. Register soon to secure your place at ELN2025 and Paul’s workshop. Join us live in Helsinki or online.