This article calls into question, on the basis of selected excerpts from the Finnish translation of Camus’ novel, Sivullinen, two commonly held ideas: (1) L’Étranger’s style is “oral”; (2) Finnic languages have a poor TAM system – if only tenses are considered. Different from Perfekti, that conveys a past event with present relevance, the Finnish Imperfekti is the verbal form of narrative dynamism: Imperfekti allows the speaker to take a stand as an observer of an action anchored in the past, it is theoretically the perfect tense for Meursault’s Finnish account. But the translator is confronted to a dilemma: in order to preserve the naturality of such a typologically different language, should he refrain from resorting to the multiple ressources of the Finnish aspectual derivation system, and stick to the standardized register of simple Imperfects? The restrictive temporality of Non-Finite Constructions provides a compromise solution.
