TWO VOICES FROM SWEDEN: TRANSLATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE (ANTTI, EKMAN)

Following translations of Gerda Antti's short story "Mother's Laughter" and four chapters of Kerstin Ekman's novel Darkness and Blueberry Bushes, this dissertation first discusses the problems of translation theory in general, then moves on to the specific difficulties of rendering Swedish literary prose into English. So far translation has stubbornly resisted theoretical regimentation. The central problem is that a word is much more than an arbitrary symbol; it accumulates through history a host of connotations. Thus, just as each language is embedded in the culture of its speaker, so each text is embedded in the history of that language. What the translator faces is the impossibility of reconciling two intricate linguistic networks of overlapping associations and symbols in which every unit is determined by at least two cultural contexts: the historical and the literary. In other words, just as there are no genuine synonyms within a single language, no word has an equivalent in another language. Until we know more about the relationship between semantics and phonology, the translator has to proceed without a theory. Nevertheless, from Dryden onwards, the overall orientation of translators has been divided into three: to "metaphrase" is to emphasize the structure of the original language, to "imitate" is to stress the structure of the target language. The majority of translators, however, "paraphrase," aiming for the best compromise between the demands of both languages. In the final analysis the translator's decisions are based on aesthetic considerations. After a discussion of general problems of modernizing, editing, and the question of how to deal with dialects, slang, etc., the difficulties of translating from Swedish to English are considered in terms of overall culturalization of the text, dialect and slang, and the need to capture in the target language the original "voice" of the author. In reference to this "voice," the differences between Swedish and English word order, genitive constructions, and use of compound words are investigated. Finally, the guiding principle for dealing with all these problems is substitution. Instead of attempting to reproduce, the translator should find a way to suggest a "voice," a dialect, or a culture.