Imarat Yaqubyan is a contemporary Arabic novel that encompasses an intensive and variable Arabic culture; this study contains a survey in tables of cultural words, according to Newmark’s categories, “material culture”, “social culture”, “originations”, and  “gestures and habits”, as well as their correspondences in the English and the Swedish translated novel versions. In this tripled language study, Arabic, English and Swedish, I undertake a qualitative comparison between the translation strategies used by each translator of the English and Swedish versions. For this purpose I apply the taxonomy of translation strategies established by Pedersen, which is divided first into SL-oriented strategies categorized into “Retention”, “Specification” and “Direct Translation”, and secondly the TL-oriented that includes “Generalization”, “Substitution” and “Omission”, as well as the “Official Equivalent”. Through my analyses process, I link Newmark’s metaphors types, terminology and the seven procedures of translating metaphors with Pedersen’s strategies.  In this study, Pedersen’s SL and TL-oriented translation strategies are considered to correspond to Venuti’s terminology of domestication and foreignization. Conclusions are drawn about the use of domesticating strategies in certain cultural words categories of both English and Swedish versions. The study devises the term “False Domestication”.

The study investigates to what extent the Scandinavian translators use the same methods when translating. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish translations of the French novel L’élégance du hérisson are analyzed using Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1958/1977) methodology. In the present study the translators are also questioned about so called situational factors that might have influenced the translation process and its outcome. There is a major focus on the methods that are characterized by indirect translation, since these in a clear way indicate differences. Results show that the translators use the same methods in 42 % of the cases in the analyzed material. Results also show that the indirect translation methods are widely used in the Danish target text and it hence also distances itself the farthest from the source text, whereas the Norwegian target text is rich in litteral translation and closest to the source text.

Uppsatsen utgör en explorativ studie av ämnet romhackning, en översättningsrelaterad verksamhet innefattande den av entusiaster utförda översättningen av tv-spel. Studiens tre syften är att kartlägga hur romhackning som fenomen ser ut i Sverige, hur svenska romhackare tenderar att arbeta, samt att granska de översättningar som tillkommit. Studien undersöker också om transkreation, en friare form av översättning vanlig inom tv-spelsöversättning, förekommit inom svensk romhackning. Tre metoder används: granskningar av webbsidor tillhörande grupper av svenska romhackare, intervjuer via e-post med individer verksamma inom romhackning, samt provspelningar av slutförda spelöversättningar i syfte att granska deras spelbarhet. Romhackare befinns oftast vara organiserade i form av olika grupper och fenomenet att i Sverige under den inledande halvan av 2000-talets första decennium ha varit förhållandevis utbrett för att år 2010, då studien utfördes, ha minskat betydligt i omfattning. Svenska romhackares arbetsmetoder befinns likna de som används av romhackare i andra länder, och visar sig i flera avseenden påminna om de arbetsmetoder som används av professionella spellokaliserare. Översättningarna som producerats har uteslutande haft engelska som källspråk, även om spel med japanska förlagor också förekommit. Översättningarna förefaller i många fall ha uppvisat en omfattande källspråksinriktning och i vissa fall innehålla språkliga misstag som negativt inverkar på spelarens förståelse av skeenden och uppgifter i spelvärlden. Transkreation tycks ej ha förekommit bland svenska romhackare, troligtvis på grund av att många av dessa betraktat en översättnings kvalitet som ”god” om den hållit sig förhållandevis nära källspråket. Det visar sig dock inte vara möjligt att uttala sig om huruvida romhackningsfenomenet 2010 permanent upphört att förekomma i Sverige.

 This article presents a translation into Swedish of the short story Дърво без корен by the Bulgarian author Nikolaj Chajtov. The translation is accompanied by a theoretical commentary, determining the purpose (skopos) of the translation, and discussing some of the translation problems encountered, mainly the translation of proper names and place names and the translation of colloquial features and dialect. Some of the discursive strategies chosen were intended to create resistancy, in line with Venuti’s (2008) concept of foreignization. 

This book addresses the complexities of the translation process. Informed by theoretical and methodological advances in translation studies, research on writing and the expertise paradigm, it explores translation as a text reproduction task. With triangulation of data from Russian-Swedish translation – think-aloud-methodology and computer logging of the writing process - it makes a cross-sectional comparison of subjects with different amount of translation experience, highlighting crucial aspects of professional competence and expertise in translation. The book also elaborates a method for a combined product and process analysis, applying it to the study of one type of explicitation: increased cohesive explicitness of the target text. The results have implications for translation theory and pedagogy.

Within the field of translation studies, it has traditionally been an important field of research to gain knowledge of how to deal with the same source text in different cultural contexts. In the spring of 1950 a Spanish translation of Mika Waltari's historical novel Sinuhe the Egyptian was published, and later that year, in Mexico, appeared a second version translated for the audience in Latin America as a response to the first. This paper is a case study and has undertaken to examine how and why these two translations in the same language differ. The translations have been compared in parallel with its source text and studied contrastively by a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis using the shift as a theoretical tool. The results of this case study show that the translations differ in certain aspects of the level of content and that these differences in all probability arose from the social-

political contexts in which the texts were produced. The study reveals also that there are striking similarities between these two target texts, mainly in form of deletions but also in terms of content, giving reason to believe that one of these two editions was used as some form of basis for the other. 

The world-famous Swedish author P. O. Enquist made his début as a writer of children´s books in 2003 with the adventurous story De tre grottornas berg (English title Three Cave Mountain, or: Grandfather and the Wolves). This book makes considerable use of oral imitation markers for adult and child characters both in dialogues and narration. The children´s voices are characterized by several ways of imitating children´s forms of expression and logic. The study compares the translation of different types of speech imitation (direct, indirect, free indirect) in the French and German translations. It concludes that the French version suppresses the child voices and thereby the polyphonic structure in favour of the more neutral narrator´s voice, while the German version to a very large extent maintains all the voices.

The Internet – when defined as a massive, uncontrolled database of information – is not a reliable source of information. Despite this, it has developed into the default terminology tool for most translators today. This study explores what criteria are used by translators to define website credibility and whether translation experience affects the criteria used. Three groups of differently experienced translators were asked to translate two technical texts from English to Swedish and document the websites they visited. The documentation was used as the basis for follow-up interviews, where the translators were asked to argue for their choices. The results show a significant similarity in application of criteria between student and experienced translators, indicating that other factors than experience are at play. Moreover, source text complexity does not affect the criteria used but rather to what extent research is performed. These results can be used to encourage further research into the information search behavior of translators.

The process in translating idioms and other fixed expressions has not yet been given much attention in process oriented translation studies. In this study involving three professional translators and three bilingual participants without any training or experience in translation, types and frequency of chosen translation strategies, the ways in which the participants arrived at their final choices, as well as possible differences between the two groups of participants were investigated, using a combination of product and process oriented methods such as keystroke logging with Translog and retrospection. Results indicate that paraphrasing and translation with an expression with similar meaning and similar or different form are the strategies most frequently used in both groups, and that there are only few occurrencies of preliminary versions in the writing process, but quite many examples of negotiation of meaning and style as expressed in the verbalizations. Compared with the novices the professional translators tended to be more cautious in their use of idiomatic equivalents and to consider aspects like target group or style and function of the target text more carefully.

TV and film are narrative media. Seeing a film means decoding the message that is carried by a complex mix of visual and verbal signs.

This means that subtitles can be seen as tools to understand the meaning of the film. It is therefore important to study not only the function of subtitles as such but also the interaction between the visual and the verbal in interpreting a film.

This thesis comprises a translation from English to Swedish followed by a commentary. The source text (ST) of the translation consists of the second chapter of Made in America (1998), a popularised language history by Bill Bryson. The commentary includes an analysis of the ST and the target text (TT), as well as a discussion of the translation process as a whole, and of the translation strategies applied in order to solve the translation problems of the ST. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on Toury’s notion of norms (1995), from which the following principle for translating is conceived: to transfer the ST information as faithfully as possible but with the modifications necessary to accommodate the source language competence level of the TT readers, which is estimated to be relatively low. As such, the principle for translating is mainly characterised by adequacy, but leans towards acceptability. In the concluding section of the commentary, the TT is deemed to be consistent with this principle since it constitutes an adequate text with evident traits of acceptability.

Trots att kokbokens död har proklamerats av kritiker under minst ett decennium nu, fortsätter travarna av färgglada kokböcker varje år att växa sig höga på bokmässan i Göteborg. Det har sagts förut och det tål att sägas igen – globalt säljs varje dag 1,5 miljoner böcker inom ämnes-området måltidslitteratur. Kokboksmarknaden har globalt ökat med 5 till 10 % per år, medan den totala bokmarknaden istället har stagnerat. Och Sverige är det land i världen som ger ut den största mängden kokböcker per capita, tre gånger fler kokböcker per capita än i Tyskland och fyra gånger fler än i Frankrike. Måltidslitteraturen är den kvantitativt viktigaste enskilda kategorin inom svensk sakprosa och är därför en genre väl värd att undersöka.

         Föredraget presenterar några preliminära resultat från mitt nuvarande projekt Översättningens sociala praktiker som undersöker översättning av sakprosa, speciellt kokböcker. Undersökningens syfte är att kartlägga de översättningsnormer som styr kokboköversättarnas arbete. Ett första steg i undersökningen blir då att rekonstruera det svenska måltidslitteraturfältet under det senaste decenniet.

 Studien är teoretiskt förankrad i Even-Zohars polysystemteori (Even-Zohar 1990; Toury 1995, 1998) och Pierre Bourdieus kultursociologi (Bourdieu 1986, 1992; Gouanvic 1997, 1999; Heilborn 2008; Merkle 2008; Sapiro 2008). Projektet undersöker också några av de nationella och internationella konsekreringsprocesser, som är avgörande för hur sakprosatexter finner sin väg in i det svenska kulturella systemet via översättning (Casanova 1999, 2004).

This paper deals with the effects of the uneven flows of translations between language groups within the world system of translation. It examines the necessary consecration mechanisms for translation taking place from one periphery, notably from the French Caribbean literature to another periphery on the global translation field, the Swedish literature. The paper tests the hypotheses that a double consecration of dominant literatures is necessary for this kind of translation to take place. In the case of the translation of French Caribbean literature into Swedish, this kind of literature needs to be consecrated primarily within the French literary culture and secondly – due to the strong impact of British and American literature and culture in Sweden – within the British and American literary culture, consequently a double consecration. In examining the consecration mechanisms of the three novels of Maryse Condé translated into Swedish in the three involved cultures and in studying the paratexts of the French source text and the English and Swedish translations the hypotheses of the necessity of double consecration for this kind of literature to be translated into Swedish is confirmed. However, given the limited material of the study, further research is needed to verify the double consecration hypotheses put forward in the paper.

Antologin presenterar några perspektiv som översatta och tolkade texter kan studeras från. Perspektiven eller infallsvinklarna skiljer sig åt från artikel till artikel. samtliga författare anser dock att det är lika viktigt att studera det sammanhang där översättningarna blir till och tas emot som att studera de översatta texterna i sig.

De åtta artiklarna tar bland annat upp skönlitterära översättningar av Nobelpristagaren Nadine Gordimer, sakprosa i produktbroschyrer och tolkens roll, här i en tv-intervju med Michail Gorbatjov. Boken vänder sig främst till studerande inom översättningsvetenskap och redan verksamma översättare men också till alla med intresse för översättarens arbete.

Artikeln presenterar en multimodal översättningsanalys av The Naked Chef (KT) och Den nakna kocken (MT) av Jamie Oliver. Analysen undersöker huruvida samspelet mellan de semiotiska resurserna text och bild förändras i och med översättnigen och vilken betydelse denna eventuella förändring får för hur den nakna kockens s k Persona konstrueras inom den svenska kulturen. Teoretisk bygger analysen på Hallidays funktionella grammatik (1994), Kress och van Leeuwens semiotiska bildanalyser (1996) och Tourys normbegrepp (1995) inom Translation Studies. Undersökningen visar att källtexten översatts med en adekvansinriktad översättningsstrategi. Små förändringar i konstruktionen av den nakna kockens persona på svenska kan dock skönjas. Källtextens spjuveraktiga pojkaktighet som i den textuella resursen uttrycks via språkliga slanguttryck mildras och feminiseras på svenska.

The Skopos theory, as formulated by Vermeer (1984), stresses that all translations have a purpose to fulfil. However, how this purpose is fulfilled depends on the strategy used by the translator. In order to see the effect of two different purposes for one and the same text, a study, conducted as two parallel annotated translations, was carried out on a scientific text about Vikings in Ireland. Nord‟s (2005) term and understanding of „translation loop‟ was used in order to pinpoint when and how often the different skopoi made it necessary to stop, make a loop, and adjust the translation strategy. The quantitative study shows a pattern where most loops occur at the start and at the end of the translation. The qualitative study of the translation loops shows that cultural aspects originate most loops, and they often demand individual strategies.

This thesis is an empirical study on gender neutral translation at the European Parliament. In order to translate gender neutraly, the translator can write he or she, use passive-constructions or plural. In order to be able to analyze how a translator translates gender neutraly, I will first present how gender and gender neutral language is defined, how gender affects translation, which aspects are of importance for Swedish and German, as well as terminological aspects. The theoretical background is based on feminist linguistic and translation theory such as Simon, Thüne and Leonardi, Jobin and von Flotow. The research material and method are based on internal documents of the European Parliament, videlicet the Rules of Procedure and a broschure on gender neutral language. In addition, I interviewed translators of the European Parliament in Luxembourg, two of them being German and two of them being Swedish. It can be said that not all of the given recommendations for gender neutral language are used and that the usage differs in German and Swedish. Recommendations such as passive-constructions and plural are applied in both languages, while nominalization was considered to be questionable. Furthermore, the usage of functions, pronouns and adjectives in the Rules of Procedure was analyzed. In Swedish translations, the use of he and she is quite common, while it is not recommended for German, nor is the usage of Binnen-I for that matter. Summing up, it can be said that it is easier to translate and write gender neutraly in Swedish as in German and that all translators pay attention to the given recommendations and translate as gender neutral as possible, which is also reflected in the translation of the Rules of Procedure.

Non-professional translations (here in the sense of translations done by a person who has not received training as a translator and does not work as one) can be assumed to differ notably from professional translations in several ways. One is the use of hegding markers before translated words or expressions to indicate that the proposed solution is not a completely accurate rendering. This paper compares the use of the marker "betyder ungefär" (Swedish for "roughly translated"; literally: "means roughly") in non-professional translations, illustrated by examples from Swedish Wikipedia-sites and the website of the Swedish quality newspaper Dagens Nyheter, and professional translations of EU texts. In a concluding discussion the use of hedging markers is related to different models of translation ethics.

Prefaces and afterwords constitute an arena which provides the opportunity for literary translators to comment on their translations. Such comments are the focus of this contribution, in which they are studied from three different perspectives. Firstly, an overview is given of the occurrence of these comments in contemporary translated Swedish literature. Secondly, a number of comments are studied in detail from the prespectives of role theroy and Bourdieu's cultural sociology. Thirdly, three interviews with publishers are presented. These interviews shed light on the conditions for the writing of such comments from the perspective of the most obvious power-holders in the field. It is shown that the boundaries for these comments on the translation by literary translators in contemporary Sweden are narrow in several respects.

The aim of this paper is to identify and describe cognitive processes occurring during the translation of a complex wordplay. Humorous texts have received little attention in empirical translation process research. This exploratory study seeks to develop a research methodology that is suited for the empirical study of wordplay. The experiment comprised the translation of a short adversarial wordplay by three groups of translation students. Their discussions were recorded and analyzed. The results indicate that students possess a high level of awareness of the importance of linguistic structures in creating the desired humorous effect, even though they cannot always translate this theoretical knowledge into practice. Another finding was that collaboration helps students overcome mental blockages and supports creative solutions.

Television commentaries on the winter sport of biathlon (comprising both skiing and shooting) show typical traits for sports language in general, but also have their own characteristics, drawn from the two activities that are combined in this sport. In this empirical study, Swedish and German television comments on biathlon are studied with the main attention being given to how motion events are depicted. Differences concerning the focusing on endpoints are observed and discussed, as these relate to, for example, a so-called process-out-of-product perspective, dynamic verbs and silence. The results are discussed in relation to newer theories on the organization of information at the discourse level (von Stutterheim, Carroll & Klein 2009) which indicate that even closely related Germanic languages differ from each other in this respect.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether different text types bring different focuses to the fore in the cognitive processes during translation. Four translator students were thus asked to translate one operative and one informative text while verbalizing their thoughts. The verbalizations were recorded and later transcribed into so called think-aloud protocols (TAPs). The analysis of the TAPs showed that the participants focused on similar aspects regardless of the source text, which indicates that the text type did not have any significant effect on the translation process in the study at hand.

Uppsatsen är en översättningssociologisk studie om översättningsnormer vid granskningsfasen vid Europeiska kommissionen (EK) och består av två delstudier. Den första studien är textbaserad och fokuserar på revideringar vid granskningsfasen. Materialet utgörs av fyra översättningar i tre stadier från franska till svenska från EK. Den andra delstudien består av intervjuer med två översättare vid EK. Metoden till den första delstudien är hämtad från Nordman (2009). Resultatet visar att majoriteten av revideringarna återfinns på textnivå, samt att den vanligaste normen är språkriktighet. Intervjuerna ger till viss del en annan bild av granskningsfasen. De samlingar med riktlinjer som finns tillgängliga framstår i båda delstudierna som värdefulla.

The study deals with the translation of the five first chapters of Rapt à Bamako, an authentic translation assignment which will be published by Bokförlaget Trasten during fall of 2010. Based on relevant theoretical considerations, the purpose and context of the source text, a survey of parallel texts and finally a style analysis, a translation strategy for the task was formulated. The contextual and lexical levels of the translation turned out to be the most problematic ones, but the solution to the problem could often be found in the translation strategy.

This paper investigates how conference interpreters with Swedish as A-language working in international institutions understand the concept of expertise. Ten interpreters with Swedish mother tongue and working in the Swedish booth at the European institutions were interviewed in two focus groups (n=5) about their opinion of professional identity. The result was then compared to the findings of a survey of the official discourse of conference interpreting at the European institutions and the International Association of Conference Interpreter (AIIC). Some possible norm-related activities were identified. This paper investigates how conference interpreters with Swedish as A-language1 working in international institutions understand the concept of expertise. Ten interpreters with Swedish mother tongue and working in the Swedish booth at the European institutions were interviewed in two focus groups (n=5) about their opinion of professional identity. The result was then compared to the findings of a survey of the official discourse of conference interpreting at the European institutions and the International Association of Conference Interpreter (AIIC). Some possible norm-related activities were identified.

This paper is based on a study aiming at testing the practicability of two methods and their possible applicability for investigating expertise in simultaneous interpretation. The two methods being Ivanova’s (ref. 1) method for investigating processing problems and their corresponding strategies as well as monitoring, and Carroll’s (ref. 2) method for measuring the quality in machine translation as compared with human translation. The methods were adapted to the context of the study.

This pilot study describes the assessment of interpreting with an application of the scales originally devised by Carroll (1966) for machine translation. Study participants (interpreters, n=6; non-interpreters, n=6) use Carroll’s scales to grade interpreted renditions (n=9) in simultaneous mode by conference interpreters with three different levels of experience. Grading was conducted using transcripts of the interpreted renditions. Although the numbers of graders and graded renditions were small, the data indicates that interpreters and laypeople agree on the grading of intelligibility and informativeness in interpreted renditions.

In this article, the performance of three simultaneous interpreters is studied. Excerpts of their performance at interpreting training and today are studied. Furthermore, their present day performance is compared with other experienced interpreters. It is assumed that the three interpreters may be possible experts according to the expertise theory (Ericsson, Charness & Hoffman 2007). However, the results in this study indicate that their development over time may not support the assumption that they are experts in the strictest sense of the theory.