Stockholms universitet
Institutionen för litteraturvetenskap och idéhistoria
B RINGING H ARRY P OTTER TO S WEDEN
THE HARRY POTTER SEPTOLOGY ILLUMINATED BY ITS SWEDISH TRANSLATION
Linnea Gustavsson Kralik
magisteruppsats i litteraturvetenskap framlagd för Per-Olof Mattsson Handledare Janina Orlov juni 2014
A
BSTRACTThis paper contrasts J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series in the English original with its Swedish translation, by Lena Fries-Gedin. After an initial presentation of related research, some concepts such as implied narrator, implied reader, as well as
intertextuality in translation and dual audience in children’s literature are explained.
These concepts are applied to the two bodies of text to examine if they are identical in both the English and the Swedish versions. Some translational strategies are
presented, and looking at examples from the texts it is discerned which strategies are being used. The Swedish translation’s use of formal ‘you’ to reflect the quality of inter-character relationships is discussed and examined, and the portrayal of sociolects in the original and translation are compared, concluding that the dialects are
transformed into average spoken Swedish, and that adolescent speech is only partially transposed from the English original. There is also a comparison of differences in register, where the mentioned examples show that there is a loss of fluidity in style, and that the tone of the Swedish text is more dated than the English text. Some comparisons to other translations of Harry Potter are made, citing examples from other research, to view the Swedish translation in an international context. A brief comparison of the graphic design differences of layout is discussed, concluding that the Swedish design is likely more appealing to children.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1BACKGROUND 1
1.2OBJECTIVE 3
1.3MATERIAL 3
1.4METHOD 8
1.5PREVIOUS RESEARCH 9
CHAPTER TWO:THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1TRANSLATING CHILDREN’S LITERATURE,
SELECTED CONCEPTS 15
2.2 THE IMPLIED NARRATOR & THE IMPLIED READER 19
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS 23
3.1SELECT CONCEPTS FROM TRANSLATION THEORY
APPLIED TO HARRY POTTER 24 3.2DIFFERENCES IN REGISTER AND PROBLEMATIC PASSAGES 27
3.3 SOCIOLECTS 35
3.4THE FORMAL ‘YOU’ IN SWEDISH 41 3.5RETAINING FOREIGN TERMS IN SWEDISH TEXT 44 3.6DUAL AUDIENCES IN HARRY POTTER 50
3.7DIFFERENCES IN LAYOUT 53
3.8 WHO IS THE IMPLIED READER HERE? 54 3.9 WHO IS THE IMPLIED NARRATOR HERE? 57
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION 64
BIBLIOGRAPHY 66
APPENDIX — EXAMPLE OF LAYOUT DIFFERENCES 70
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has become a global phenomenon of epic proportions. The books have been translated into over 70 languages, 1 among them Swedish. It is tricky to assign the novels to a specific genre, there are several at play
— fantasy, Bildungsroman, Children’s Literature, British boarding school story, mystery, thriller, adventure, and Christian fantasy, to name a few. 2 The author uses unique invented words to help create a parallel magical world hidden within our reality, while still keeping us grounded in a very tangible British environment. The series consists of seven books, each increasing in complexity and intensity. The translation of such a corpus is certainly an extraordinary challenge and I intend in this paper to have a closer look at the Swedish version, from several viewpoints.
The basic plot follows a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, and their quest to defeat Lord Voldemort, a Dark wizard who wants to attain immortality, conquer the world, and destroy anyone who stands in his way — above all, Harry Potter.
The translation into Swedish was performed by Lena Fries-Gedin, a well-known professional in the field with experience in both adult and children’s literature. The hype surrounding the Harry Potter series brought with it a great deal of pressure to translate the books rapidly into other languages, which is certainly an aspect to keep in mind when analyzing the texts.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter
2Genre discussion, see for example John Granger, Harry Potter’s Bookshelf: The Great Books Be-
hind the Hogwarts Adventures (New York 2009) Chapter 1 [this e-‐book contains no page num-‐
bers; I will refer to chapters instead]; Anne Hiebert Alton’s “Playing the Genre Game: Generic Fu-‐
sions of the Harry Potter Series”, in Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, ed. Elizabeth E. Heilman, 2nd Edition (New York 2009); A. S. Byatt’s article in the New York Times: “Harry Potter and the Childish Adult”, Jul. 7, 2003; as well as the student paper J K Rowling och fantasygenren: En gen-
reteoretisk studie av Harry Potter written by Sofia Hård at Mittuniversitetet 2009 (text in Swed-‐
ish).
Additionally I think it is important to mention that it is not self-evident that the whole HP septology in translation is translated by one and the same translator; in other countries there have been different translators working on different books, for example the Russian and Italian series have endured a switch in translators.3 So it is very encouraging that the Swedish HP corpus was handled by one single translator.
This suggests continuity and a pervasive methodology throughout the corpus.
Furthermore, it is important to stress the impact the publisher and editor have on a translated text. Often in reviews and evaluations, conclusions are reached where the
‘translator’ is pointed out as having made objectionable decisions, but I want to emphasize here that the editor and publisher also play substantial roles in shaping a translation. Therefore it makes more sense talking about the characteristics of a text and not pointing fingers at individual translators. In the following, whenever I mention the ‘translator’ or Lena Fries-Gedin, I also imply the roles the editor and publisher have played in the process.
Since I come from an American background I will use American spelling in this paper, however, when quoting sources I will naturally use the spelling precisely as it is used in the original sources, whether British or American.
What is special about translating literature for young readers? Adults are aware when reading a translation that they are in fact reading a translation, and not everything has to be explained — any foreign words give it flavor, and much can be deduced by its context. Adults are more forgiving and will tolerate difficult texts to a higher extent than younger readers, and keep on reading long after a younger reader would have given up, an issue which is explored in Riita Oittinen’s book.4
Translating for children, in contrast, requires more explanations inserted into the text. But what about literature for the age group between child and adult? Do you explain everything, or do you assume the adolescent reader is mature enough to understand the foreign elements — or otherwise to look them up? The translator’s
3 Italian translator switch is mentioned in Katrine Brøndsted and Cay Dollerup, “The Names in Harry Potter”, in Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 12 (2004), the Russian switch in Steven Goldstein’s article “Translating Harry, Part I: The Language of Magic” in Translorial, Dec. 1, 2004 accessed online: http://translorial.com/2004/12/01/translating-‐harry-‐part-‐i-‐the-‐language-‐of-‐
magic/
4 Riita Oittinen, Translating for Children (New York, e-‐book edition 2002), p. 33.
choices — along with their publisher’s and editor’s — reveal what they think of adolescent readers: are they simply big children that need everything explained? Or are they practically adults, prepared to make their own deductions when they come across an unknown phrase?
1.2OBJECTIVE
The aim of this paper is to look at the Swedish translation of the Harry Potter novels from a number of viewpoints. What is different? What is the same? Which aspects of the text are particularly challenging, and how has the translator dealt with them? We will also put various issues into context by hearing about translations into a few other languages and see how the Swedish translation contrasts. For example we will look at the use of formal and informal address, where in English there is only one type of
‘you,’ and see how this manifests in some other translations as well as in Swedish.
Sociolects present in the original will be examined in the translation, to study how they have been treated. Among other areas I want to examine, I also aim to briefly compare the visual differences of the books’ covers, layout, and typography.
Every text is written with a hypothetical reader in mind. I want to take a closer look at the Harry Potter translation to compare the implied reader in the original text with the implied reader in the translation, specifically posing the question if there is any difference. There is also a voice in the text, telling the story, and I want to compare the character of that voice — the implied narrator — in the original and the translation.
There are a wide range of approaches available to apply to these two bodies of text, but the restrictions of space oblige me to limit my analysis. I will confine the study to largely two viewpoints, selected concepts from translation theory applied to children’s literature, and the concepts of the implied narrator and implied reader, as well as considering how the translation fits into an international context alongside a number of other translations.
1.3 MATERIAL
Given that J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is so universally well known, a presentation might be unnecessary. However, to make a number of assertions in this paper, certain elements of the story need to be familiar, and so a description of the series follows below.
The seven Harry Potter novels are Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007).
The narrative begins with Harry as an orphan unaware that he has magical powers.
He grows up with his non-magical — or ‘muggle’ — relatives, the Dursleys, who mistreat him and keep the truth of his identity from him. His parents were killed by the Lord Voldemort when Harry was a baby, leaving him with a lightening-shaped scar on his forehead. Harry’s reluctant guardians, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, who want nothing to do with magic, lead him to believe his parents died in a car accident. Their obese son Dudley is overindulged beyond comprehension, while Harry is systematically neglected and forced to live in a cupboard under the stairs.
Harry finds out about his secret past, when he is invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — a school that reaches out to those who have inborn magical talents. Hagrid, a half-giant who works at the boarding school, is the one who on Harry’s 11th birthday delivers the letter from Hogwarts informing him that he is welcome to start. And it is now that Harry finds out about his past, about the existence of a secret, magical parallel world, and about his being a wizard. He learns about the evil Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard so universally feared that most magic people even fear to say his name, and choose to refer to him as ‘You-Know-Who.’
The reader finds out that Voldemort’s Death Curse aimed at baby Harry ricocheted back and mortally wounded Voldemort’s physical body — though his spirit is kept alive through the use of Horcruxes, a kind of dark magic. As the story develops, Voldemort’s strength grows and he finds a way to resume physical shape. It is eventually disclosed why Voldemort wants to kill Harry — because of a prophecy stating that one of them must die so the other can live. The fact that Harry
inexplicably survived Voldemort’s Death Curse as a baby, makes him a living legend in the magic world, which is artfully contrasted with his very plain name.
The first six books take place largely at the castle of Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry, which becomes Harry’s true home. Each novel covers one school year, and each year Harry — and the reader alongside him — encounters new people and places inside and outside the school. The scope of the stories grows each year, and the complexity and intensity of the storyline increases with each book. The seventh and last volume departs from the familiar setting of the school, and
documents the arduous search for, and destruction of, Voldemort’s Horcruxes — fragments of his soul he created in order to secure immortality — and ultimately the decisive battle and defeat of the evil enemy.
The reader follows, from Harry’s perspective, his development from an 11-year- old, grappling with the ins and outs of the wizarding world, to the almost-adult teenager. Harry treasures the feeling of ‘family’ of his student-house, Gryffindor. His friends Ron and Hermione by his side, he deciphers, battles and overcomes one magical adversity after another. Each school year ends with Harry confronting and defeating either Voldemort or some of his followers, the Death Eaters.
Harry finds a mentor in headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and an enemy in fellow student Draco Malfoy, as well as in the sinister professor Severus Snape. An escaped wizard convict named Sirius Black causes chaos in Book 3, but ultimately turns out to be not only wrongly accused, but also to be Harry’s godfather and the closest thing to
‘family,’ until he is tragically killed in Book 5.
The books feature a procession of cameo roles performed by numerous magical characters — some known from legends and myths, others invented by Rowling.
There are ghosts (largely benevolent), unicorns, mermaids, a mischievous poltergeist, dragons, goblins, werewolves, centaurs; and also fictitious creatures created by Rowling — boggarts (shape-shifters who transform into whatever the closest person is most afraid of); Dementors (who are guards of the wizard prison Azkaban, joy- extracting, floating mean beings whose greatest wish is to suck people’s souls out with a kiss); thestrals (skeletal Pegasuses who are only visible to those who have seen death), and many others. Rowling’s impressive imagination is obvious in her
suggestive coining of names for creatures, as well as her frequent use of alliteration, assonance, rhyming and wordplay. The author constructs a very tangible framework full of realistic details to support this magical menagerie, with vivid descriptions of sensory perceptions — the taste of the mouth-watering food, the cold clamminess of the dungeons, the feel of the wind whipping Harry’s cheek as he flies on his
broomstick, the feeling of snuggling down in his warm welcoming four-poster bed in the Gryffindor tower. Such concrete details make the implausible, fictitious elements all the more believable. “The ability to combine fantasy and reality is one of
Rowling’s greatest strengths, and she makes it effortless for readers to invoke their willing suspension of disbelief” writes Anne Hiebert Alton.5
The students in Hogwarts learn how to utilize their magical talents, using their magic wands and uttering specific spells. The names of these spells are interesting, many invite interpretation — either because they resemble common ‘magician’s’ phrases — such as ‘Avada Kedavra’ being the Death Curse, which sounds like ‘abra cadabra’ but also like ‘cadaver’; or containing echoes of primarily Latin, for example ‘Accio,’ the summoning charm, makes objects come flying to you, meaning ‘I summon’ in Latin;
and yet others that are simply intriguing nonsense, such as ‘Alohomora,’ a charm used to unlock locks. The vast majority of the spells are inspired by Latin, so those readers who have studied it in school are rewarded with extra insight and amusement.
Subjects the students are taught range from Charms, Potions, Transfiguration, and Care of Magical Creatures, to History of Magic, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, and Divination.
The world portrayed in the books in clearly British. Susanne Schmid comments that the distinct feel of England is one of the main attractions of Harry Potter. “What is sold is an image of Britain as a brand and of Britishness […], a set of local values and images that are marketed on a global scale.”6 A translator approaching the Harry
5 Anne Hiebert Alton, “Playing the Genre Game: Generic Fusions of the Harry Potter Series”, Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, ed. Elizabeth E. Heilman, 2nd Edition (New York 2009), p.
214.
6 Susanne Schmid, “Stunning or Ridiculous? The Marketing of Global Harry Potter”, in the online journal EESE, accessed on 21 Jan. 2014
Potter texts is certainly going to have an interesting job ahead, considering not only the permeating British atmosphere, but also the vast fantasy world Rowling invented, with such a linguistic extravaganza. As Daniel Hahn puts it, the imaginative creativity in the novels poses for the translators
a number of challenges that most books don’t present. There are countless made-up words, for a start. What’s the Turkish for “golden snitch”, or the Hungarian for “Bludger”, or the Welsh for “Quaffle” [terms from the wizard sport ‘Quidditch’], the Catalan for “Sickles and Knuts”
[wizard money], or the Hindu for “Floo Powder” [a wizarding means of transportation through fireplaces using magical powder]? And then there’s the wordplay, the prophecies and rhymes (like those of the sorting hat — the sombrero seleccionador). There are also the spells and the anagrams. /…/ [T]his is no ordinary translation job [.]7
Sofia Helgegren explains in her thesis that “the books portray a very British world, and one question the translator needs to ask himself or herself is if this should or should not be retained in translation.”8
I would also like to mention that newer editions of the Swedish translation have since come out, and taking a quick glance at one recently in a bookstore, I happened to notice a difference in the wording.9 Fries-Gedin has been bombarded with feedback,10 and perhaps she has integrated some alterations. However, since it is unfeasible for me to compare all the different editions (there are also a number of newer English editions), I will focus on the first publication of the translations.
http://webdoc.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic29/schmid/1_2009.html, under heading 2, Britishness: A Magic Brand.
7 Daniel Hahn, “¿Hagrid, qué es el quidditch?” in The Guardian, Jan. 27, 2007.
8 Sofia Helgegren, Tracing Translation Universals and Translator Development by Word Aligning a Harry Potter Corpus (Linköping University, Dept of Computer and Information Science) 2005, p.
6.
9 The dilemma of ‘The Mirror of Erised’ — where ‘Erised’ spelled backwards is ‘Desire’, Stone Chapter 12. The Swedish first edition retains this English word, and Fries-‐Gedin has commented on the difficulty of finding a satisfactory solution here. She rejected: “Eksnö(Önske) spegeln or Snaksnö-‐(Önskans)spegel as too strange in Swedish, not to mention Mörd(Dröm)spegeln, which are too close to nörd (nerd) or mördare (murderer).” Interview by Sarah Death, “Dunkare, Klonken och den Gyllene Kvicken: Translating the Harry Potter Phenomenon into Swedish”, in Swedish Book Review 2002: Supplement translation. As I mentioned, recently at a bookstore I picked up a new Swedish edition, and saw that it was now called ‘Mördspegeln,’ which she said she’d rejected. It would appear that she changed her mind. (But how about ‘Rägebspegeln / Begär’?)
10 Also mentioned in the aforementioned interview with Sarah Death; in Harald Bergius’
interview, “Hon tar sig friheter med Harry Potter,” in Dagens Nyheter, July 27, 2003, as well as Ossi Carp’s interview “Tyngre språk för var Potterbok,” in Dagens Nyheter, July 21, 2007.
As I will be frequently quoting from the Harry Potter books, I will refer to them accordingly: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as Stone, and its Swedish translation as Sten; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as Chamber and the Swedish version as Kammare; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as Prisoner and the Swedish corresponding text as Fången; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Goblet, and Bägaren, respectively; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as Phoenix and in Swedish, Fenix; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as Prince, and Prinsen in Swedish; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as Hallows, and Dödsrelikerna in Swedish. The abbreviation HP will be used for the Harry Potter series, without italicizing.
A complete, in-depth analysis of such a massive corpus (some 3400 pages for the English original text, and the Swedish translation is over 4500 pages) is not feasible in this limited space, however, I am sure the examples I have chosen will be
representative enough to illustrate the conclusions this paper intends to display.
1.4 METHOD
The main theoretical framework I intend to use in my research comes from two areas:
selected concepts from translation theory applied to children’s literature, and the study of narrative communication.
The world of translation theory is fast growing and too complex to cover in this limited space, so I have chosen segments that are relevant and applicable to HP in order to make my arguments. I will focus on translation theory in regards to children’s literature as well as narratology. I will discuss the concept of implied reader as well as implied narrator, and investigate if the ones in the original text are identical to the ones in the translation. I will also discuss a number of concepts such as the dual audience in children’s literature (child and adult); the treatment of register in
translated texts; dialect and speech in translated texts; as well as the formal ‘you’ and informal ‘you’ in Swedish where English only has one universal ‘you’ and how it plays out in translation.
Eirlys E. Davies has written a study of Harry Potter into several languages, creating a number of categories to structure her research.11 These categories will also be put to use in my discussion of the differences between the English and Swedish Harry Potter.
Some abbreviations common in translation studies will be used in this paper:
SL = source language (the language a text is being translated from, in this case, English)
ST = source text (the text that will be translated, in its ‘original’ state) TL = target language (the language a text is being translated into, in this paper, the focus is on Swedish)
TT = target text (the resulting text once the translation has been performed)
Also, since I will be frequently comparing translated words with the original, I will mark the segment I want to discuss in bold. Should the original contain italics or any other emphasis, I will state this. Otherwise, if there is no comment, it is my emphasis.
1.5 PREVIOUS RESEARCH
There has been a considerate amount of academic work relating to this subject, which I will in part use as a starting point for my paper. There have been a number of fascinating studies of Rowling’s Harry Potter series translated into other languages, which are productive to contrast with the Swedish TT. The study by Anne-Lise Feral of the French translation of Stone offers an interesting example of how the cultural values present in the original text can be adapted by the translator to fit their
individual assessment of acceptability in the target culture. 12 The Russian translations of Stone — one official and two unofficial translations — are juxtaposed in Judith Inggs’ study, where she pays particular attention to cultural references and how the three translations deal with them.13 Lia Wyler, the Brazilian-Portuguese translator of
11 Eirlys E. Davies, “A Goblin or a Dirty Nose? Translations of Harry Potter” in The Translator, Vol.
9, nr 1, 2003, pp. 65-‐100.
12Anne-‐Lise Feral, “The Translator’s ‘Magic’ Wand: Harry Potter’s Journey from English into French”, in Meta: Translators’ Journal, vol. 51, nr 3, Sept. 2006, paragraph 2 and throughout the article. Accessed online: http://www.erudit.org/revue/Meta/2006/v51/n3/013553ar.html
13Judith Inggs “From Harry to Garri: Strategies for the Transfer of Culture and Ideology in Russian Translations of Two English Fantasy Stories”, Meta: Translators’ Journal, Vol. 48, nr 1-‐2, May 2003. Accessed online: http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2003/v48/n1-‐2/006975ar.html
the HP series, has given her side of the story, describing her experiences and strategies along the way in an article in Meta: Translator’s Journal.14
Several studies have focused on the issue of the names in the Harry Potter series. For example Katrine Brøndsted and Cay Dollerup have compared the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German and Italian translations of the first four HP books, in their article
“The Names in Harry Potter.” Their conclusion was that various approaches were discernable, and that the practice of keeping many character names in English had the negative result that non-English-speaking readers wouldn’t experience the same effect as the British readers. “Most translators have transferred the British names directly and thus made it impossible for readers without a knowledge of English to recognize the ‘Britishness’ pervading the names.” 15 They also reported that the movie company Warner Bros., who bought the rights to Harry Potter, put restraints on many of the translators by making them sign contracts agreeing to keep the original names. The idea behind this was to help create a unified image, to facilitate the film and
merchandizing side of HP, but this understandably affected the resulting texts and impact the translations have on readers.
Nancy K. Jentsch, in her analysis of the books translated into French, Spanish and German, compares the approaches used by the respective translators. She looks particularly at Rowling’s special invented words, as well as how the Britishness comes through. Jentsch discusses the dilemma of the formal and informal ‘you’ that exists in these three aforementioned languages, and how the matter is dealt with in HP, which obviously only has one type of ‘you.’ Using an informal ‘you’ signals a certain closeness in the relationship, so it is fascinating to see how each translation, the French, German and Spanish, interprets the characters’ relationships — it is not always interpreted the same. Jentsch also covers the issue of dialects in HP, lamenting
14 Lia Wyler, “Harry Potter for Children, Teenagers and Adults”, in Meta: Translators’ Journal, vol.
48, nr 1-‐2, May 2003. Accessed online: http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2003/v48/n1-‐
2/006954ar.html
15 Katrine Brøndsted and Cay Dollerup, “The Names in Harry Potter”, in Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 12. (2004), p. 61.
that none of the three translations in her study let the character Hagrid speak with an accent in the TTs. 16
Eirlys E. Davies has written a study called “A Goblin or a Dirty Nose? The Treatment of Culture-Specific References in Translations of the Harry Potter Books”, which seems to be already iconic in the HP translation research field; almost every single analysis I’ve found refers to this article. Davies uses the term ‘culture-specific items’
or CSIs to facilitate the analysis of culturally loaded names and expressions in translation — food, traditions, names, how holidays are celebrated etc. — things that are ‘typical’ and self-evident in one particular culture but not necessarily known in other countries. She discusses various policies and strategies concerning the translation of culturally fixed words, rejecting other previous terminology and
division lines. Davies creates categories of her own to describe various approaches to challenging translational situations, using HP to illustrate, taking examples from an impressive number of languages.17 Her conclusion is that a “compromise involving a mixture of procedures seems to be the favoured way of incorporating local colour without alienating target readers.”18 Nonetheless, she expresses a wish that translators would pay more attention to the big picture, and consider ahead of time which type of strategy they want to use when confronted with the various categories of CSIs, instead of solving them case by case and making a very inconsistent and unpredictable
impression. 19
I find Davies’ categories logical, and will put them to use in my analysis. (I noticed incidentally that Davies on page 79 mistakenly referred to Mrs Norris as
Dumbledore’s cat, although she is actually the caretaker Argus Filch’s.)
Evelina Jaleniauskienė and Vilma Čičelytė have written an informative paper called
“The Strategies for Translating Proper Names in Children’s Literature”, where they analyze character names in contemporary children’s fiction, including Stone,
16 Nancy K. Jentsch, “Harry Potter and the Tower of Babel: Translating the Magic” in The Translation of Children’s Literature: A Reader, ed. Gillian Lathey, (Clevedon 2006)
17 Eirlys E Davies., “A Goblin or a Dirty Nose? Translations of Harry Potter” in The Translator, Vol.
9, nr 1, 2003, pp. 65-‐100.
18 Ibid., p. 97.
19 Ibid., p. 94.
translated into Lithuanian. They make some interesting observations about translation strategies that are helpful for putting translation issues into perspective.20
Martin B. Fischer’s “‘Gulpin’ Gargoyles’ — Language varieties in the Harry Potter novels and their translations” is a detailed investigation into how dialects, teen vocabulary, and foreigners’ accents are portrayed in the translations of Stone,
Chamber, Prisoner and Goblet into French, Spanish and Catalan. 21 Fischer describes Rowling’s way of conveying sociolects in writing as “pseudo-transcription”, seeing as it is not technically phonetically transcribed. For example, the character Stan
Shunpike speaks with a Cockney accent, and Fischer lists the features, one of them however is the glottal stop instead of -tt- in for instance butter (which becomes
‘bu’er’). Fischer mentions this aspect of Cockney dialect,22 yet interestingly doesn’t mention that for example in Stan’s line which he (Fischer) quotes, “’Woss that on your ‘ead?’”23 — if it was authentically transcribed, would have had a glottal stop at the end of ‘that’. So this is an example showing it is only a pseudo-transcription. He also looks at the issue of formal / informal ‘you’ and finds some fascinating examples where one translation pegs characters’ relationship as deserving the use of informal
‘you,’ but in another language not.
Gillian Lathey wrote an article inspired by a gathering of translators comparing and discussing various languages’ treatment of HP. She discusses the specific Englishness and how it is rendered in the TT’s, as well as names, dialect and cover design
differences in different countries.24 She has additionally written a study in Children’s Literature in Translation, analyzing historical and contemporary translator’s prefaces
20 Evelina Jaleniauskienė and Vilma Čičelytė, “The Strategies for Translating Proper Names in Children’s Literature”, in Studies About Languages (Kalbų Studijos), issue: 15 / 2009, accessed online: www.ceeol.com.
21 Martin B. Fischer, “‘Gulpin’ Gargoyles’ — Language varieties in the Harry Potter novels and their translations”, in TRANSÜD. Arbeiten zur Theorie und Praxis des Übersetzens und
Dolmetschens, Volume 48: Translating Fictional Dialogue for Children and Young People, ed.
Martin B. Fischer and Maria Wirf Naro (Berlin 2012)
22 Ibid., p. 56.
23 Ibid., p. 60.
24 Gillian Lathey, “The Travels of Harry: International Marketing and the Translation of J. K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter Books” in The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 29, Nr 2, Apr. 2005. Accessed online May 4, 2014
http://muse.jhu.edu.ezp.sub.su.se/journals/lion_and_the_unicorn/v029/29.2lathey.pdf .
to children’s fiction, as well as edited a collection of research in the field, called The Translation of Children’s Literature, both of which I will quote from.25
Karolina Buitkuvienė has looked at the translation of teenage language in literature, mainly focusing on the frequent use of repetition, but she has also made some valuable observations about the uniqueness and complexity of rendering adolescent speech in translated fiction.26
When it comes to the Swedish translation of HP, there have been a few academic papers on the topic, however the majority have their focus on the first book(s) — on account of the fact that the studies were written before the whole series was finished.
Nonetheless, these studies provide a valuable point of departure for this current study.
Most of them focus on names, and tend not to go in for a deep analysis.
Johanna Astrén of Högskolan Dalarna has written an academic paper in 2005 on the names used in the first five Harry Potter books (those were the ones published at that time). Astrén includes a compelling comparison between the Swedish and the Norwegian character name translations, concluding that the Swedish version retains many in English while the Norwegian replaces many characters’ names with
Norwegian equivalents. This, she deducts, reveals the two translators’ different intended target audiences — the Norwegian aims at younger children, and the Swedish to older children and adults.27
Katja Elisabeth Holm’s academic paper at Stockholm’s University, Alohomora!
Accessing Harry Potter s world through the magic of translation [sic] compares the English and Swedish versions of the first HP book. Her conclusion is that the Swedish text is targeted at “older children who are able to understand English well enough to grasp the puns in the names kept in their source text form, thus staying close to the
25 Gillian Lathey “The Translator Revealed,” in Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies, ed. Jan Van Coillie and Walter P. Verschueren (Manchester and New York 2006), and The Translation of Children’s Literature: A Reader, ed. Gillian Lathey (Clevedon 2006).
26 Karolina Buitkuvienė, “Strategies for Translating Lexical Repetition in Contemporary Novels for Teenagers” in Studies About Languages (Kalbų Studijos), 2012 No. 20. Accessed online:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.20.1317 .
27 Johanna Astrén, Hogwarts, Muggles and Quidditch: A Study of the Translation of Names in J.K.
Rowling's Harry Potter Book, C-‐uppsats, Högskolan Dalarna, Dept. of English, 2004.
original humour, but bereaving young readers of an important layer of meaning in the text.” 28
A computer analysis was undertaken in Linköping’s university, by Sofia Helgegren, where chunks of text from the English and Swedish Harry Potter books were
processed, compared and analyzed on a micro-level, comparing word counts, number of sentences etc. The results showed than the further the series went, the freer the Swedish translation became, that the translation became less ‘literal’ as it progressed.
However, this is a computerized analysis, and in my view, too detailed. For example, translating ‘People in cloaks’ with the suitable Swedish equivalent, ‘Folk i långa mantlar’— i.e. four words in Swedish to correspond three words in English — was classified as an example of unjustified “addition.”29 Nonetheless, I think that if the Swedish text merely had ‘mantlar’ — that is, mere coats — the meaning wouldn’t come across as intended, that these were wizarding apparel and not commonplace winter coats. In my opinion, this analysis is unnecessarily pedantic, and creates a somewhat disapproving view of Fries-Gedin, which I consider she doesn’t deserve.
However, Helgegren’s meticulous research presents many interesting points which are useful in my paper.
It might be worthwhile to question those HP translation analyses that cover translations into 4 or more languages, if it is plausible that the researchers have sufficient knowledge in all the covered languages, enough to judge them so authoritatively, and issue serious statements. I’m thinking for instance of Davies, Brøndsted & Dollerup, Jentsch, Fischer and Schmid.
I would like to bring up the issue of the translation study community’s apparent obliviousness of adolescent literature. It doesn’t fit into the category of children’s literature, but it is not adult literature either. Translation studies historically started out looking at texts for adult readers, and then after some delay, at children’s literature.
28Katja Elisabeth Holm, Alohomora! Accessing Harry Potter s world through the magic of translation [sic], Institute for Literature Science, Stockholm university (Stockholm 2005)
29 Helgegren, p. 23.
Nowadays there seems to be a significant amount of literature discussing translating for children, but I have had a very hard time discovering any research about
adolescent literature translation, Buitkuvienė’s paper is one of the few. In some cases, children’s literature translation theory is applicable, but in many ways not. Teen literature is something different, separate, distinct, I’d like to argue. Perhaps this can be taken as a suggestion for future research.
Since the translations of HP names and Rowling-invented terms have already been thoroughly explored, this paper will not need to cover these subjects. However, I will refer to these studies to put my analysis into context, and sporadically add some thoughts or additional perspectives to the existing research.
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1 TRANSLATING CHILDREN’S LITERATURE, SELECTED CONCEPTS
The translation studies community has only relatively recently started looking with interest at children’s literature in translation. This is because literature for children has traditionally had a lower status than adult literature. As a consequence of this,
translators working on texts for younger readers have felt at liberty to alter the texts to a higher degree than texts for adults.30 “Because of the marginal situation of texts for children, translators can be very free with them, unhesitatingly adapting them” writes Emer O’Sullivan. 31 The didactic role children’s literature plays is also an important aspect to keep in mind, as well as the adults’ estimation of what children can and should be presented with, what adults think children can handle — all these aspects come from the adult’s side, the adult is the driving force and so the end product will be shaped by the adult perception.
30 Oittinen, 2002, p. 80. Puurtinen also discusses the peripheral role of children’s literature, as well as the necessity to adapt texts for readability regarding the target audience, in her article
“Syntax, Readability and Ideology in Children’s Literature” in Meta: Translators’ Journal, vol. 43, nr. 4, 1998, pp. 524-‐533. Accessed online: Apr. 28, 2014:
http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1998/v43/n4/003879ar.pdf .
31 Emer O’Sullivan, Comparative Children’s Literature, translated by Anthea Bell (New York 2005) e-‐book, p. 66.
“Translated texts always reveal the translator’s intentions, feelings and moral values, making translation an inherently ethical issue” as Riita Oittinen writes in her essay “No Innocent Act – On the Ethics of Translating for Children”.32 A translator working on a text aimed at children will unconsciously reveal their opinion of the hypothetical child reader in the choices made while translating. Oittinen goes on to say
Child image is a central factor in translating children’s books: according to their ideologies, translators direct their words at some kind of child, naïve or understanding, innocent or experienced. It is also important to bear in mind that children have lived for a shorter time than adults and do not share the same ‘world knowledge’, which is one reason why grown-ups tend to explain more to children than to older readers. Taking children’s experiences, abilities and expectations into consideration is no easy task. How translators do this in practice depends on the child images they have and on what they know about the children of their time. 33
To briefly explain some common concepts in translation studies, there are two general strategies frequently referred to: Source-oriented versus target-oriented translational strategy. Davies writes about “the distinction between two basic goals of translation:
that of preserving the characteristics of the source text as far as possible, even where this yields an exotic or strange effect, and that of adapting it to produce a target text which seems normal, familiar and accessible to the target audience.” 34 She continues to explain that these two paths are often viewed as opposites, that one strategy is selected and maintained. However, as she exemplifies, it is more often the case that translations will shift between strategies depending on which technique will suit the particular passage’s characteristics.35 Inggs writes:
If the translator chooses to produce a text orientated more strongly towards the source text, then even seemingly simple elements, such as food and clothing, along with more complex elements, such as value systems and relations between characters, may take on a significance that may be confusing to the reader. This is one reason that textual and lexical accuracy is not always the overriding aim of the translator.36
Davies agrees. In her article, a number of translation theories and strategies are discussed, for example the abovementioned notion of a polarization between a
source-related translation (labeled foreignization, adequacy, or retention, by various
32 Riitta Oittinen, “No Innocent Act – On the Ethics of Translating for Children”, in Children’s Literature in Translation – Challenges and Strategies, ed. Jan van Coillie and Walter P.
Verschueren (Manchester 2006), p. 37.
33 Ibid., pp. 41-‐42.
34 Davies, p. 69.
35 Ibid., p. 97.
36 Inggs, paragraph 4.
schools of translation theory) and a target-focused translation (adapting a text to make it more relevant and acceptable for the target audience; this is labeled
domestication, acceptability, or re-creation, by the different schools). It has also been described with the comparison of bringing the reader to the author (foreignization), or the author to the reader (domestication). Davies argues that this opposition is
unnecessary, and both extremes are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad.’ Translations can be successful, she maintains, by combining these two approaches in varying degrees, applying them as needed.37
Davies opts for setting up her own categories to describe how translators tackle cultural references (my summarized definitions):
! preservation (keeping the word in its original language, without added explanation, no matter if it is understandable in the TL or not);
! addition (keep the original item but add an explanation);
! omission (the word is simply deleted when a clarification would distract from the flow of the narrative or be too difficult to explain);
! globalization (substituting a very specific cultural object with a more general term, for example replacing ‘black forest cherry torte’ with ‘cake’);
! localization (taking something locally familiar instead of the unfamiliar original item, for example substituting ‘crumpets’ with ‘English muffins’);
! transformation (a change more invasive than globalization or localization, for example the change of the book title Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to … and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as the American edition is called); and lastly
! creation (actual insertion of cultural items where they were none in the ST, this is sometimes done when translators compensate the omission of some
‘untranslatable’ words by inserting words in another location)38
Davies maintains that “each procedure may be used effectively in some contexts and not in others.”39 I will refer to these categories in the analysis chapter.
Intertextuality is a term that often comes up when discussing literature, it refers to the
‘echoes’ or references to other literary works. In HP intertextuality is prominent, and viewing this aspect from a translational viewpoint is interesting. In the analysis
37 Davies, p. 69.
38 Ibid., pp. 72-‐89.
39 Ibid., p. 96.
section I will look more in detail to examine how intertextuality is affected by translation.
When analyzing children’s literature, it is often heard that children’s texts reach out to a dual audience: both the child reader and to the adult. It is after all the adult who enables the obtaining of books, so the adult must be persuaded. This duality is worthwhile to keep in mind when dealing with translations, seeing as the twofold appeal should theoretically be retained. Tiina Puurtinen asserts:
Writing and translating for children, though often regarded as a simple and even insignificant matter, is governed by numerous constraints, which usually vary from culture to culture. The situation is also rendered problematic by the fact that a children’s book must simultaneously appeal to both the genuine reader — the child — and the background authority — the adult.40 A successful children’s book will often on some level captivate both the child and adult readerships. Emer O’Sullivan discusses this duality in her book, Comparative Children’s Literature, and mentions for example jokes or irony in children’s books that pass the child reader but are discerned and enjoyed by the adult reader, in part enjoyed precisely because the child doesn’t understand the joke. She brings up Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as a generally recognized case of dual audience.41 Oittinen also mentions for example The Little Prince and Winnie-the-Pooh as classic examples of a children’s text addressing both an adult and a child readership.42 She agrees that books for children frequently appeal to both children and adults,
something which reflects the power adults hold over children.
Children themselves do not decide on how their literature is defined; neither do they decide on what is translated, published, or purchased for them. Children’s literature as a whole is based on adult decisions, adult points of view, adult likes and dislikes. /…/ However well-
intentioned, far too often adults look down on their children and know best. This is a power struggle: the one who reads and the one who decides. 43
I consider this to be applicable to a certain extent. One must not underestimate children’s talents of persuasion by wearing parents down with a mind-numbing
repetition of demands. Children find out about popular trends from other children, and
40 Tiina Puurtinen, “Translating Children’s Literature: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies” in The Translation of Children’s Literature: A Reader, ed. Gillian Lathey, (Clevedon 2006), p. 54.
41 O’Sullivan, 2005, pp. 15-‐16.
42 Oittinen, 2002, p. 64, where she discusses Zohar Shavit’s research.
43 Ibid., p. 69.
want to join the crowd. This is particularly relevant when discussing the HP books, considering the frenzy that was very intense at times. Furthermore, modern children have become active consumers at increasingly early ages. Children are also computer- savvy at increasingly early ages; they might access e-books or audiobooks easier than we think. Older siblings facilitate younger readers’ access to books intended for older children. The role of libraries should also not be underestimated; there children may theoretically choose which books they want.
‘Skopos’ is a word taken from Greek meaning ‘aim’ or ‘purpose.’ It has been appropriated by the translation studies community to describe the purpose of a translation, for example a text can be translated for a particular audience, with a specific function intended. Obviously when a text is approached for translation, it is necessary to know what the envisioned function of the TT will be.44
For example, the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales included instances of explicit violence. But the popularly known versions have often omitted the graphic violence, since adults tend to perceive such details to be inappropriate for the young target audience. The story of Cinderella in its original version, to exemplify, has the two stepsisters cutting off their heels with a knife in order to fit into the glorified shoe. In many popular versions, this is omitted.45 In other words, the ‘skopos’ of the
Cinderella translation was to create a child-friendly text, and the story was adapted accordingly. The original Little Red Riding Hood also contained more violence and death than the version most people are familiar with today.
2.2 THE IMPLIED NARRATOR & THE IMPLIED READER
In her book, Translating for Children, Oittinen discusses Mikhail Bakhtin’s term
‘superaddressee,’ to apply it to the translational situation:
authors, including translators, address their words and images, speak ‘directly’ to someone, someone who does not exist in the flesh. This someone might be called ‘superaddressee,’ /…/.
The child image of the translator for children (and her/his time and society) could be described as this kind of a ‘superaddressee’: she/he is directing her/his words, her/his translation, to
44 Theories by Katharina Reiss and Hans J. Vermeer summarized in Jeremy Munday’s, Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications, e-‐book edition (New York 2010), p. 79.
45 Oiitinen also writes about this in her book Translating for Children, pp. 91-‐93, using other examples.
some kind of child /…/ ; this influences her/his way of addressing the child, her/his choice of words, for instance. 46
Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s book, Narrative Fiction, looks at several concepts in literary theory. She discusses, among other things, the reader’s role — the
involvement of the reader — in fictional texts. A text only exists by being read, thus the reader’s participation is vital to bringing a text to life. And by using a particular type of vocabulary, the text signals what kind of reader is anticipated. The reader is
“an image of a certain competence brought to the text”.47 Oittinen concurs and adds:
“Texts do not function without human beings. Thus the function of a text is not ‘as such’ but is redefined every time the text is read. A text in translation is influenced by the author, the translator, and the expectations of the target-language readers.”48 And thus by examining a text, it is possible to deduce what type of readership is presumed.
In my analysis chapter I intend to examine the ST and TT to see how they compare in this respect.
The study of narrative communication is a way to look at the supposed participants in a literary text and examine their relationship to each other.49 “Within a text,
communication involves a fictional narrator transmitting a narrative to a fictional naratee” explains Rimmon-Kenan.50 Emer O’Sullivan presents, in her article from 2003, an analytical model to describe the participants of narrative communication in literary texts, with 6 parts: 51
Table 1
46 Oittinen, p. 24.
47 Shlomith Rimmon-‐Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics 2nd Edition (London and New York 2005) e-‐book, pp. 121-‐122.
48 Riitta Oittinen, Translating for Children (New York, e-‐book edition 2002), pp. 11-‐12.
49 O’Sullivan, 2003; Rimmon-‐Kenan, pp. 135-‐136.
50 Rimmon-‐Kenan, p. 3.
51 Based on model by Seymour Chatman. See Emer O’Sullivan, “Narratology meets Translation Studies, or, The Voice of the Translator in Children’s Literature”, in Meta: Translators’ Journal, vol.
48, nr 1-‐2, May 2003, pp. 197-‐207.
52
The inner box symbolizes the text. The two participants outside of the box, outside of the text, are the real author and the real reader, which indicates the physical
participants, the actual human beings, the one who writes the text and the one who reads the text. These two are represented in the text-situation by substitute
counterparts, the ‘implied author’ and the ‘implied reader.’
Rimmon-Kenan explains that the implied author is “the governing consciousness of the work as a whole, the source of the norms embodied in the work. Its relation to the real author is admitted to be of great psychological complexity, and /…/ the two need not be, and in fact are often not, identical.”53 The implied reader, similarly, is the intended recipient of the text, and is identical to the ‘superaddressee’ mentioned in the quote from Oittinen above. The narrator is the one who is telling the story, who is not necessarily sensed as a persona in the text, but in some cases can be so involved in the story as to take part as a characters. In the Winnie-the-Pooh books for instance,
Christopher Robin’s father, a peripheral character, is also the narrator telling the stories. 54 In some cases “the voice of the narrator of the translation can entirely drown out the voice of the narrator of the source text, producing a new constitution of the implied reader.”55 That is what happens when the translation alters the text so dramatically that the original narrator’s voice has changed character in one way or another. The other end of the scale is the practically invisible, or covert, narrator, which is barely discernable in the text. Rimmon-Kenan reasons that “there is always a teller in the tale, at least in the sense that any utterance or record of an utterance presupposes someone who has uttered it.”56 The vocabulary used, the choice of
words, the choice of what to tell and what not to tell, and how to tell it, help the reader form a picture of the narrator’s character.
52 O’Sullivan, 2003, paragraph 5.
53 Rimmon-‐Kenan, p. 89.
54 O’Sullivan, 2005, p. 14.
55 Ibid., p. 92.
56 Rimmon-‐Kenan, p. 91.
