Adapting literature from a cultural context to another is the main theme of my master's thesis. The aim is to determine how publishing houses adapt a book from a different cultural context to their own, and if there are any specific marketing choices being made during the publishing process.The thesis highlights two authors, Sara Stridsberg from Sweden and Silke Scheuermann from Germany. Interviews have been made with the publishers, editors and translators of the translated novels. One of the main themes is to be able to showcase differences between the Swedish and the German publishing business and their particular cultural characteristics in working with translated novels. I have found that the brand of a publishing house is important when making publishing decisions. For larger publishing houses, the economical capital is of importance, and for smaller publishing houses the cultural capital tends to be of a higher value. The book market is becoming more defined by the economy of attention and economization of culture, which is showing in all different aspects of the business; publishing houses, newspapers and agents are all adapting towards a more economic focus.

<p>This pre-study explores how the process of translating from English to Chinese may distort intended brand name messages, using Oriflame as a case study. The findings show that the brand name had a tendency to be perceived as phonetic rather than phonosemantic and that the character combination was perceived to make no clear sense. The study identified these as two main reasons to why Oriflame’s intended brand name messages did not get through.</p> / <p>Denna förstudie utforskar hur varumärkesnamnens avsedda budskap kan bli förvrängda genom översättningsprocessen från engelska till kinesiska genom att använda Oriflame som en fallstudie. Resultaten visar på tendenser för varumärkesnamnet att uppfattas som fonetiskt snarare än fonosemantiskt och att kombinationen av tecknen inte anses vara begriplig. Studien identifierade dessa två resultat som den främsta anledningen till att Oriflames avsedda budskap inte nådde fram.</p>

How do management control systems function when under pressure to mainstream gender equality into a core business? This question is being discussed with an interpretive approach from both the institutional and the gender perspective. Empirical evidence stems from two longitudinal case studies within the Swedish public sector where management by objectives (MBO) is the current model for governmental control. The analysis is based on four aspects: management by objectives, gender mainstreaming, the concept of loose coupling from organization studies and institutional change as translation. The gender perspective highlights constructions that tend to enable or to hamper gender equality. The sociological institutional perspective sheds light over rules, norms and culture. In the empirical cases, it becomes evident that formal goals within MBO proved unable to overrule prevailing norms that have grounded a well established gendered (malestream) culture.  Control systems are designed to handle new issues; however, in the cases studied, this took place merely normatively and in line with the core business, not by changing the grounds on which the control system stands. The MBO model consequently lacks the ability to integrate gender in a transformative mode.

I denna rapport beskriver jag hur jag tagit mig an ett rumslig informationsproblem som grundar sig i personer med demenssjukdoms mentala förmåga att orientera sig. Min bakgrund som undersköterska i kombination med min kunskap i hur rum påverkar människans beteende gör att jag reagerat på de miljöer där dessa personer vistas. Studien är genomförd på Marielunds äldreboende och seniorboende i Eskilstuna kommun och syftar till att främja de boendes självständighet.Resultatet visar arkitekturens komplexitet och observationen av boendet avslöjar en mängd rumsliga hinder som påverkar orienterbarheten negativt för personer med demenssjukdom. Utifrån teorier om hur vi människor orienterar oss och hur demenssjukdom påverkar den kognitiva förmågan har ett gestaltningsförslag på ett vägledningssystem tagits fram. Forskningen visar på behovet av anpassning av boendemiljöer för personer med demenssjukdom och att en medveten färgsättning kan hjälpa dessa personer till ett mer självständigt liv. Vägledningssystemet är designat för att leda betraktaren med hjälp av referenspunkter i form av färgkodade väggmoduler och ledtrådar i form av linjer i golvet. Slutsatserna av studien visar att en tydligare översikt av miljön och visuella hjälpmedel kan göra så att de boende klarar sig bättre själv vilket i sin tur gör att de kan bo kvar hemma längre. / This report describes how I have engaged a spatial information problem based in the cognitive ability of people with dementia and their ability to orient themselves. My academic knowledge of how space affects people’s behavior in combination with my experience as a secondary nurse have made me react to the environments in which these people reside. The study was conducted at Marielunds nursing home and senior housing in the city of Eskilstuna and aims to encourage residents independence. The result shows the architecture’s complexity and the observation of the housing reveals a variety of spatial barriers that affect the ease of orientation negatively for people with dementia. Based on theories of how we orient ourselves and how dementia affects the cognitive ability I have developed a design proposal for a guidance system. The research demonstrates the need for adaptation of living environments for people with dementia and that a deliberate color scheme can help these people to a more independent life. The guidance system is designed to lead the viewer with reference points in the form of color-coded wall modules and visual clues in the form oflines in the floor. The findings of this study show that a more clear overview of the environmental and visual aids can help the residents to a more independent life witch will allow them to stay in their own home longer.

En röststörning kan sägas föreligga då rösten inte fungerar eller låter som den brukar så att det påverkar kommunikationen. Prevalensen för röststörningar uppskattas till omkring 6 % av den vuxna befolkningen. När rösten inte fungerar som den ska leder det till emotionella, sociala och funktionella svårigheter för individen och har negativ inverkan på livskvaliteten. Voice- Related Quality of Life (V-RQOL) är ett självskattningsformulär som mäter vilken inverkan en röststörning kan ha på individens livskvalitet. Detta instrument är internationellt välanvänt, men har inte funnits översatt till svenska. Syftet med föreliggande uppsats var att översätta och validera V-RQOL för en svensk population. Översättningen skedde genom så kallad back translation och den svenska versionen fick namnet Röstrelaterad livskvalitet (RRL). RRL och Rösthandikappindex (RHI) distribuerades i pappersformat till en röstpatientgrupp (n = 88) och en röstfrisk grupp (n = 110). Reliabiliteten av domänerna och samtliga tio påståenden på RRL var hög för patientgruppen med Cronbach’s alfa- värden från 0.82 till 0.90. Det fanns en tydlig relation mellan den självskattade röstkvaliteten och poängen på RRL och formuläret kunde även differentiera mellan röstpatienter och röstfriska. Dessa resultat indikerar att formulärets begreppsvaliditet är god. Pearson’s korrelationsanalys visade att det fanns en signifikant negativ korrelation mellan RRL:s och RHI:s domäner och totalpoäng. Detta starka samband mellan ”the gold standard”, RHI, och RRL innebär en god kriterierelaterad validitet för formuläret. Sammanfattningsvis visar resultaten att RRL har hög reliabilitet och god validitet, dessutom är formuläret kort vilket innebär en liten arbetsinsats. Formuläret anses därför vara ett pålitligt och värdefullt tillägg i den kliniska bedömningen av röststörningar. / A voice disorder can be said to exist when the voice does not work or sound as it normally should in a manner so that it interferes with communication. The prevalence of voice disorders is estimated to be about 6 % of the adult population. When the voice does not work as it should it may lead to emotional, social and functional difficulties for the individual and with negative effects on the quality of life. Voice- Related Quality of Life (V-RQOL) is a self-reporting questionnaire which measures the effect of a voice disorder on the quality of life of an individual. The instrument is frequently used internationally, but no Swedish translation has existed. In the present study, the purpose was to translate and validate V-RQOL for a Swedish population. The method for translating the questionnaire was back translation. The translated questionnaire was given the Swedish name Röstrelaterad livskvalitet (RRL). RRL and the Swedish version of The Voice Handicap Index, Rösthandikappindex (RHI), was distributed to a group of voice patients (n = 88) and a group of non-voice patients (n = 110). The reliability of the domains and the combined items of RRL was high according to Cronbach’s alpha with alpha values ranging from 0.82 to 0.90. There was a strong relation between the self–estimated voice quality and the scores on RRL, and the RRL- questionnaire was shown to differentiate between voice patients and non-voice patients. These results indicate that the construct validity of the questionnaire is good. Pearson’s correlation analysis demonstrated a significant negative correlation between the domains and total scores of RRL and RHI. This strong relation between “the gold standard”, RHI, and RRL proved that the criterion validity of the questionnaire is good. In summary the results show that RRL has a high reliability and good validity, in addition to this, the questionnaire is short and requires minimal work. The questionnaire is therefore considered to be a reliable and valuable addition to the clinical assessment of voice disorders.

This pre-study explores how the process of translating from English to Chinese may distort intended brand name messages, using Oriflame as a case study. The findings show that the brand name had a tendency to be perceived as phonetic rather than phonosemantic and that the character combination was perceived to make no clear sense. The study identified these as two main reasons to why Oriflame’s intended brand name messages did not get through. / Denna förstudie utforskar hur varumärkesnamnens avsedda budskap kan bli förvrängda genom översättningsprocessen från engelska till kinesiska genom att använda Oriflame som en fallstudie. Resultaten visar på tendenser för varumärkesnamnet att uppfattas som fonetiskt snarare än fonosemantiskt och att kombinationen av tecknen inte anses vara begriplig. Studien identifierade dessa två resultat som den främsta anledningen till att Oriflames avsedda budskap inte nådde fram.

Avhandlingen beskriver och analyserar hur frågor kring tillgänglighet/handikapp för första gången aktualiserades och implementerades i planeringen och utformningen av den byggda miljön i Aten, nämligen processen i samband med beslut, planering och implementering av jätteprojektet Atens Metro. Studien tecknar framväxten av olika handikapporganisationer, som från att ha varit svaga aktörer successivt lyckades få gehör för sina krav inom stadens förvaltning, politiska organ, den grekiska riksdagen och inte minst inom de företag som byggde metrosystemet. Avhandlingen diskuterar hur handikapporganisationer och metrosystemet växte fram och påverkade varandra, hur viktiga forum för att diskutera/problematisera olika perspektiv på handikapp skapades där aktörsgrupper med delvis olika intressen förde fram sina ståndpunkter och förhandlade samt vilka konkreta avtryck som dessa processer ledde till i form av en - slutligen - handikappvänlig teknisk konfiguration av metrosystemet. Studien knyter också an till den europeiska diskussionen, bl.a. inom EU, kring handikapp och vilken betydelse som denna diskussion hade för det framväxande metroprojektet, inte minst inför Atens OS-värdskap 2004. Avhandlingen tar sin teoretiska utgångspunkt i dels samhällsvetenskapliga teknik- och vetenskapsstudier, dels "disability studies". / The idea of building a metro network in Athens dates back to the 1950s. It took almost fifty years for the Greek government to develop plans, secure funds and to carry out an effective procurement process for the construction of the Athens metro. In February 1987 the government announced an invitation to tender for the design and construction of the metro. Thirteen years later, in January 2000 the first two lines began operation. The construction of the metro consisted of numerous preliminary studies, different public organizations which dealt with its development and several controversies concerning its design. One of these controversies referred to the issue whether the metro would be accessible to disabled people or not. Integrating accessibility provisions in the metro design constituted a controversial issue where different actors argued and acted for and against its implementation. This study describes and analyses the process of making the metro accessible. The analysis focuses on how questions regarding accessibility/disability were actualized for the first time in the planning and design of the Greek built environment and in particular on the process of building the biggest and most complicated infrastructure project in Greece, the Athens metro. At the same time, the study describes the evolution of disability organizations in Greece: they changed from being weak actors who were unable to influence socio-political configurations to actors that successively gained attention within the public administration, political organs, the Greek Parliament and the company that constructed the metro. The study discusses how disability organizations and the metro were developed and influenced each other and how important forums, where several actors with diverse interests problematized and produced different perspectives on disability, were initiated. These forums constituted public spaces within the public administration and eventually contributed to the construction of an accessible metro network. The analysis is also connected to Athens hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2004 which created increasing demands for constructing an accessible built environment, including the metro. Furthermore, the study also draws upon the discussion within the EU on disability and on which kind of consequences this discussion implied for the developing metro. The theoretical basis for this study is located at the intersection of two broad fields, namely science and technology studies (S&amp;TS) and disability studies.

This essay focuses on the cultural aspects of translation, mainly on the cultural-specific elements known as realia, when translating from Italian to Swedish. As the realia might be unknown to the reader of the target text and as they often have no exact correspondence in the target language, they often pose a challenge for the translator. The essay examines which strategies the translator has used to translate cultural-specific elements and the question is raised whether the translation, regarding the cultural aspects, is orientated towards the source culture (adequacy-orientated) or towards the target culture (acceptability-orientated). Three of the Neapolitan Novels written by pseudonymous Elena Ferrante, Storia del nuovo cognome (2012), Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta (2013) and Storia della bambina perduta (2014), serve as source text of the analysis. The Neapolitan setting of the novels make them specifically suitable for a study of cultural-specific elements. The study is qualitative and complemented with a quantitative part. It is based on Osimo’s (2011) strategies for the translation of realia. The analysis reveals that cultural-specific elements of the source text tend to be replaced with more generic and international expressions. Prioritizing the narrative over cultural-specific elements the translation shows a tendency towards acceptability.

This thesis examines the translation of culture-specific phenomena in children’s literature with a theoretical framework based on “translation studies”. In the translation of children’s literature, translators generally choose translations that brings the content closer to the target culture, creating an “acceptable” translation. At the same time, these choices distance the translation from the culture of the original text. The opposite, translations which remain faithful to the original, are called “adequate” with the terminology of translation studies.This thesis presents the result of the parallel reading of the original Madicken på Junibacken, a children’s book written by famous Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, and the Italian version, Martina di Poggio di Giugno, translated by Fiorella Onesti and Isabella Fanti (Salani, Gl’Istrici, 2003). During the reading of the two books, the phenomena specific to the Swedish language culture (realia, in translation studies’ terminology) were collected, listed, grouped according to type of realia (names of persons and places, food, idiomatic expressions, songs and games) and the translation strategy used. The grouping according to translation strategy took as its starting point the ten strategies described by Osimo (2008). The analysis confirmed the initial hypothesis that Martina di Poggio di Giugno would be, like many other translations of children’s books, an “acceptable” translation. A complimentary analysis of corresponding realia in two other translations of Astrid Lindgren books, the Italian versions of Pippi Longstocking and Bill Bergson, Master Detective, showed that one realia can be translated in different ways, leading to different results. The translations in the second phase of the analysis were deemed as slightly less “acceptable” and therefore closer to equivalence with the original texts.

AbstractThis study deals with linguistic interference in abstracts of scientific papers translated fromPortuguese into English collected from the online scientific database SciELO. The aim of thisstudy is to analyze linguistic interference phenomena in 50 abstracts from the field ofhumanities, history, social sciences, technology and natural sciences. The types ofinterference discussed are syntactic/grammatical, lexical/semantic and pragmatic interference.This study is mainly qualitative. Therefore, the qualitative method was used, in order to findout what kinds of interference phenomena occur in the abstracts, analyze the possible reasonsfor their occurrence and present some suggestions to avoid the problems discussed. Besides, aquantitative analysis was carried out to interpret the results (figures and percentages) of thestudy. The analysis is aimed at providing some guidance for future translations. This studyconcluded that translations from a Romance language (in this case Portuguese) into aGermanic language (English) tend to be more objective and/or sometimes lose originalmeanings attributed in the source text. Another important finding was that abstracts from thehumanities, history and social sciences present more cases of interference phenomena than theones belonging to technology and natural sciences. These findings imply that many abstractswithin these areas have high probability to be subject to the phenomena discussed and,consequently, have parts of their original meaning lost or misinterpreted in the target texts.Keywords: abstracts, bilingualism, cross-linguistic influence, linguistic interference, linguistictransfer, non-native speakers of English, Portuguese-English interference, source text, targettext, translation. / Study on linguistic interference