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.

Postkolonial teori har skiftat intresset från västerländska diskurser till frågor som ideologi, ojämlika maktförhållanden och etik. I samband med översättningsvetenskapens kulturella vändning på 1980-talet, började översättningsvetare ifrågasätta översättningsstrategier som antingen assimilerar (domesticering) eller stereotypiserar (exotisering) källkulturen. Newmark (1981) föreslår en semantisk, källtextorienterad översättningsprincip och menar att så länge den åstadkommer en likvärdig effekt, är en ordagrann översättning inte bara den föredragna, utan den enda godtagbara översättningsmetoden. Denna uppsats är en kommentar till min egen översättning av de första 17 kapitlen i romanen Welcome to Lagos, skriven av den nigerianska författaren Chibundu Onuzo. Källtexten har översatts med hjälp av en semantisk översättningsstrategi. Kommentaren fokuserar på tre aspekter som krävde särskild uppmärksamhet under översättningsarbetet, eftersom de utgör betydande utmaningar för semantiska överföringssätt: kulturspecifika begrepp, stilfigurer och talspråksmarkörer. I kommentaren framförs att den semantiska översättningsstrategin fungerade bra på den övergripande textnivån; även om specifika översättningsproblem ibland fick angripas med ett mer kommunikativt förhållningssätt för att åstadkomma en idiomatisk måltext med likvärdig effekt i målkulturen. / Postcolonial Studies shifted the interest from Western discourses to issues of ideology, power inequality, and ethics. As a consequence of the cultural turn in translation studies in the 1980s, scholars started questioning translation strategies that either assimilate (domestication) or stereotype (exoticization) the source culture. Proposing a semantic, source-text oriented translation principle, Newmark (1981) argues that as long as an equivalent effect can be achieved, literal translation is not just the preferred, but the only acceptable procedure. This paper comments on my own translation of the first 17 chapters of the novel Welcome to Lagos, written by Nigerian writer Chibundu Onuzo. The source text was translated using a semantic translation strategy. The commentary focuses on three key aspects that demanded particular attention during the translation process, due to the fact that they present significant challenges to semantic transfer methods: culture-specific items, stylistic devices, and spoken language markers. As the commentary suggests, the semantic translation strategy worked well on the global text level; occasionally, however, specific translation problems had to be dealt with using a more communicative approach in order to produce an idiomatic target text with an equivalent effect in the target culture.