This essay discusses the subject of translating a French book about the French cuisine into Swedish. The author is Gérard Depardieu, a famous French actor with a keen interest in the French culinary art and culture. The book is about simple, classic, French cooking. While translating, we had some difficulties translating some cultural expressions or words that do not have an equivalence in Swedish, and therefore we had to find another solution than literal translation that would allow us to retain the cultural sense. To our help, we used the theories of Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet who discuss equivalence, explication, modulation and adaptation, which are different methods of translating a foreign culture to a target language. We also used the expressions foreignization (where you break target conventions by retaining a foreign cultural element in the original way) and domestication (where you translate the foreign element to something that exists in the target culture to minimize the strangeness). Our goal was to adapt the translated text to a Swedish reader, but at the same time keep as much of the French culture and Depardieu's style as possible.

This study focuses on comparing two different versions of Pippi Longstocking translated into English on a structural level. With the help of the research of the known linguistics John Catford and Paul Vinay & Jean-Louis Darbelnet, we compare how the two different translators, Tiina Nunnally (2007) and Florence Lamborn (1950) have translated the same book. This study compares these two translations for grammatical features and word choices on a structural level, for example use of verb tense and differences in Vinay & Darbelnet’s modulation. It also studies how the translators have done differently regarding Catford’s structural shifts. The essay also briefly looks at the cultural differences between the countries and how they have been translated. The aim of this project is not to determine which translation is better, but to compare and describe any differences and similarities found. It will look at how the two translators have handled the same problems differently (or similarly). The translations by Florence Lamborn and Tiina Nunnally have much in common, but in our result and analysis we present the differences.