Universiẗat, Diss., 1964--Tübingen.

Translating without betraying. Translating a theoretical text about translation, using the strengthening of cohesive links as the principal strategy of translation.   The aim of this study was to examine some aspects of the translation of a theoretical text on translation, written in French. In order to do that I started off by translating a passage of the book Introduction à la traductologie. Penser la traduction: hier, aujourd’hui, demain by Mathieu Guidère (2010). The book is intended for students and others interested in translation and translation studies. The theoretical framework of this study makes references to, among others, Blum-Kulka (1986) and to Vermeer (2012) and the skopos theory. As Guidère has a pedagogical aim with his book, it is particularly relevant to pay a special attention to the function of the text while translating. In several cases the source text proved to be both ambiguous and unclear. The skopos theory claims that the function of the target text should be at the center of the translator’s interest. The fact that the translation process requires an interpretation by the translator in the mediation of the message to be transmitted brings, according to Blum-Kulka (1986), about a text that is more redundant than the source text. This redundancy results in a higher level of cohesive explicitness that strengthens the textual cohesion. For this, Blum-Kulka (ibid) suggests that explicitness and greater cohesion can be seen as forming a general strategy in translation. To achieve a greater level of cohesion in the target text and to make it easier to read, I used some translation procedures, namely explicitness, simplification, reference and lexical cohesion (cf. Blum-Kulka 1986, Mauranen & Kujamäki 2004 and Halliday & Hassan 1976). I hope to have shown that these procedures were appropriate for the translation of this source text but also for the function of the target text. At the same time it turned out that these categories were in no way waterproof – on the contrary – many times they actually overlapped. I also found passages where textual coherence could not be achieved through translation strategies. In those cases, the translator faces the choice of either transmitting the inconsistency of the source text by translating them, or leaving the field of translation and rewriting the text. I opted for staying in the field of translation. The analysis of my own translation is of course a translation commentary rather than a scientific research. To really conduct a thorough research on translation procedures related to the function of the target text, you would have to analyze texts from other translators in order to have a more objective study object.

Understanding the process and the dynamics involved in news translation, as well as the challenges news translators face in my country of origin - The Gambia- has been a long-held goal, considering my background and experience as a former bilingual editor for Kuwait Oil Company and a senior news translator for Al-Watan Daily in Kuwait. The quest to unravel the enigmas surrounding news translation practices has always been a subject of great interest to me. With the intent of proffering pragmatic solutions to the attendant challenges of news translation in the Gambia, my focus is on providing well-researched recommendations. The study specifically seeks to answer questions regarding news translation processes and practices and how they have evolved over time in the Gambia. Furthermore, this study sheds light on the manifold professional and technical obstacles that confront news translators in the Gambia as they endeavour to render news content originally produced in English into Mandinka, which is one of the prominent Indigenous languages. It also delves into the broader linguistic landscape in the Gambia and other colonized territories from an indigenous perspective. Colonialism looms large over my study, considering the fact that news is translated from English, a minority colonial language imposed on the majority speakers of indigenous languages. The legacy of colonialism still lingers, with the news still being read in English first before it gets rendered in indigenous languages. Using qualitative methodology, my research explores the evolution and importance of news translation in the Gambia and the underlying factors behind the professional and technical challenges that Gambia’s news translators continue to wrestle with. Dowling, Lloyd, and Suchet-Pearson (2016) posit that this methodology is employed to comprehend the spatialities, interpretations, and experiences of social life. The undertaken field study has availed me of the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of some of those challenges and come up with recommendations that might hopefully address them, including language planning, the development of a monolingual Mandinka dictionary, translator training, the development of unique Mandinka writing systems, among others. My research participants were enthused to participate in the study, affirming that it was the first time ever a researcher approached them to have an idea about the dynamics of their work and include their findings in a thesis—an assertion that sustained the momentum throughout the journey.

Denna uppsats kommenterar min översättning från engelska till svenska av kapitel sju ur The IT support handbook av Mike Halsey. Källtextanalysen visar att texten är pedagogisk men jargongartad på grund av sin breda målgrupp. Syftet är att ge lättläst information och instruktioner. På grund av detta valdes Vermeers Skoposteori och Nords instrumentella översättning som översättningsprincip. Jag använder Nords kategorier för översättningsproblem och översättningssvårigheter för att diskutera arbetet. Svårigheterna är beroende av översättare och situation. Kategoriseringen tyder på att översättningsstudenter kan ha goda språkliga färdigheter men bristande sakkunskap. Lösningarna på främst konventionsrelaterade och lingvistiska problem visar att måltexten anpassats till mottagaren, vilket resulterat i en instrumentell översättning. Samtidigt tilläts vissa främmande drag från källkulturen som kulturella referenser kvarstå, eftersom dessa redan inkorporerats i målkulturen. / This essay covers my translation from English to Swedish of chapter seven of Mike Halsey’s The IT support handbook. The source text is pedagogical and easy to read, while also including a lot of jargon due to its broad target group. The purpose is giving easy to read information and instructions. The translation principle chosen is Vermeer and Nord’s skopos theory and instrumental translation. I use Nord’s categories of translation problems and difficulties for discussion. The difficulties suggest that translation students can have reliable linguistic skills but insufficient subject knowledge. The solutions for mainly convention-related and linguistic problems show how the target text has been adapted to its readers, resulting in an instrumental translation. Some cultural references remain in the target text however, since they were already incorporated into the target culture.

Den här uppsatsen består av en partiell översättning med kommentar av Kinas kommunistiska partis rapport från den 20:e nationella partikongressen som ägde rum i oktober 2022. Översättningen gjordes från kinesiska till svenska utifrån en översättningsprincip baserad på skopos att en ”vanlig svensk” ska förstå texten. Syftet är att undersöka vilka översättningsproblem som uppstår vid översättningen av kinesisk politisk diskurs till svenska för den svensk kulturkontexten. Politisk terminologi identifieras som det enskilt största översättningsproblemet, samt att ett antal mindre översättningsproblem på grammatisk, lexikal, syntaktisk och stilnivå även diskuteras. Översättningen och kommentaren kompletteras även med en komparativ studie där den svenska översättningen jämförs med KKP:s officiella engelska översättning utifrån skoposteorin och Juliane House SFL-baserade metodologi för kvalitetsbedömning av översättningar. Jämförelsen visar att KKP:s översättning gör större textuella avsteg från källtexten, medan min översättning använder sig av fotnoter, samt att KKP:s översättning ligger nära förtäckt och min översättning ligger nära öppen översättning på House skala mellan de två. / This thesis consists of a partial translation, with commentary, of the report from the 20th national party congress of the Chinese Communist Party which was held in October 2022. The text was translated from Chinese into Swedish with a translation principle based on the skopos that a “normal swede” should be able to understand the text. The purpose is to explore translational problems when translating Chinese political discourse into Swedish for the Swedish culture context. Political terminology is identified as the single largest translational problem. A number of smaller problems are also identified on the grammatical, lexical, syntactical and style levels. The translation with commentary is also accompanied by a comparative study where the Swedish translation is compared to the official English translation sanctioned by the CCP, based on skopos theory and Juliane House’s SFL-based translation quality assessment methodology. The comparison shows that the official translation diverges more from the source text textually, while mine uses footnotes, and that the CCP translation lies close to covert translation, on the scale from covert to overt, where my translation is on the other end of the scale.

The present study aims to analyse, from a functional perspective, the Swedish transla­tion of an administrative text about how the border control in France is organised in cooperation between the border police and customs authorities. It is an informative text produced by French authorities at the request of the European Commission, and the translation for a Swedish-speaking audience in a national context (as opposed to a supranational, institutional one) will have a slightly different aim – or skopos, referring to the concept developed by Vermeer. The translated text is an excerpt from a survey, containing both questions and answers, that was sent out to various member countries. It is considered to belong to the text variety category that the Swedish EU translation units refer to as “communications” (meddelanden). Texts belonging to this category have a content that is political or administrative in nature, rather than legal or judicial. The source and target texts are studied in a contrastive manner, focusing on two major aspects: referential coherence and organisation terminology. Both aspects are examined in a quantitative and qualitative way, with the aim or skopos as a guiding principle when deciding on which translation strategies to adopt. More specifically, the first part of the study aims to examine if a reinforced referential coherence could contribute to attain the aim of “clear language” (klarspråk) which is a key feature in the language used by Swedish public authorities. The second part of the analysis focuses on terms referring to different organisational levels, and the functional equivalents that best suit the skopos of the target text, e.g. through the study of organisational charts. In conclusion, reinforced referential coherence seems to be one of the ways in which clear language can be achieved, and consideration of different hierarchical relations between terms is important when translating organisational terminology. The study overall highlights the importance of adapting the target text to its context and intended readers, for example by studying parallel texts.

This essay aims at analysing and understanding different choices made by Caj Lundgren when he translated Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), more specifically when he translated the fictive language called Nadsat, which is one of the features that made this novel famous. The method used to analyse Lundgren’s translation is based on Reiß and Veermer’s (1984/2014) concept of skopos and functional equivalence. Conclusions drawn are that Lundgren uses a compensatory translation strategy, and that a model can be created for identification of Russian words in the original text’s Nadsat and the transfer of these words to the target text as Swedish Nadsat. In a comparison between Lundgren and two Russian translators’ strategies, their strategies are shown to differ, which could be caused by different translation problems dependent on the target languages. / Denna uppsats mål är att analysera olika val som Caj Lundgren gjorde i sin översättning av Anthony Burgess roman A Clockwork Orange (1962), specifikt avseende originalets fiktiva språk, som Burgess döpte till nadsat. Metoden som använts för analysen baseras på Reiß och Veermers (1984/2014) term skopos och funktionell ekvivalens. Slutsatser som dras är dels att Lundgren använder sig av en kompensatorisk strategi vid översättning, dels att ett schema kan uppställas för identifiering av ryska ord i originalets nadsat och deras överföring till måltexten som svensk nadsat. I en jämförelse mellan Lundgrens och två ryska översättares strategier visas att deras strategier skiljer sig åt, vilket kan bero på översättningsproblematik avhängig målspråken.

Detta arbete utgörs av en skönlitterär översättning från engelska till svenska med tillhörande kommentar. Texten som har översatts är skräcknovellen The Summer People av den amerikanska författaren Shirley Jackson (1916–1965). En källtextnära översättningsprincip upprättades för översättningsarbetet baserat på teorier om skopos, polysystemteori samt domesticering/exotisering. Översättningskommentaren innehåller en redogörelse för de översättningsstrategier som tillämpats vad gäller överföring av källtextens kultur- och tidsspecifika referenser, talspråksmarkörer och stilistiska drag. Det utfördes även en mindre specialundersökning bestående av en kvalitativ jämförelse mellan svenska översättningar av Shirley Jacksons romaner utförda av Inger Edelfeldt och Torkel Franzén. Specialundersökningen visade att Edelfeldt tog sig något större friheter med texten, och framför allt Franzéns översättning hade stora likheter med den aktuella översättningen av The Summer People. / This paper consists of a commented translation of literary fiction from English to Swedish. The translated text is a short story of the horror genre called The Summer People by the American author Shirley Jackson (1916–1965). A source text-oriented translation principle was established for the translation task based on theories such as skopos, polysystem theory and domestication/foreignization. The commentary contains an account for the translational strategies that were applied regarding transfer of culture- and period-specific references, indications of spoken language, and literary style in the source text. An additional minor study was also carried out, consisting of a qualitative comparison between translations of Shirley Jackson’s novels executed by Inger Edelfeldt and Torkel Franzén. The additional study showed that Edelfeldt made slightly more alterations of the text, and Franzén’s translation in particular showed striking similarities to the current translation of The Summer People.

I denna uppsats utforskar jag det komplexa i musikalöversättning, med min egen översättning av ett urval av sånger från Beetlejuice: The Musical. The Musical. The Musical. (2019) som underlag. I min översättningskommentar presenterar och utvärderar jag fyra olika strategier som jag har använt för att översätta rim i källtexten. Jag använder mig av Peter Lows skoposbaserade femkampsprincip (The Pentathlon principle) för att analysera mina översättningsval i förhållande till principens fem kriterier sångbarhet, innebörd, naturlighet, rytm och rim, med ett särskilt fokus på hur rim interagerar med de andra fyra kriterierna. / In this essay I explore the complexities of musical theatre song translation, using my own translations of a selection of songs from Beetlejuice: The Musical. The Musical. The Musical. (2019) as a case study. In my commentary I present and evaluate four different strategies I have used to translate rhymes in the source text. I use Peter Low's skopos-based Pentathlon principle to analyse my translation choices in regard to the five criteria of the principle, namely singability, sense, naturalness, rhythm and rhyme, with special focus on how rhymes interact with the other four criteria.

This study investigates the translation of song lyrics and presents an analysis of translation outcomes. While the majority of previous studies regarding song translation focuses on the translation of lyrics from musicals and operas, this study focuses on the translation of popular song lyrics. The lyrics of eight German songs and their English versions were analysed using the approximation approach (Franzon 2009) which divides smaller textual units into the categories paraphrase, metaphrase and addition. The target texts (henceforth TT) were also categorised according to Peter Low’s (2013) song translation categories, translation, adaptation and replacement text. The aim of this study is to determine to what degree the meaning of the source texts (henceforth ST) is transferred into the TTs and to determine how Franzon’s approximation approach can be used to determine if the TTs are translations, adaptations, or replacement texts. This study found that all TTs were mostly made up of paraphrases and metaphrases, which means that all TT derived to most parts directly from the STs i.e. the TT was written using mostly direct and oblique translations. Due to the low frequency of additions and all significant details of the STs being transferred into the TTs, all song translations analysed in this study were categorised as translations.