In this week’s roundup of global literary news, our Editors-at-Large from Sweden and Bulgaria report on controversial translation practices and changes in reading preferences over the past sixteen years. Read on to learn more!
Linnea Gradin, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Sweden
Last week, the translation of American historian Timothy Snyder’s latest book, On Freedom, was published in Sweden to mixed reviews. Perhaps more interesting than the book itself, though, is the debate that the translation has caused, because, as reported by SVT, the Swedish translator has both changed the meaning of certain words and added an entirely new clause to a section on Nazism—without consulting the author.
The original:
The boys threw off what they were wearing, pushed their arms and heads into their new shirts, and suddenly looked like a team.
The Swedish (in my translation):
The boys tore off their own shirts, threw on their new ones, and suddenly looked like one “body,” in the same sense that the Nazis saw the German people as one body.
Obvious differences aside, the saga takes an absurd turn as “Kerstin Oscarsdotter” appears to be a pseudonym the translator has chosen to work under to avoid being associated with the book. They justify the additions as an attempt to make a bad and unclear text easier to comprehend and note that, “given Snyder’s position in America, no editor has dared ask him to clarify.” Publishers Albert Bonniers confirm that the additions were made to help elucidate Snyder’s argument, but the response from the industry has been condemning, calling this an assault on the source material, raising the question whether “bad writing” justifies arbitrary translation.
Meanwhile, in a twist of irony, Swedish Academy member Peter Englund has been awarded the 2025 Delblanc Award (a biannual award in Sven Delblanc’s honor) for his historically and factually rigorous authorship.
Radio Sweden has also announced the shortlist for their annual award: Den första boken by Karolina Ramqvist, Tänkarens testamente by Jessica Schiefauer, Helga by Bengt Ohlsson, and Allätaren by Martin Engberg. The winner will be decided in April by five listeners, chosen from two hundred applicants. None have been translated into English yet, but you can find Karolina Ramqvist’s The Bear Woman (2022) and Jessica Schiefauer’s Girls’ Lost (2020), both in translation by Saskia Vogel.
Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Bulgaria
Recently, Janet 45, one of Bulgaria’s leading publishing houses, announced the release of a new study on the reading practices and habits of the country. Led by Prof. Alexander Kyosev, the team comprising sociologists, culturologists, literary critics, anthropologists, pedagogues, and psychologists dedicated sixteen years to in-depth observation and analysis of the population’s reading preferences during leisure time as opposed to other types of entertainment. According to the announcement, special attention was paid to cultural inequalities and generational differences, especially in the transitional decades that saw a decisive move from print to electronic media.
Speaking about the project, Prof. Kyosev noted that his team’s findings should not be compared to those of the PISA reading performance study, which is limited to examining the functional literacy of 16-year-olds. He also added that reading practices during the researched period shifted to reading that was not particularly intensive, deep, or prolonged: “An iceberg emerges from below with new, let’s call them digital, practices in which the act of reading is still present, but this reading is different. It’s not like before.”
In an interview for Vij Magazine, Monika Vakarelova, Chief Coordinator of Sofia University’s Cultural Center and a member of Prof. Kyosev’s team, explained: “In short, two main processes can be distinguished. On the one hand, there is the process of a growing cultural division and widening chasm between active readers and non-readers, which, however, is not just a division between readers and non-readers. In fact, the polarization has various social manifestations. Active readers tend to be more engaged with civil society, they are much better culturally and socially integrated, while non-readers are mostly from small towns and villages, people over 60 years of age, people from minorities, those with low education and low income.”
While I am waiting to get my edition of the study, I will also be wondering whether the findings reveal something more general, about the world all of us currently live in, and not only about the local reading landscape.
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