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.
