Editors Jakob Lothe, Ástráður Eysteinsson and Mats Jansson

This book discusses literary translation in the cultural and historical context of the Nordic countries. Focusing on a range of authors and exploring various aspects and challenges of translation, the contributors emphasize the interdependence of and interrelationships between translation, literature, literary history and literary culture. Although the main emphasis is on translations of individual works and authors, attention is also paid to “translation” as an inevitable element in other forms of writing, including the presence of the “foreign” in original writing, and the translational element in any literary discussion of foreign literature. 

The volume thus aims to broaden the scope of literary history and of literary studies. A growing awareness of the importance of translation can be witnessed in all the Nordic countries. As these countries have a strong mutual interest in each other’s cultures, translations between their languages are also import­ant. All in all, the volume demonstrates how ideas, values, genres and literary forms travel in translation – both between the Nordic languages and between the Nordic languages and those outside the Nordic region.

Jakob Lothe is professor of English literature at the University of Oslo and adjunct professor at the University of Bergen.

Ástráður Eysteinsson is professor of comparative literature and dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Iceland.

Mats Jansson is professor of comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg.

Contents

Acknowledgments 7

Introduction 9

Jón Karl Helgason
Translation and Canonization: Posthumous Writings by Hans Christian Andersen and Jónas Hallgrímsson 23

Hólmfríður Garðarsdóttir
Translating a Continent: (Re)Creating Latin American Cultures and Images 35

Ástráður Eysteinsson
Icelandic Versions of Hemingway 51

Martin Ringmar
The Vicissitudes of (After-)Life: Salka Valka in the Nordic Translation System 1934–2008 69

Turið Sigurðardóttir
The Role of Translation in a Minor Literary Language 89

H.K. Riikonen
Translating into Swedish in Finland 99

Janna Kantola
Skandinavs in The Cantos: A Nordic Reading of Ezra Pound’s Cross-Cultural Poetics 119

Mats Jansson
Cultural (Un)translatability: The Waste Land in a Swedish Context 135

Bjørn Tysdahl
Melodrama? Literary Scholars and Translators on Lines 215–56 in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land 155

Steen Klitgård Povlsen
What is Bureaucracy? On the two Danish Translations of Franz Kafka’s The Castle 167

Ole Karlsen
Jan Erik Vold’s Translations of American Poetry 177

Christian Janss, Julie Kleiva and Jakob Lothe
Olav H. Hauge’s Translations of three Poems by Georg Trakl, René Char and Stephen Crane 197


Contributors 235

Index 239


ISBN 978-82-7099-762-6, 245 pp., hard cover
Format: 15,5x22 cm, vekt 0,5 kg, year of publication 2014, language: English