https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5093-5598
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ABSTRACT
Recently, scholars have pointed to the need for exploring non-retranslations, i.e. translations that are continuously being published in a target culture but not retranslated. Yet, there has not been a thorough examination of the phenomenon to date. This article aims to explore this phenomenon in greater depth by reporting on a pilot study from a bibliography on Swedish non-retranslations. More specifically, the article investigates the concept of (alleged) ageing in relation to fourteen Swedish non-retranslations that have been published, in the same translation, in more than ten editions over the course of 45–87 years. The non-retranslations are discussed through the parameters of publication history, agents of non-retranslations, and textual features. The article’s findings contradict some established views regarding the (alleged) ageing of texts as a motive for retranslation and complement others.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Prof. Kaisa Koskinen and Dr. Christopher Crocker for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have ameliorated the article. The remaining faults are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Sven Stolpe often translated together with his wife Karin Stolpe, and Dahl (Citationn.d.) mentions Stäppvargen as one of their collaborative translations.
2 All translations by the author unless otherwise indicated.
3 I am using Vanderschelden’s (Citation2000, 11) translation for Berman’s term “surge de traduire”.
4 In the following, I refer to the Swedish titles in the text.
5 In cooperation with Bonnier.
6 Siddhartha from 1946 cannot be associated with any publishing house.
7 The editions that were not available at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm are Öster om Eden (1957), Äcklet (1949), Muren (1970), and Glaskupan (1974 [a second edition published the same year as the first edition], 1975, 1978).
8 The note reads: “The title story was translated by Eyvind Johnson and the remaining by Eva Alexanderson, who revised her translation in 1987.”
9 I have added commas in order to reflect the use of commas in the Swedish translation from 1938; the example from 1950 follows the same rule.
10 In the case of Stäppvargen, the most recent edition is, however, not the original edition but the revised edition from 1968.
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Elin Svahn
Elin Svahn holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Stockholm University. She defended her PhD thesis The Dynamics of Extratextual Translatorship in Contemporary Sweden. A Mixed Methods Approach in 2020 and works as an assistant professor at the Institute for Translation and Interpreting Studies at Stockholm University. Her research interests include retranslation, translation sociology, and translation history. She is the co-editor of a special issue of Hermes dedicated to the translation profession together with Minna Ruokonen and Leena Salmi (2018) and a methodologically oriented volume co-edited with Lova Meister (Morfem, 2020).