Mucked up in translation
Reading lovely Gustav Wied in Danish this Christmas got me going about translation from Danish into Norwegian. Bear with me.
Written Danish and written Norwegian is very nearly the same language, due to the development of written Norwegian during the era of the kingdom of Denmark-Norway. Danish was the official language in Norway too in that period, and since the spoken languages are pretty close, written Norwegian ended up being more or less Danish, to this day.
This means that everyone and his great-uncle's third cousin think they can translate from Danish. The written languages are so similar, it's really so simple to translate, seems to be the going idea.
Not so. Utterly, completely, totally not so.
In fact, the similarities make it harder.
Let's have a look at Lars von Trier's Riget (The Kingdom), for instance (yeah, I know it isn't a book. The translation problem goes for movies and comics and such too, believe me). In the opening scene of each of the four episodes, a voice-over mentions "mosemændene". In Danish, of course.
In the Norwegian subtext, "mosemændene" is translated into "mosemennene". This caused near-rioting in my Danish-Norwegian home when Riget was shown on TV, as the Norwegian "mosemennene" means "the men of moss" while the Danish "mosemændene" means "the men of the bog".
There's a point in the plot in Riget that involves that the hospital is built on a bog. This point was entirely lost on Norwegians not knowing that "mose" in Danish isn't the same as "mose" in Norwegian, I assume. Four times we watched that intro. Four times we yelled at the telly.
Also, there's a rhythm in Danish that somehow stays with the translations into Norwegian. Not knowing the name of the author or indeed that what I'm reading is a translation and not originally Norwegian, I can spot Danishness right away. Extremely few translators manage to turn that feel into Norwegian.
Naturally, all (I think) languages have that certain feel to them. I think that feel is far more difficult to translate from a language close to the one you're translating into, instead of having to reconstruct it in a completely different language. At least, that's what translations from Danish to Norwegian show, because I can't see the language feel dragged so visibly over from other languages, not even Swedish, which is also closely related to Norwegian.
To summarise: no, you can't just go ahead and translate Danish into Norwegian. Not even if you think you can. Especially if you think you can, despite not knowing Danish language and culture beyond cheap elephant beer in Copenhagen. Don't rely on your shaky ability to figure it out when you're reading it.
Written Danish and written Norwegian is very nearly the same language, due to the development of written Norwegian during the era of the kingdom of Denmark-Norway. Danish was the official language in Norway too in that period, and since the spoken languages are pretty close, written Norwegian ended up being more or less Danish, to this day.
This means that everyone and his great-uncle's third cousin think they can translate from Danish. The written languages are so similar, it's really so simple to translate, seems to be the going idea.
Not so. Utterly, completely, totally not so.
In fact, the similarities make it harder.
Let's have a look at Lars von Trier's Riget (The Kingdom), for instance (yeah, I know it isn't a book. The translation problem goes for movies and comics and such too, believe me). In the opening scene of each of the four episodes, a voice-over mentions "mosemændene". In Danish, of course.
In the Norwegian subtext, "mosemændene" is translated into "mosemennene". This caused near-rioting in my Danish-Norwegian home when Riget was shown on TV, as the Norwegian "mosemennene" means "the men of moss" while the Danish "mosemændene" means "the men of the bog".
There's a point in the plot in Riget that involves that the hospital is built on a bog. This point was entirely lost on Norwegians not knowing that "mose" in Danish isn't the same as "mose" in Norwegian, I assume. Four times we watched that intro. Four times we yelled at the telly.
Also, there's a rhythm in Danish that somehow stays with the translations into Norwegian. Not knowing the name of the author or indeed that what I'm reading is a translation and not originally Norwegian, I can spot Danishness right away. Extremely few translators manage to turn that feel into Norwegian.
Naturally, all (I think) languages have that certain feel to them. I think that feel is far more difficult to translate from a language close to the one you're translating into, instead of having to reconstruct it in a completely different language. At least, that's what translations from Danish to Norwegian show, because I can't see the language feel dragged so visibly over from other languages, not even Swedish, which is also closely related to Norwegian.
To summarise: no, you can't just go ahead and translate Danish into Norwegian. Not even if you think you can. Especially if you think you can, despite not knowing Danish language and culture beyond cheap elephant beer in Copenhagen. Don't rely on your shaky ability to figure it out when you're reading it.