”Spiced with skåls” Bilden av det skandinaviska i Mary Howitts översättning av Fredrika Bremers Strid och frid

Abstract

This essay examines the 1844 English translation of Fredrika Bremer’s novel Strife and Peace (first published in Swedish in 1840) made by Mary Howitt. This translation is partly compared to a German translation from 1841 by publishing house F.A. Brockhaus, as well as an American translation ordered by the publisher Munroe, copied and reprinted by William Smith’s London-based publishing house in 1843. Thus trying to answer questions of whether Howitt has made her translation from the Swedish, the German translation or from the American edition, as well as how the Scandinavian elements in Strife and Peace are transmitted in Howitt’s translation and in the American edition. The essay also studies the ”Preface by the translator” written by Howitt in which she criticises the American edition and the literary climate, and the answer to the preface by James Russell Lowell in North American Review. Using theories of domesticating and foreignizing translation given by Lawrence Venuti in The Translator’s Invisibility the essay discusses how the Scandinavian (language and culture) is translated by Howitt and in the American edition. An important result is that Howitt, to a higher extent than the American translator, kept much of the Scandinavian words, thereby giving a superficial difference between English and Scandinavian culture. In examining errors, footnotes etc. in the Howitt’s translation and comparing with the American and German translations, it is shown that Howitt most likely didn’t copy her translation from the American edition, but that she might have made her translation partly from the German.