TRANSLATION PROBLEM

Pratchett Abroad. Translating Terry Pratchett into Swedish

This is the essay I wrote as my C-level paper at the English department, University of Uppsala during the spring and summer of 1994. It should be noted that even though the essay deals with translation into Swedish, its intended reader does not understand Swedish.

Contents

1 Introduction
1.1 Introduction to the topic
1.2 Background: The corpus
1.3 Aim, scope and method: presentation of problems
2 The investigation
2.1 Problem area 1: names
2.2 Problem area 2: parody
2.3 Problem area 3: puns
3 Translatability
3.1 Translatability in general
3.2 Untranslatables in the corpus
4 The "good" translator
5 Concluding remarks

1. Introduction

1.1 The topic

When making a critical study of a translation from one language into another, there are a number of points that may or may not be taken into consideration. One of the most common issues of discussion is whether or not a translation should be as literal as possible. A literal translation, while preserving the author's wording, loses the nuances of the original; while a free translation can capture more of these nuances, although it is, in fact, a rewriting of the original. The translator has to take a middle course, but he also has to accept the fact that the same text cannot exist in two languages. This implies that everything cannot be translated, a problem which will be discussed in more detail further down in this essay.

Several papers, essays and theses have been written on the subject of translation; most of them, however, approach the topic solely from a scholar's point of view. By studying actual translations and then interviewing the translator, I have endeavoured to look more at the practitioner's side of the subject. The scope of the essay has limited my research to one author, which means that few or no general rules for translating can be extracted from my investigations. This, however, was not my goal.

1.2 Background: The corpus

Terry Pratchett has been writing humorous fantasy novels since 1987, totalling, so far, about 20 novels. In Britain, he is somewhat controversial, and there are frequent discussions in the papers about his quality as an author. In spite of this, he is immensely popular; also among well-educated readers; and his books are on the best-seller lists in England. In Sweden, few people except those who read fantasy literature to any extent would recognise his name. Noteworthy features of Pratchett's style are his fondness for parody and the abundance of puns in his texts. His best-known books are the Discworld novels, which are set in a disc-shaped world resting on the backs of four elephants, which in their turn stand on the back of a turtle.
The novels are set in different parts of the Discworld and there are a number of leading characters, several of which appear in more than one of the novels; none, however, in all of them. The two novels which I have chosen for a closer study are _Wyrd_Sisters_ and _Witches_Abroad_. Their Swedish translations are called _Häxkonster_ and _Häxor_i_faggorna_.(1) They have been translated into Swedish by Olle Sahlin. I chose these two novels because they feature the same protagonists and, partly, the same setting; this means that the language usage does not differ because of dissimilarities in the plot. Together, they make up 518 pages of text.

1.3 Aim, scope and method: presentation of problems

As far as I can see, the Swedish translations are well made, and my purpose with this essay is not to point out instances of mistakes or not-so-good translations. The questions I asked myself during the investigation were these: Which problems does the translator of Terry Pratchett face? Which of these problems does he have in common with other translators of fiction? What kind of problems cannot be satisfactorily solved, and what does he do about them?

To attempt to identify these problems, I have made a close parallel study of the novels and their Swedish translations, noting down all instances where the texts differ in meaning, register or other aspects, as well as clever solutions to problematic situations. I have then discussed some of these instances as well as more general translation problems with the translator, Olle Sahlin. Of course, given the amount of text, there is a considerable number of instances which cannot be discussed or even mentioned in an essay such as this. To be able to make a fairly detailed study, I have limited it to three, partially overlapping, fields: translation of names, parody and puns. In the course of this investigation, another question has arisen; namely the problem with the good translator. Which qualities should a translator possess to be considered good? This is a complex question, and one which has no objective answer, but I have noted a few points which may lead to further discussion.

As has already been mentioned, there are a number of different theories concerning translation; most of which were made by scholars and not by practising translators; the latter being too busy with their profession to carry out any research. There is a vast distance between theorists and practitioners of translation, which also has been stated several times.(2) I have also noticed that no theories I have found seem to apply to the kind of literature I have studied, with an exception for very general statements; the conclusion must therefore be that fantasy literature is a field much neglected by linguists in spite of the fact that much of the fantasy literature written holds high literary standards and has a rich and well-developed language of its own.

In the discussion about proper nouns, I will make a distinction between fantasy novels on the one hand and realistic fiction on the other. This is not a distinction between different types of literature, but between two kinds of settings: in the real world and in a fictional world, respectively.

2. The investigation

2.1 Problem area 1: names

The main concern for a translator when it comes to names is whether to translate them at all. This applies to personal names as well as to place-names.
In realistic fiction, there is a common practice recognised by most translators. Place-names cause no trouble: either they have a name in the target language (TL), which should then be used, or not, in which case the source language (SL) name should be kept. Proper names can be translated in certain contexts, for instance where they depict a character;(3) but usually they are kept intact in the SL, which is what the TL reader expects from his knowledge of the setting.

Ruke-Dravina (1983:242) writes as follows about translating proper nouns in literary texts:

To transfer place-names and personal names from a literary text written in language A to its translation in language B in the best way, the translator has to scrutinise the set of names and the ways of forming new names in both languages. Differences in the grammatical systems of the two languages must be closely examined.(4) (my translation)

Here, we can see the distance between translation theory and translation practice. The practising translator must, needless to say, be aware of how names are formed in the SL, as well as in the TL which in most cases would be his mother tongue, but it would be impossible to make an investigation of the complete set of names in both languages. The important thing must be to have such a good grasp of the SL that a suitable name in the TL comes intuitively to mind. Obviously, the translator's stylistic skill is as important as that of the original author.

The translator of a fantasy text can choose to translate names into the TL or to keep them untouched. There are no general principles, and practice varies considerably. A former editor at the publishing company Target Games pointed at the noteworthy fact that the main target group for translated fantasy literature is teenagers, to whom English names sound 'better' or more 'suitable' than Swedish ones. In Michael Moorcock's _Jewel_In_the_Skull_, Sw. translation _Den_onda_juvelen_, for instance, the personal name Hawkmoon was kept; partly because the setting is a future Europe and thus, in a way, realistic; but also very much because the editor judged that the young readers would feel that Hökmåne would be a less fitting name than Hawkmoon in a fantasy/science fiction novel. That this is a real problem is shown by the enraged fan who wrote to Terry Pratchett and complained about the translation of the name Rincewind to Rensvind in one of the first Pratchett books to be translated into Swedish.

Place-names and personal names occur frequently in the Discworld novels. The main setting of _Wyrd_Sisters_ (henceforth _WS_) is Lancre, a small country mainly consisting of mountains and with a number of small villages. The king is a despot, the people are peasants, smiths etc. The general atmosphere is that of a small, somewhat mediaeval community without any given equivalent in our world. In _Witches_Abroad_ (henceforth _WA_), the protagonists go to another part of the Discworld, a town which is a direct parallel to New Orleans, USA.

Sahlin's general approach to proper nouns in fantasy novels is that everything should be translated if possible. The author's intention when inventing a name is to make the reader associate, whether it is to an exotic setting or to a milieu resembling the reader's own. Thus, English-sounding names are always translated into a Swedish equivalent.
This also applies to the Discworld novels. When Pratchett creates personal names with an English ring to them, his intention is to give his English readers the feeling that, basically, the characters are not exotic. The name often conveys some kind of information about the character; nobles are called, for instance, Lord Henry Gleet or Sir Roger the Coverley (_WA_ pp. 217 and 228), names that sound almost as if they could be real names of English gentry - although rather silly, of course. To the average Swedish reader, English-sounding names convey only an impression of an English person, and most of the nuances are lost. Since the intention, as stated above, is not to create an impression of English characters in England, the translator has endeavoured to translate most of the personal names into Swedish. To capture the style of the original, it must also be seen as vital to try to keep the humorous connotations. The two gentlemen from _WA_ mentioned above are called Lord Henry Glafse and Hans Nåd Roger af Krepide, respectively (_Häxor_i_faggorna_, pp. 221 and 232).(5) When, on the other hand, Pratchett creates an exotic environment with the help of names, a phenomenon more common in _WA_ than in _WS_ because of the different settings, the original names are kept in the Swedish translation. An example is Lagro te Kabona, innkeeper in a village pictured on Pamplona in Spain.

The same principles apply to the place-names in the books. The villages in Lancre usually have rather strange but very English names which contain names of animals and/or features of the landscape, for instance Mad Wolf, Sheepridge and Bad Ass. Translating these names into Swedish is only a matter of translating their literal meaning: they become Tokeulv, Fåråsen and Rumperöv; the last name an illustration of the problems connected with ambiguous words. More far-off places are given exotic names: Howondaland, Tsort and Klatch. The translator has not changed these names, since he thinks that Swedish readers react to them in the same way as Pratchett's English audience, that is, that the intended effect of exoticism is achieved.(6) Some English-looking proper nouns are kept unchanged but with a slightly modified spelling: Old Mother Dismass is changed to Gammelmor Dismas and Lancre is respelled as Lanker.

2.2 Problem area 2: parody

As stated above, Terry Pratchett often uses parody in his novels. In _Moving_Pictures_ (1990), the emphasis is put on parodying films and cartoons. _Eric_ (1990) is partly a parody of Goethe's _Faust_. _WS_ is pictured on _Macbeth_ as far as dialogue and some of the scenes go, even if the plot is rather different, and it also contains some parody on _Hamlet_ and _King_Lear_.

There is one major problem when translating parodies on Shakespeare. All Englishmen can recognise Shakespeare, having studied his plays in school. Even if they do not identify from which play a given quotation originates, they will be able to see immediately that it is Shakespeare, mainly because the sixteenth-century language is so distinctly recognisable. Thus, it is also possible for them to identify parody as Shakespearian.
The Swedish reader does not have this advantage. Shakespeare is not taught very extensively in Swedish schools, especially not in the Swedish language. No plays are studied in detail, usually only the plots are covered. References to scenes, dialogue or soliloquies, apart from the extremely well-known ones, in Swedish are not likely to be immediately recognised as Shakespeare by the average reader to the same extent as they would be to the English audience.
But there are other problems as well. Shakespeare's plays were not translated into Swedish until the nineteenth century, and since then, they have been retranslated time and again, and the translations have been revised several times. There is no 'Shakespearian Swedish' that can be used to indicate what is parodied, and quotations cannot be recognised from their register or style only.

Sahlin's approach to parody in general is that the parodies should be traced back to their origins, the recognised Swedish translation of the original quotation should be found and a similar parody made in Swedish. He visualised this process with the help of the following picture:
X (original quotation) Q> X1 (parody of original quotation)
Y (original Swedish translation of X) Q>Y1 (parody of translated quotation)

It can be said that the translator's task is to get from X1 to Y1. This is, naturally, a picture of the ideal situation and there are several factors which may impede the process. Firstly, the translator may fail to see that X1 is a parody. This is especially true when translating Pratchett, where almost any line could be a reference to a novel, movie, piece of music or television programme.(7) One sub-plot in _WS_ is about a company of strolling theatre-players. Their plays are a mixture of real, more or less recognisable plays, films etc. Since most of the references in _WS_ are to Shakespeare, as has already been stated, it can be very difficult to discern parodies on other authors. Take this extract from a play, for instance:

1st Witche:

 He's late. (Pause)
2nd Witche:

 He said he would come. (Pause)

3rd Witche: He said he would come but he hasn't. This is my last newt. I saved it for him. And he hasn't come. (_WS_, p. 193)

This is a parody on Samuel Beckett's play _Waiting_for_Godot_, a radical step away from Shakespeare. But Pratchett can, at times, remove himself even further from the fictional world he describes, as in this extract, pictured on the children's television series Sesame Street:

King: Now, I'm just going to put the crown on this bush here, and you will tell me if anyone tries to take it, won't you?
Groundlings: Yes!

King: Now if I could just find my horsey...
(1st assassin pops up behind rock.)
Audience: Behind you!
(1st assassin disappears.)
King: You're trying to play tricks on old Kingy, you naughty... (_WS_, p. 183)

In this particular case, it can be argued that it does not matter much if the translator fails to recognise the source, since the television programme in question was shown on Swedish television in the 1970s and not many of the target readers would know it. Against this can be put the argument that if the translator recognises a foreign phenomenon which is typical and easily recognisable to a foreigner, he can adapt it to Swedish circumstances - in this case the language used in Swedish children's television shows.

When X1 has been recognised, the step to X is usually not too difficult to make. The problem involved in this process is to identify the exact Shakespeare play, Marx Brothers film or advertisement that has been paraphrased, in order to get the original wording right.

The third step, from X to Y, is more or less difficult depending on the nature of the quotation. In the case with Shakespeare, the task is made harder by the fact that there are several translations of each play. The translator then has to pick one edition and follow it. The Swedish translator has chosen the translation made by Carl August Hagberg in the 19th century, to get as much of the feeling of past time as possible.

Films are usually less ambiguous, having, as a rule, only one translation; even so, the Swedish text can be hard to find if the film is not easily obtainable. In _WS_, the dwarf Hwel, who works as a script writer for the above-mentioned theatre company, gets an idea for a play about 'two clowns, one fat, one thin... Thys ys amain Dainty Messe youe have got me into, Stanleigh...' (_WS_ p. 159). To identify the clowns is easy, but to find the Swedish translation of a Laurel and Hardy picture from the 1930s proved rather more difficult for the translator. It must be taken into consideration that a translator almost always works under pressure of a deadline, and thus has to prioritise and decide which part of the text is most important to get exactly right. There might not be time to put down the same amount of work on tracing every reference.

The last step, that from Y to Y1, is, naturally the one most demanding of the translator. No general principles can be set for this step; it is the imagination and creativity of the individual translator that has to decide how the effect from the SL text can be achieved in the TL text.

Concerning the particular problem with the non-existent Shakespearian Swedish, the translator resigned to the fact that not everyone who read Pratchett in Swedish only will be able to recognise the parody; and he made a similar parody following the model pictured above.

2.3 Problem area 3: puns

Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. (_WA_ p. 11)

The quoted example is not an instance difficult to translate in itself, especially not into Swedish, since the two languages have very similar words for gold. As could be expected, the translator simply changed Glod to Glud, and the effect was kept. Nevertheless, it is a good example of the difficulties involved with translating Terry Pratchett. The quoted sentence is only a foot-note at the bottom of a page, and most of the rest of the page is based on a pun much more difficult to translate:

Local people called it the Bear Mountain. This was because it was a bare mountain, not because it had a lot of bears on it. [...] people often strode into the nearest village with heavy duty crossbows, traps and nets and called haughtily for native guides to lead them to the bears. Since everyone locally was making quite a good living out of this, what with the sale [...] somehow no-one had time to go and correct the spelling. _WA_ p. 11

The translator could have refrained from trying to keep the humorous effect by translating the part carrying importance for the rest of the text, and not the part which only was a pun on bear/bare with no significance for the rest of the novel and impossible to transfer into Swedish. However, the result of this would have been that the foot-note about Glod had no introduction, and would have had to be cut out. This was too big a change from the SL text, the translator judged, and so he tried to find a solution to the problem with Bear/Bare Mountain. The solution was found in the fact that the Bare Mountain, meeting-place of the witches, was an elaborate pun not only on 'bear' but also on Bald Mountain, the site of the witches' sabbath in Moussorgsky's Concert Fantasy for large orchestra, Night on Bald Mountain. In Swedish, this piece of music is called En natt på Blåkulla, and a new pun was made on 'kulla'= Swedish dialect word for woman.

Lokalinvånarna kallade berget för Blåkullen. Detta berodde på att toppen var avskalad all vegetation och därför såg lite blåaktig ut [...] En rätt vida spridd missuppfattning var att berget hette Blåkulla och att det hade något med blåmålade kvinnor att göra. [...] folk stegade ofta in i närmaste by och bad högdraget att få bli förda till de märkliga kvinnorna på berget. Då byborna gjorde sig rätt stora förtjänster på att sälja [...] var det ingen som tyckte sig ha tid att rätta till stavningen. _Häxor_i_faggorna_, p. 11

Later in the book, the translator has inserted a new, Pratchett-style pun on guld/glud, which did not exist in the original.(8) Of course, the author has to give his clearance to this kind of insertion, but since Pratchett had no objections, the principle that when translating Pratchett, new jokes should be inserted whenever the TL allows it, must be considered a good one, as it will give the TL text the same feeling of abundance of jokes as the SL one.

What can be learned from this example is that the better the translator knows his author and the cultural sphere he moves in, the better translations he will be able to make. This rule also applies to the two problem areas already mentioned: if the translator is to translate a proper noun, he has to be certain of the author's intentions with the SL form of the noun; likewise, to recognise parody, the translator must be aware of what the author is likely to travesty, and he must be able to make a corresponding parody in the TL.

3 Translatability

3.1 Translatability in general

In my introduction, I stated that the same text cannot exist in two languages; a fact which all translators have to learn to cope with. This concept of translatability is extensively dealt with in Snell-Hornby 1988:41-42. She expresses the phenomenon as follows:

In other words, the extent to which a text is translatable varies with the degree to which it is embedded in its own specific culture, also with the distance that separates the cultural background of source text and target audience in terms of time and place. [...] the problems do not depend on the source text itself, but on the significance of the translated text for its readers as members of a certain culture, or of a sub-group within that culture, with the constellation of knowledge, judgement and perception they have developed from it.

The statement is very true and applies to all kinds of translation, from poetry to technical manuals. It is not only valid with respect to translation between two separate languages; differences in cultural background between speakers of the same languages can create difficulties in interpreting a text written in one's own mother tongue. This extract from _WA_, where the witches after a meal discuss dishes typically British, is so much Greek to an American reader: ''I like stuff that tells you plain what it is, like...well...Bubble and Squeak, or...or...' 'Spotted Dick,' said Nanny absently.' (p. 88) This sentence is very much 'embedded' in British culture, and the English-speaking reader with a different cultural background than that of the British author has almost the same task as the translator: he must interpret the words and the meaning and translate them into his own cultural sphere, if only for his own benefit.

Swedish readers have few difficulties when it comes to understanding and transferring meaning in English texts to a Swedish cultural environment, whether the source text was written in Britain, Ireland, Australia or the United States. The fact that this is not true for all foreign readers even in Europe can be proved by the following example from Pratchett. One of the most important characters in all the Discworld novels is Death, who is impersonated as the traditional Grim Reaper: a skeleton with a scythe, dressed in black. Naturally, Death is male, and is called he rather than it. The Polish translator, however, had serious troubles with this since the Polish word for death, smierc, is in the female gender.

Another problem for readers from more remote cultural spheres is the frequent referring to Shakespeare. It would be interesting to know how, for instance, an African or Asian translator would treat Shakespearian references; that discussion does not, however, fit into this essay.

3.2 Untranslatables in the corpus

There are puns, as well as instances of parody, that are impossible to translate into Swedish; and must be transferred rather than translated. Take this instance, where the Duke's Fool is trying to cheer the Duke up with a jest: ''Why, sirrah,' he quavered, 'why may a caudled fillhorse be deemed the brother of a hiren candle in the night?' [...] 'Withal, because a candle may be greased, yet a fillhorse be without a fat argier,' he said' (_WS_, p. 57) It is no coincidence that few of the words seem meaningful to a foreign reader: Pratchett made most of the words up in a style which seemed appropriate for a mediaeval fool and matched them with existing English words. The translator solved this dilemma by making a similarly unintelligible joke in Swedish, but he used existing although very archaic Swedish words to make a real joke; thus enabling the reader to look the words up and understand the meaning if he wishes to. The Swedish version sounds like this: '"Vad är det för skillnad, go'herrn", darrade han, "mellan en ölsupig fleptut och en förhydd lykta i natten?" [...] "Därför att...lyktan slocknar om den tappas och fleptuten slocknar om den fylls", sa han' (_Häxkonster_ p. 64)

Another untranslatable instance occurs on p. 98 in _WS_. In this case it is a pun which cannot be translated with meaning as well as word-play kept: 'The books said that the old-time witches had sometimes danced in their shifts. Magrat had wondered about how you danced in shifts. Perhaps there wasn't room for them all to dance at once, she'd thought.' (_WS_, p. 98) The question the translator has to put to himself here is whether the wording or the humorous play on words is more important. Clearly, the passage has no other function than that of a pun, and since shifts are not mentioned elsewhere in the book, the pun must be seen as more important than the actual wording. This was also the Swedish translator's judgment: he translated the passage as follows. 'Böckerna berättade om att häxor förr i tiden ibland hade dansat i bara mässingen. Viväcka undrade hur det skulle se ut. Det vore nog svårt att få tag på tillräckligt mycket av den metallen, tänkte hon.' (_Häxkonster_, p. 111)(9) These instances show us that the translator sometimes has to use his imagination and above all his stylistic skill as an author to transfer literary text into a foreign language in a satisfactory way.

4. The 'good' translator

In the course of this investigation, I have drawn a few conclusions about the characteristics of a 'good' translator. Of course, I do not attempt to draw up any rules, nor do I claim to be able to recognise a good translator from a bad one; the points I am about to make are to a large extent my own opinions and they are, as I stated in the introduction, chiefly meant to serve as topics for further discussion.

The most important thing for any translator of fiction is to know the author he translates, in the sense that he is familiar with his objectives for writing, the audience for which the text was originally intended, and any likely or unlikely sources of inspiration for the text. It cannot be denied that all authors are influenced by external phenomena; it might be other authors, deeply religious feelings or a fascination for motion pictures. Likewise, there are external sources which are less likely to influence each particular author: if an author dislikes the works of another author very strongly, he is less inclined to be affected by them, and an author who always lived in a big city would not likely be influenced by rural life. A good translator should be aware of the sources of inspiration and influence for the author whose works he is about to translate. In section two of this essay, I gave some of the sources of inspiration of Terry Pratchett's; the fact that he is a fantasy author also tells us that he is likely to be influenced by other authors in the same genre. Thus, the translator must be rather well-read, in order to be familiar with the literary sources of inspiration for the author in question. It is also desirable that he is acquainted with the author's cultural background, to understand particularities which concern the earlier mentioned 'embedding' in a cultural sphere.

The second thing which any translator must be aware of is the TL readers, who may expect an exactly similar reading experience as that of the SL readers. This is an impossible thing, and any translator who aims for that goal must inevitably be disappointed, as showed in section 3.1. All readers will not have the same expectations, depending on what background they have, and also on whether or not they have read the original text. If the translator tries to translate and transfer as much as possible in order to get a similar feeling in the TL cultural sphere as the one in the SL text, he will be criticised by readers who want him to keep the SL cultural sphere feeling, as discussed in 2.1. My opinion regarding this problem is that what is important is to endeavour to reproduce the general atmosphere of the original in a translated version. This is best done by transferring as much as possible into TL equivalents, which will give those readers who cannot, or do not want to, read the original a reading experience in their own language similar to that of the original readers in the SL.

What is important in order to capture the atmosphere in Terry Pratchett's novels and transfer it to another language? I have already stated the fact that his texts contain a large number of humorous plays on words, as well as instances of parody. Since much of the humorous effect is based on the use of the English language, much of it is lost in a translated version of the text, even if part of it is transferred rather than translated in order to make a joke in the TL too. When possible, the translator should use the TL in the same way as Pratchett used the SL, to make new puns which were not possible to make in English. It must, however, be noted that this is a step away from actual translation, and the consent of the author must always be received before a translator may attempt to transform the text in this fashion.

This leads to a further point which is important in the discussion of the good translator. Naturally, he must possess a stylistic skill in his own language in order to make a tolerable representation of a work in another language, as was pointed out in 2.1 and 3.2. It must not be forgotten, however, that stylistic skill is judged very differently; what is considered well-expressed by one person may very well be discarded as bad language use by someone else.

5. Concluding remarks

It has been showed that the translator of Terry Pratchett faces a number of problems: specific as well as general. The general problems are those which all translators of fiction encounter: whether or not to translate proper nouns, how to deal with parody, puns and other kinds of word-play and what to do when instances in the text prove untranslatable. An important factor in any translation of fiction is to capture the general feeling or atmosphere of the work, and in Pratchett's case this has very much to do with the abundance of parody and puns. Thus it can be said that even though these problems are general, they are particular to Pratchett because of the fact that many of his works depend largely upon parody and word-play in terms of setting, plot, characters and dialogue. A quantitative investigation could be made on the use of humour in Pratchett's novels compared to other novels; such an investigation did not fit into this essay, but may very well be a future project.

When it comes to personal names and place-names, the dividing line lies between realistic fiction and fantasy literature rather than between Pratchett and other authors of fiction. Since the works in question are fantasy novels, the rules or common practice for translating fantasy literature - insofar as any such rules or principles exist - apply to them. What can be considered specific is Pratchett's use of humorous connotations, which are important to transfer into the TL.

Untranslatable instances occur in all kinds of texts, and are more difficult to solve the more the understanding of them depends upon an understanding of the cultural environment within which the text was written. In Terry Pratchett's novels, this cultural environment is Britain, and he makes frequent and, in all probability, sometimes subconscious references to phenomena typically British. When this environment is referred to, the translator should strive to transfer, rather than to translate, in order to capture the atmosphere as discussed in section four.

It has hopefully been made sufficiently clear that one main objective of Terry Pratchett is to amuse his readers. What I have tried to describe in this essay is the general method of the Swedish translator of Terry Pratchett to translate his texts in a way that makes Swedish readers similarly amused.

Notes on the text:

(1) When quoting these works, the quotations refer to the following editions: Wyrd Sisters, Corgi books 1989, reprinted 1992 (first edition by Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1988); Witches Abroad, Corgi books 1992 (first edition by Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1991); Häxkonster, Wahlströms 1993; Häxor i faggorna, Wahlströms 1994.

(2) For instance by Neubert(1985): "The very fact that translation is carried out by professionals who have an interest in improving their craft is of no interest for pure research. On the other hand, practitioners look upon theorising as a pastime that is at best a luxury which they in their day-to-day routine can hardly afford."

(3) This is a well-known practice in children's books.

(4) För att på det rätta sättet överföra ON och PN från en litterär text på språk A till dess översättning på språk B måste översättaren konfrontera namnförrådet och namnbildningstyperna i båda språken. Olikheter i språkens grammatiska system skall granskas noggrant.

(5) It can be noted that, for some reason, the translator has chosen not to translate the English title "Lord" into a Swedish equivalent, for instance "Högvälborne".

(6) One instance where Pratchett's intentions seem unclear is the name Genua, the above-mentioned city where WA is set. The town is clearly based on New Orleans but the name is Italian.

(7) Pratchett's own comments (taken from the Annotated Pratchett File on the Internet) on the use of the reference in his works: "If I put a reference in a book I try to pick one that a generally well-read (well-viewed, well-listened) person has a sporting chance of picking up [but note, however, that he writes for a British audience]"; "There are a number of passages in the books which are `enhanced` if you know where the echoes are coming from but which are still, I hope, funny in their own right."; "Sometimes I... well... I just write stuff which hasn't been pinched from ANYONE"

(8) WA, p. 65: "'Oh, good. A silver lining'"; translated in Häxor i faggorna p. 66 to "'Åh, utmärkt. En gludkant'"

(9) This pun takes advantage of the fact that the Swedish word "mässing" is a homonym. The meaning of the set phrase is "in the nude" but the word actually means "brass".

Bibliography:

Neubert, A. 1985. 'On the interface between translation theory and translation practice' _Translation_studies_in_Scandinavia_:_proceedings_from_the_Scandinavian_Symposium_on_Translation_Theory_ (SSOTT) II, Lund 14-15 June, 1985 ed. by Lars Wollin and Hans Lindquist, 25-36. Malmö: Liber/Gleerup

Ruke-Dravina, Velta. 1983. 'Översättning av ortnamn och personnamn i litterära texter' _Från_språk_till_språk_:_sjutton_uppsatser_om_litterär_översättning_ ed. by Gunnel Engwall and Regina af Geijerstam, 230-246. Lund: Studentlitt.

Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1988. _Translation_Studies_:_an_Integrated_Approach_. Amsterdam: Philadelphia Benjamin

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