2012:1

A recent New Yorker cartoon reflects on what some Anglophone writers have to contend with while Nordic fiction remains in vogue: a publisher looks disparagingly at a submission and says to its hapless author: ‘Can’t you make it Swedish?’ Meanwhile, Edith Grossman in her Why Translation Matters (Yale University Press, 2010) cites ‘one of my favorite cartoons, in which a bewildered translator asks a disgruntled author, “Do you not be happy with me as the translator of the books of you?”’

The majority of literary translators currently active in our circles do not, thankfully, give their authors such cause for alarm. It is good to see the translator’s importance more widely acknowledged and discussed these days than it has been for quite some time. The award of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature to Tomas Tranströmer did much to keep the spotlight trained on the profession: an article in Svenska Dagbladet, ‘Tranströmer now in 54 languages’, incorporated interviews with his translators into Dutch, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Czech and Slovak.

In this issue of SBR we launch a new, occasional series called Translator’s Choice, in which established literary translators are invited to translate and introduce texts that particularly appeal to them. Our first contributor is Laurie Thompson, who has chosen a selection of Stig Dagerman’s ‘daily verses’ from the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, all the translations in this issue look back to the past. Kristina Sandberg’s Giving Birth is an achingly told tale of a young woman contending with class prejudice and unplanned pregnancy in 1938. Kjell Westö’s Don’t Go Out Alone Into the Night is set in the 1960s, as the generation born in 1939-45 seeks its place in a rapidly modernising Finland. In While Others Were Celebrating Victory Jens Orback gives a moving account of helping his German mother start to come to terms with scarring experiences at the close of the Second World War.

An impressive reviews section offers a great range of books for non-Swedish publishers looking for potential winners to back. Remember that translators are busy these days and need to be booked in good time! 2012 is Strindberg centenary year, and SBR will mark this with a themed autumn issue. Strindberg scholars around the world will be hoping to shed new light on the man and his writing, and there is no better way to do that than by translating or retranslating his work.