Julmust, Must or Christmas Cola? : Translation Strategies for Words for Culture Specific Items in Two Translations of Liza Marklund’s 'Sprängaren

Research within translation characterises cultural references as being problematic for translators, meaning they must choose between different translation strategies as to how to transfer these references into the translated text. These strategies are often described in general terms according to how closely oriented they are to the target-culture or source-culture, known as domestication or foreignisation. Translation of literature into English is minimal in world terms and there is seemingly a lack of statistically comparable data concerning the translation of cultural references. This study investigates and compares translation strategies of words denoting cultural references in two translations of the 1998 Swedish Nordic Noir novel Sprängaren by Liza Marklund. The methodology in the study is based on descriptive translation studies, and a categorisation model for types of cultural references is used, as well as an adapted taxonomy model for evaluating translation strategies. Issues addressed are: what types of strategies are used; whether strategies change between translations; how the second translation stands in relation to the retranslation hypothesis and whether any general translation norms are apparent. Results show that a wide variety of translation strategies are used for different types of cultural references, with subtle differences in strategies used in each translation. However, both translations appear to be more domestication-oriented with little overall movement towards to the source culture, as the retranslation hypothesis suggests