HEALTH BY CHOCOLATE : "Food of the Gods: Cure for Humanity? A Cultural History of the Medicinal and Ritual Use of Chocolate"

Abstract Translation is not an easy task. There is a plethora of problems and difficulties which needs to be tackled in the process of translating a text from one language to another. This analysis concentrates on three of them – terminology, connectors and cultural aspects. The study is based on the Swedish translation of an English text concerning the medical and ritual use of chocolate in ancient Native American cultures as well as in Europe during the colonial era. The main problem encountered in the translation of this text was how to generalize it so it would suit the Swedish public but still maintain the level of formality of the source text. The specialized terminology found belongs to the fields of medicine and botany and these terms were often explained or replaced with more common words. A couple of the cultural aspects were also explained, since, for example, the cultural area Mesoamerica may not be known to the target readers unless they are knowledgeable in anthropology or archaeology. This made the target text somewhat less formal than the original so, to compensate, the translation of the adverbial connectors however and thus were on occasion translated with the more formal Swedish emellertid and således