How to dress a cloud in swedish trousers? : A comparative analysis of swedish translations of Vladimir Majakovskij's poetry

Abstract of How to dress a cloud in trousers? – A comparative analysis of Swedish translations of Vladimir Majakovskij’s poetry In this essay I present a comparative analysis of Swedish translations of Vladimir Majakovskij’s poems “Облако в штанах” and “Во весь голос”.[1]My ambition is to analyze and understand methods of translation and reasons of devices in transforming Majakovskij’s poetry into a Swedish language and context. On the basis of my theoretic perspectives (which contain fundamental problems of translation, the development of the subject “translation” and English translations of Russian texts) I methodically execute a parallel reading of the original poems, literature concerning Majakovskij as a poet and selected, biographic literature with a concentration on the works of the Swedish translator and scientist Bengt Jangfeldt.[2]The chapters of my analysis was formed during my methodic reading of theoretic and biographic literature and creates a frame for my results: the analyze of three different kinds of transforming the Russian rhymes into Swedish, the way of translators actualizing and making poems more understandable by placing it in a different context by changing names/national clichés, the effect of using hard or vulgarized language and the inevitable transformation from Russian to Swedish when translators are showing underlying meanings in the strophes by using more poetic language, a discussion of errors in translation, implicit difficulties in Russian use of certain words and the ideology of Majakovskij’s poetry and the Swedish publication/relationship to the authorship. [1]”A cloud in trousers” and ”At the top of my voice” [2]An interview with a Russian-speaking reader is also executed for another perspective of the Russian languag