Part of
Textual and Contextual Voices of TranslationEdited by Cecilia Alvstad, Annjo K. Greenall, Hanne Jansen and Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov
[Benjamins Translation Library 137] 2017
► pp. 201–221
Translations are often treated as if they were identical to the source text – as if the translated text was written not by a translator but by the original author. This phenomenon, recently dubbed “the translation pact,” also informs the way literary reviewers talk about the works they review, as if such works provided access to the original author’s voice. In this chapter, I study the ways in which reviewers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, respectively, talk about the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish translations of Nadine Gordimer’s 2005 novel Get a Life as if they were talking about the original book, when they are in fact talking about three different books in closely related languages.