Year: Various (1842)
Publisher: Various
Language: Swedish (Various translators)
Translators are the unsung heroes of literature. Thanks to their efforts and skill, works of literature, poetry, and drama that would remain unknown outside of their original language area, are made available to readers around the globe.
In order to better understand the importance of translations on the accessibility and comprehensibility of a foreign work of fiction, I decided to look up all translations of Nicolai Gogol’s novella “The Overcoat” (“Шинель” in original) into Swedish. Hans Åkerström’s survey “Bibliografi över rysk skönlitteratur översatt till svenska”, Acta Bibliothecae Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2018, as well as the librarians at the Royal Library in Stockholm and Haninge Kommunbibliotek.
I managed to identify and hunt down seven full versions of the story by the following translators:
“Kappan”; Peterson, Karl Erik; 1889
“Kapprocken”; unknown translator; 1889
“Kappan”; Nilsson, Nils-Åke; 1946
“Kappan”; Andrae, Staffan; 1959
“Överrocken”; Nilsson, Sture; 1985
“Överrocken”; Fält, Erik; 1993
“Kappan”; Lindgren, Stefan; 2010
“Kappan”; Peterson, Karl Erik; 1889
“Kapprocken”; unknown translator; 1889
“Kappan”; Nilsson, Nils-Åke; 1946
“Kappan”; Andrae, Staffan; 1959
“Överrocken”; Nilsson, Sture; 1985
“Överrocken”; Fält, Erik; 1993
“Kappan”; Lindgren, Stefan; 2010
There seem to be two basic approaches to translations: source-oriented and target-oriented. Simply put, it is the difference between bringing the reader to the text or the text to the reader.
Notably, the two translations from 1889 are not from the Russian original but from German and French translations and seem to have been done independently as demonstrated by their completely different vocabulary and syntax. The first Swedish translation directly from Gogol’s Russian was Nils-Åke Nilsson’s work. After that, only Staffan Andrae seems to have reached for a non-Russian (German in his case) source as the vantage point for his work.
Most of the translations seem to gravitate toward target-orientation. Russian terms such as currency (копеечными/kopeechnymi), a well-known statue (Фальконетова монумента/Falkonetova monumenta), and civil servants’ titles (капитан-исправник/kapitan-ispravnik) are consistently modified by the translators to make sense to the foreign reader. Also, many sentences are routinely re-arranged in order to make them easier on the Swedish eye. Having said that, I observe that over time, the translations become increasingly accurate and increasingly source-oriented.
Two items stand out in this regard. Staffan Andrae’s translation effectively does away with all gogolian flavour and chops the text up to short and poignant phrases in contrast to Gogol’s winding phrases. Erik Fält’s, on the other hand, preserves the both the vocabulary and the idiosyncratic syntax of Nicolai Gogol and seems to be the most loyal to the source. As an example, a sentence in the Russian original, which contains 210 words separated by 37 commas, 3 hyphens, and 3 semi-colons, but only one period in the very end is offered in a similar single-sentence format by Fält (13 commas, 3 hyphens, and 3 semi-colons) and Lindgren (21 commas, 3 hyphens), but a whopping 15 sentences by Staffan Andrae (a mere 5 commas).
What is interesting is that, although the post-1946 translations often differ significantly from one another, they all seem to connect to Nilsson’s. Unusual concepts that were first introduced by Nilsson routinely re-appear in at least one of the subsequent translations whereas virtually none have been carried over to the more modern translations from the 19th century versions. Nilsson seems therefore to have set a standard for The Overcoat in the Swedish language. His is also the most widely reproduced translation in new editions issued by a number of publishers. Furthermore, a Swedish schoolbook (“Enhvar sin egen lärare”) from 1893 as well as a news article from 1926, mention the novella as “Kapprocken” without any further explanation which indicates to me that in this era the book was widely known to the general public under that title. Nilsson called his translation “Kappan” which today is the generally accepted name, despite some translators’ choice to apply the title “Överrocken”. This further strengthens my conclusion that Nilsson’s translation should be considered the benchmark for Gogol’s story in Sweden.
