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The Translation of Foul Language in the French and Swedish Translations of Maria Parr’s Keeperen og havet The current study deals with the translation of foul language in the French and Swedish translations of Maria Parr’s Norwegian novel Keeperen og havet (Lena, the Sea, and Me, 2017). Previous research shows that children’s literature is translated differently in France and in Scandinavia. It is also well-known that parents often have an opinion on what children’s literature can contain. For this reason, we choose the two target languages in question, French and Swedish, and the specific object of study, namely foul language. Methodologically, this is a comparative case study where we compare how passages containing foul language are translated from Norwegian to French and Swedish. Parr is highly creative in her use of foul language. Our study suggests that the Swedish translator retains the coarseness of the source text, and often does so to a great extent by choosing established expressions in the target language. The French translator shows a great deal of creativity, as she uses the characteristics of the plot and the setting to find solutions that are true to the style of the source text.

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This article investigates how the covers of two novels, Vaffelhjarte (Waffle Hearts, 2005) and Tonje Glimmerdal (Astrid the Unstoppable, 2009) by the Norwegian children’s fiction author Maria Parr, are visually and verbally translated into German, French, and English. The central question of this study is how representations of characters, theme, and geographical context are rendered in the target text paratexts. Methodologically, the study is inspired by Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design. The results show that the target paratexts to a large extent reflect the novel, but in different ways and not necessarily by staying close to the source paratexts. Previous research on paratexts and translation shows that exotic source text elements tend to be foregrounded in translation. This is something that we also see regarding the French and the British Parr translations, but not the German. Drawing on previous research by Kathryn Batchelor and Maria Pujol-Valls, we would like to put forward the hypothesis that verbal text – that is, the narrative in the novel – and paratexts behave differently in translation. As verbal text, according to previous research, often is more adapted to the target culture when migrating from a peripheral system (Norway) to more central ones (France and Great Britain), the opposite seems to be the case for translated paratexts, where exotic source culture elements are reinforced in central systems. Concerning the German cover, where there was no foregrounding of exotic source culture elements, we raise the possibility that such foregrounding is not needed, since German readers are already familiar with Scandinavian children’s literature.

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