Translation of The Lord of the Rings into Swedish

in 1938 Åke Ohlmarks (1911–1984) was a philologist and prolific translator, who published Swedish versions of Shakespeare, Dante and the Quran. His translation of The Lord of the Rings was the only one available in Swedish for forty years. He ignored complaints and calls for revision from readers, stating in his 1978 book Tolkiens arv ("Tolkien's legacy") that his intention had been to create an interpretation, not a translation. When The Silmarillion was published in 1977, Tolkien's son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien consented to a Swedish translation only on the condition that Ohlmarks have nothing to do with it. The translation was done by Roland Adlerberth. Ohlmarks went on to write a book in 1982 called Tolkien and Black Magic. Tolkien's response Tolkien intensely disliked Ohlmarks and his translation of The Lord of the Rings. He thought Ohlmarks's version was even worse than Schuchart's 1956–57 Dutch translation, as is evident from a 1957 letter to his publisher Rayner Unwin: Examples singled out by Tolkien in the same letter include: The Ent Quickbeam becomes Snabba solstrålen ("Swift Sunbeam"), apparently taking beam in the sense of "beam of light" instead of "tree", ignoring the fact that all Ents have names connected with trees. Tolkien stated that Quickbeam was so named because he was a "hasty" Ent; Tolkien advises translating the name to give the sense "quick (lively) tree", noting that both "Quickbeam" and "Quicken" are actual English names for the rowan tree. Ohlmarks sometimes offers multiple translations for names: for example, he renders Isengard variously as Isengard, Isengård, Isendor or Isendal. The "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings" states that this name was meant to be so "archaic in form" that its etymology had been forgotten. Tolkien advises that it could be used either as it was or, for Germanic languages (like Swedish), "one or both elements in [the] name" could be translated using "related elements" in those languages, mentioning gård as an option. Reception in Sweden Early welcome Some of the initial reception was warm; author and translator Sven Stolpe wrote in Aftonbladet that Ohlmarks "has made a ’swedification’ [försvenskning] – he has found wonderful, magnificent, Swedish compound words, he has translated poem after poem with great inspiration, there is not a page in his magnum opus that does not read like original Swedish work by a brilliant poet". , reviewing the book for Dagens Nyheter, listed some objections but wrote that "I only list these objections so that I can with greater emphasis praise the translation as a whole: it is magnificent." Later hostility Later, the translation's reception became more hostile. In 2000, of Lund University's Institute of Linguistics noted among other things Ohlmarks’s confusion/conflation of Éowyn and Merry in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and wrote that "There can be no doubt that the Swedish translation is defective and in many ways a failure". He argued that whereas Tolkien was writing for adults, Ohlmarks translated for children; and that Ohlmarks tried to make the text his own, supplanting Tolkien rather than directly translating him. Also in 2004, Tolkien scholar Anders Stenström (pen name Beregond) wrote that Ohlmarks’s translation contains numerous factual errors, mistranslations of idiomatic expressions, and non-sequiturs. Andreas Brunner commented in Sydsvenska Dagbladet that Ohlmarks' prose is hyperbolic in style, where the original uses simple or even laconic language. == Erik Andersson and Lotta Olsson, 2005 ==

Approach Ohlmarks's translation was not superseded until 2005, when a new translation was made by , Andersson retained some of Ohlmarks's more popular and well-established choices, such as Vidstige (roughly ”Wide-walker”) for "Strider", Midgård for Middle-earth and Fylke for the Shire. Reception The 2005 translation project attracted great interest from Swedish Tolkien fans and Swedish media. Henrik Williams, reviewing the new translation for Dagens Nyheter, wrote: "Let me say that Andersson & Olsson have prepared a readable, even and in large part correct translation, a test of a very robust piece of work that deserves deep respect, but also a careful review". Malte Persson wrote in Göteborgsposten that "the new translation follows the original's fluent prose very closely, and only a linguistic pedant could find anything to object to". == Comparisons ==

Titles Charlotte Strömbom notes that the Swedish titles chosen for the books immediately indicate differences between Andersson and Ohlmarks. Andersson’s title for the trilogy is, she writes, plainly closer to Tolkien's in both meaning and form; Ohlmarks' title shifts attention to the Ring itself. Ohlmarks omits the "Fellowship" from Volume I, giving what Strömbom suggests is a more epic feeling to the title, where Andersson's is more grounded in reality. where rift, "scratch, crack, gap", is uncommon). She adds that sometimes Ohlmarks' choices come closer to the sound of Tolkien's names. Strömbom notes the following as an instance of the difference in styles and length: Verse Aftonbladet wrote of the poetry that "Lotta Olsson has had the thankless task of translating the book's numerous verses which many readers skip, though she does it well and economically". Olsson rendered a sample of Tolkien's verse like this: == See also ==