Publications
Publication details [#52324]
Svahn, Elin. 2022. The Making of a Non-Retranslation through Paratexts: Bonjour Tristesse in eight Swedish editions 1955–2012. In Pleijel, Richard and Malin Podlevskikh Carlström, eds. Paratexts in Translation: Nordic perspectives (TransÜD: Arbeiten zur Theorie und Praxis des Übersetzens und Dolmetschens 135). Berlin: Frank & Timme. pp. 21–55. URL
Publication type
Chapter in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Source language
Target language
Person as a subject
Title as subject
Abstract
This chapter explores paratexts — producer-created peritexts and receiver-created epitexts — in connection with Lily Vallquist’s Swedish translation of Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan. The translation is approached as a non-retranslation, i.e., as a translation that is continuously being republished over a long period of time without prompting a retranslation; Vallquist’s Bonjour Tristesse has been published, in the same translation, in eight editions between 1955 and 2012. Consequently, it represents a prime object for studying paratexts in order to follow the novel’s long-term canonization in the Swedish literary system. The findings show an interplay between the epitexts and peritexts, with formulations being used, re-used, and slightly altered over a period of over fifty years, highlighting the interrelations between publishing houses and press. They also show how the short-term consecration, mainly by Bonjour Tristesse being published in book clubs and classics series, builds up to the long-term canonization and the novel’s contemporary status as a classic. The chapter concludes with a discussion of whether a translation from the 1950s may in fact be perceived as an asset for a novel and an author that are strongly associated with the same era.
Source : Abstract in book