Translating code-switching and L3. Stieg Larsson's Män som hatar kvinnor in German, French, Italian, Portuguese, English, Catalan and Spanish

Abstract

El artículo aparecerá en el número 68 de la revista 'Onomázein', correspondiente al segundo trimestre de 2025. Al texto se le ha asignado el DOI 10.7764/onomazein.68.03 por el equipo editor: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Departamento de Ciencias del Lenguaje.

The objective of this article is to analyse a translated text's willingness or reluctance to maintain code-switching present in the original text. To that end, we use a corpus comprising Män som hatar kvinnor, the first novel in the Millennium trilogy, and its German, French, Italian, Portuguese, English, Catalan and Spanish translations. English words and expressions are scattered throughout the novel, reproducing the codeswitching between English and Swedish common in Sweden. The novel also includes instances of multilingualism (L3), which, in principle, require a different translation approach. Our analysis points to the stance taken towards maintaining or eliminating the English words and expressions present in the original having more to do with the power imbalance between literary systems than with how "familiar" or "foreign" readers may find them.