The Challenges of Translating Jane Austen’s Irony: Samples from 150 Years of Norwegian Versions of the Novels

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a wonderful and engrossing study of the subject. My only comment overall is that even English speakers don’t always understand Austen’s irony - it sometimes contains ambiguities even for expert readers. Perhaps this could be acknowledged in passing. 
The back-translations are most enlightening but they too are translations and I think this could be acknowledged.
One small point about the end of Persuasion - they may be “rich and happy” but Austen makes sure we realise that Anne lives in dread of a future war - which will happen, given the timing of the novel. Even I am not sure whether her final phrase is ironic or a genuine tribute to the navy - perhaps both!

Author Response

I am grateful for the very positive review, and also for the three suggestions, which have all been followed up in the revised version (to be submitted after all reviews have been dealt with). Here, I have added ironic ambiguities in passing (p 5), expanded footnote 25 on back-translations (p 6), and added a comment on the shadows of war in the ending of P, p.7.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a generally well written, interesting contribution to the growing number of studies of Austen in translation, by an author who is an experienced translator of the novelist. The essay compares, via a series of close readings, the original texts with a variety of modern renditions into Norwegian (modestly excluding his/her own) in order to explore their differing purposes and intended audiences. The author rightly points out, among other things, the importance of serial publication in the history of translation and authorial reception, and the sacrifice of irony and humour in many renditions of Austen into another language. For practical purposes, Norwegian translations are ‘back-translated’ into English, but this does not prove as awkward or distracting as it might initially seem.

It is curious to discover (p. 3) that the title of the sole nineteenth-century Norwegian translation of Persuasion is Familien Eliot, since Persuasion was not the author’s choice of title and as family tradition has it The Elliots seems to have been her preferred alternative. Could the translator somehow have known this and re-named the novel accordingly, or was the Norwegian title simply a reflection of the French and Swedish versions? The date of the translation’s appearance (1871-2) is suggestive in this regard, given that James Edward Austen-Leigh’s memoir of his aunt appears first in 1869 (dated 1870) and then in a second edition in 1871. Was the publication of this biography an influence in any way on the new translation? Was Austen-Leigh’s Memoir itself read or consulted in Norway, whether in English or in translation?

The author’s argument about punctuation (pp. 13-14) is potentially a little problematic, since it seems to assume that Austen herself is entirely responsible for this feature of her novels. That is not necessarily the case. William Gifford may well have edited and (as he saw it) ‘corrected’ Emma and Persuasion. In his letters, he complains of Pride and Prejudice that it is ‘wretchedly printed in some places, & so pointed [punctuated] as to be unintelligible'; of the manuscript of Emma, he wrote: ‘It is very carelessly copied, though the hand-writing is excellently plain, & there are many short omissions which must be inserted. I will readily correct the proof for you, & may do it a little good here & there.' (Kathryn Sutherland has written about this; for a summary of her arguments, and challenges to them, see Language Log » "Austen's points": Kathryn Sutherland responds (upenn.edu)).

Another way of assessing Austen’s popularity at home and abroad – beyond the sheer number of editions and translations, and their presence in public and private libraries – might be the print runs of each edition. These, at least in England, were to begin with relatively small, albeit typical for a novelist at the time (c. 1750 copies, of which in the case of the posthumously published Northanger Abbey and Persuasion a considerable number remained unsold some years later). Only Walter Scott could expect print runs of c. 10,000. Is this also true of Austen in (Norwegian) translation in the nineteenth century and beyond?

Some minor points about phrasing and punctuation etc.:

p. 4, l. 127: I don’t think there should be a comma after ‘nicest’.

p. 4, l. 133: ‘limited of the language’: this does not sound idiomatic, and is a bit hard to follow; I think ‘understanding’ needs to be repeated after ‘limited’.

p. 5, l. 156: ‘since then’ would sound more natural than ‘since’.

p. 5, l. 159: I think ‘and’ would sound better and more immediately comprehensible than ‘to wit’.

p. 5, l. 160: ‘a good hand at finding’ doesn’t sound quite right; replace with ‘is good at finding’?

p. 5, ll. 166-8: ‘My own [removed for peer-review] (2022), is not only the first time this novel appears in Norwegian, but also the first time any Austen work is translated into the minority language New Norwegian.’ This isn’t coherent; it would be better as: ‘My own […] (2022), is the first Norwegian translation of this novel, as well as the first of any of Austen’s works to be translated into…’

p. 5, l. 177: I am not sure it’s possible to have ‘irony on’ someone or something. Perhaps ‘ironic attitude to’ or ‘ironic handling of’? Or ‘dramatic irony at the expense of the characters’?

p. 6, ll. 207 and 211: I don’t think you make jokes ‘on’ something, but rather ‘about’ it.

p. 6, n. 28: ‘Familien Elliot’ is here given in italics and quotation marks, but in other notes only in italics: which should it be?

p. 7, l. 223: It’s not clear to me that Austen is directing irony at her own love story: how would we know?

p. 8, l. 266: ‘Heywood-family’ should not be hyphenated.

p. 8, l. 288: there should not be a comma after ‘yet’.

p. 9, l. 309: ‘irony on’ – again, this should be rephrased.

p. 9, l. 314: ‘cautious’ doesn’t seem the right word here; he deems it ‘a wise precaution’, maybe?

p. 9, notes 42, 44 and 45 lack a full stop.

p. 10, l. 352: ‘a tone of ironic distance to her world’. I don’t understand what this means; is it saying that her world possesses an ironic distance (if so, from what?). The reader is led to expect that ‘distance’ will be ‘from’ something, which makes the ‘to’ that follows additionally confusing.

p. 11, l. 374: add comma after ‘gossip’; ‘no less than’ should be ‘no fewer than’.

p. 12, l. 407 ‘character’s’ should be ‘characters’’ (i.e. plural possessive, not singular).

p. 13, l. 437: ‘whether’ would sound more natural than ‘if’ here.

p. 14, n. 81: should a translator be given for the Genette text?

p. 14, l. 460: ‘no less than’ should be ‘no fewer than’.

p. 15, n. 83: add a translator for Benjamin?

Author Response

I am grateful for the positive, well-considered and helpful review, and have revised the article accordingly:

The long list of language, stylistic and other amendments have all been implemented, and I thank the reviewer for taking the time to give me such thorough feedback! It is most appreciated.

A major issue, on Austen and punctuation, has been addressed and new material and reference added. This is certainly an improvement of my case, although it does not change the argument itself. 

Two issues have been referred to another article in footnote 14 p 3, i.e. the question of the title of The Elliots, and the influence of the Memoir. Both are further discussed in the article in question.

One interesting question has not been dealt with, this is the figures for print runs in England and Norway. I simply do not have any research on this as yet, and must leave it to later articles.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article aims to examine how irony was expressed in Jane Austen’s novels in Norwegian translations published from 1871 until 2022. The study gives a unique and nuanced insight into literary translations in Norwegian and provides invaluable information to non-Norwegian-speaking translation studies scholars.

The suggested changes are the following:

1) The article presents very intriguing examples of (mis)translations and omissions of ironical references in Norwegian literary translations, but does not provide any analyse of these case studies. The author also poses very interesting questions at the introductory part of his/her article such as “What purposes do the translations serve and what readership do they address?” but these questions are both left unanswered in the Norwegian context.

2) I have also found the conclusion of the study quite general. It does not even determine what the major findings of the research have been: Was there any progress, improvement throughout these years? Omitting the subtle ironic references should merely be linked to the translators’ language skills, or there are other reasons such as their gender ideology (Alf Harbitz, for instance (?)) or “lack of a good ear”, etc.?

3) It would be also very important to give a more detailed definition of ‘irony’ in the article.

4) Giving a very short overview on other academic non-Norwegian studies how Jane Austen’s irony has been translated elsewhere would be likewise very beneficial, but not necessarily essential.

5) Finally, sometimes it is very difficult to follow which translations were referred to when the author uses the term “modern version”. Translators’ name with the translations’ first publication dates, or any abbreviated titles or references might be used for easier reading, but it is only a suggestion.

The examples given in the study are most interesting, and I am convinced that it will open new horizon for interested researcher in this field.

Author Response

I am grateful for the positive and encouraging review. As a consequence of this feedback, I have added a definition of irony on p 5, and also amended some ambiguous references to 'modern versions'. The reviewer raises a couple of interesting questions that I have answered elsewhere in my work, and therefore cross-referenced in footnotes and bibliography. Not least the question of whether there are gender - or other influences behind certain translations (such as Harbitz and Knutsen). Also, the reviewer finds that there are opening questions that are not fully answered in this article. These are, indeed, meant to point to the bigger, joint project of studying the foreign translations of Austen, of which this article is only one little contribution. It is not my intention to give full analysis of the different translations mentioned, but instead draw out one aspect for comparison: translation of irony. I hope this works in this new, revised version.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your revised version.