The Swedish translation of concessive conjuncts in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to present and analyze the translation of seven selected concessive conjuncts – anyway, however, although, though, still, nonetheless and yet – in Dan Brown’s novel Angels and Demons translated by Ola Klingberg, by means of a comparative method combined with a qualitative analysis. Background and theory are mainly based on Altenberg (1999, 2002) for the conjuncts and Ingo (1991) for translation strategies. The aim is fulfilled by answering the three research questions: 1. How does Klingberg translate the seven selected concessive conjuncts into Swedish? 2. What factors influence the choice of translation alternative? 3. What kinds of strategies does Klingberg use? The main result is that the conjuncts translate into many different alternatives, although most frequently into the Swedish adversative men, followed by a Swedish concessive like ändå. However, the analysis of anyway is inconclusive because there were not enough tokens. The main conclusion is that translation is a difficult area to be involved in since numerous aspects affect the choice of translation alternative, even though it is shown that it is definitely possible to translate more or less ‘correctly’. A second conclusion is that some words are more likely to be translated with a particular word than others.