Translation Quality Assessment : A Model in Practice

Abstract: When J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings was published in Swedish 1959-1961, the translation by Åke Ohlmarks was considered by most critics to be excellent. According to Ohlmarks, even J. R. R. Tolkien himself and his son Christopher were very pleased with it, which Ohlmarks was told by Christopher when he met him in 1975. This is, however, contradicted in the authorised biography of Tolkien by Carpenter (1978), in which Tolkien is said to have been most negative towards the way Ohlmarks handled the text. Before the biography was published, Christopher Tolkien and Ohlmarks had become bitter enemies, which might explain the re-evaluation. The schism has been described by Ohlmarks in his book Tolkiens arv (1978). But ever since The Lord of the Rings came out in paperback in 1971 there has been a discussion about the translation quality also in Sweden. When I first read the books in English I had the Swedish translation beside me. I soon discovered that Ohlmarks had taken great liberties with the text. I noticed that the descriptions were often more detailed in the Swedish translation than in the original and it was this fact that first roused my interest. Therefore, I decided to try to make a translation quality assessment of a part of the text, using a model by Juliane House.