Max Havelaar by Multatuli in Russia: The origins of translations

This article is dedicated to the Russian translations of the Dutch novel Max Havelaar or the coffee auctions of the Nederlandsche Handelmaatschappy (1860) by Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–1887), who published his work under the pseudonym Multatuli. Max Havelaar is one of the best known and most translated works of Dutch literature. There are six complete Russian translations published between 1916 and 1959, which have not yet been analyzed. The authors hypothesize that German is the intermediate language in the Dutch-Russian literary transfer as research has shown that German often served as an intermediate language for translations into Scandinavian and Slavic languages during this period. In the specific case of Max Havelaar, the German translation by Wilhelm Spohr, who moved in circles of anarchists, served as an intermediate text. The authors also investigated whether the Russian translators used the English translation of 1868, but this was not the case. In the first part of this article, the biographies of the Russian translators, authors of forewords and editors who worked on the Russian translations are examined. In the second part, excerpts from the novel are compared with the translations to analyze the relationship between the texts. The results of the research confirm that the first Russian translations were based on Karl Mischke’s German translation, which had appeared almost simultaneously with Spohr’s. Traces of this translation can also be found in later texts. To the authors’ knowledge, it has not been shown before that Mischke’s translation and not Spohr’s was used as an intermediate text.

Quasi-synonymy of Danish causal conjunctions from the speaker’s perspective

The article explores a fragment of the grammatical system of the Danish language, which represents a regular formal variation of auxiliary language markers — causal conjunctions fordi, for, eftersom, thi. The functional and pragmatic description of each of them is proposed based on the anthropocentric approach. This approach is aimed at studying the linguistic expression of the speaker’s orientation in denotative reality and communication. In terms of expressing causation, this presupposes differentiation of ways to substantiate the speaker’s assertion, depending on different sources of causation: the speaker’s own inference (for); appeal to knowledge, common to all participants in communication (thi); justifying one objective fact with another (fordi), justifying the speaker’s own inference with an objective fact (eftersom). The etymology of conjunctions, as well as the temporal correlation of the predicates in causal and main clauses, allows us to determine the reasons for the speaker to organize the mental space of causation in different ways. In addition, the use of the conceptual blending concept allows us to explain why one conjunction is replaced by another in oral speech.

I dette åbenbaringens lys — an example of word formation, incongruency, or maybe something completely different?

The article concerns constructions such as et herrens år in Danish where the first of the nouns is in the definite form (with a suffixed definite article), in the genitive case and functions as an attribute and not a determiner in relation to the following noun. The determiner (a definite or indefinite article, demonstrative pronoun, etc.), on the other hand, is not linked directly to the following noun but to the one that occurs in the last position of the whole phrase. This stands in contrast to the regular structure of the noun phrase where the determiner refers to the directly following noun (e.g., en bils ejer). In the case of the construction discussed here, however, the determiner refers to the last noun in the phrase (e.g., dette herrens år). Moreover, adjectives can occur before both nouns, but they will always refer to the last noun (e.g., en vældig kræfternes udfoldelse). The work discusses both the grammatical and semantical aspects of the construction. As demonstrated in the article, the construction should not be treated from the perspective of word formation, as it is rather an example of an attributive use of a definite noun in the genitive. Secondly, it is also interesting to point out that the semantic relations within the construction do not fully overlap with the grammatical relations, as from the semantic point of view the determiner, the adjectives, as well as the attributive noun, refer to the main noun. Thirdly, and most importantly, there are strong indications that here we are not dealing with just a few rare examples of a more literary style or certain fixed expressions, but with a regular grammatical construction. To conclude with certainty, however, it is necessary to complement this exploratory research with a corpus study, and preferably also a survey that could reveal the native speakers’ perception of the construction.

Literal translation in the light of the gravitational pull hypothesis: The case of sentence-initial indefinite noun phrases in singular in Norwegian-to-German and German-to-Norwegian translation

The present article reports on a study of renditions of sentence-initial indefinite noun phrases (NPs) in singular in Norwegian-to-German and German-to-Norwegian parallel corpus data. It briefly describes the correspondences to such NPs and the translation- induced changes that are made in the structure of the sentences including the phrase. In particular, however, the study focuses on fully congruent correspondences to singular sentence-initial indefinite NPs, i. e., the instances in which the structure is formally copied in translational renditions. Finding out to what extent such sentence initials are preserved in translation allows us to verify the hypothesis about literal translation that pertains to a potential (yet somehow forgotten) translation universal. By referring the conducted study to the framework of the current version of the gravitational pull hypothesis by Sandra Halverson, it becomes possible to position the phenomenon of literal translation in the context of the latest research into bilingual cognition and to find common ground where more traditional contrastive linguistics and translation studies may meet. The analysis generally supports the literal translation hypothesis as the NPs under investigation (classified as highly salient linguistic structures) have been translated into German and Norwegian literally in over 70 %. Thus, the gravitational pull of the source text structures on the target language is of similar strength. On the other hand, it has been observed that Norwegian is more resistant to using sentence-initial indefinite NPs than German, or that German applies this way of content construal more willingly. In a broader perspective, the research results shed new light on the extent to which the linguistic patterns of the use of the indefinite article in a real text production are similar and entrenched in a bilingual’s Norwegian/German representation.

The language of Dutch indoor cycling instructors

Sports, physical fitness and good health are important to most people across the world. For this reason, fitness centres are constantly growing and offering their customers a wide range of different activities (e. g., strength training, personal training or group classes). One of the most popular forms of fitness for years has been indoor cycling — a group class on stationary bikes to the rhythm of stimulating music. A charismatic trainer is of course a part of it. This article focuses on the specific language of Dutch indoor cycling instructors used in contact with their clients. The research is based on the participant observation of Spinning® classes in Dutch fitness centres between June 2019 and March 2020 and is supported with my own experience as an indoor cycling instructor. Already at first sight, some characteristics are noticeable that make this language special, such as specific pronunciations and intonations, vocabulary, certain morphosyntactic features or the use of affirmation and visualization. Language seems to be an important tool to ensure the balance between body and mind. Moreover, language is seen as part of the whole philosophy of Spinning®, which confirms the words of Johnny G., the creator of this programme: “Spinning® has always shone a bright light in the health and fitness community. Not because riding a stationary bike is such a trick, but because of its language”.

The new Scandinavian zoomorphic amulet with runic inscription, through the lense of ancient germanic mythological system of the world

The new rhombus-shaped cast amulet of the 10th century, made in the Borre style by means of the openwork metalworking technique, is a unique example of the Scandinavian jewelry tradition. The amulet originated from the region of the middle Dniester. The amulet and graffito are unique and they have no direct known analogies. This article is devoted to the study of semiotics and semantics of a zoomorphic pendant and elements of its image. The study carried out a structural-semantic analysis of the composition and individual elements of ornament through the paradigm of cosmological and cosmogonic representations of the ancient Germans. The work used the comparative method as well as a wide range of archaeological and literary sources. The picture stones and runic stones, Hogback stones, objects of material culture of the ancient Germans, results of comprehensive archaeological research, Old Norse songs about the gods and heroes of the “Younger Edda”, a set of Scandinavian sagas, Icelandic Viking sagas about Old Rus’ and materials from written sources of the XI– XIII Centuries were examined in detail and compared. The novelty of the research lies not only in the uniqueness of the new early medieval Scandinavian amulet, but also in the comparison and study of the object through the lens of the literary heritage of German- Scandinavian mythology. This approach was first applied in the detailed study of the “Gnezdovo-type” pendants. The methodological approach of the research and the historical-typological and semantic-semiotic analysis led to a scientific interpretation of the depicted story of the amulet within the context of the ancient Germanic mythological system and cosmogony.

Linguistic aspect of Søren Kierkegaard’s “Indirect communication” with continual reference to romantic irony

The subject of this article is the language of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. The article presents a classification (based on the material of the treatise Repetition) of rhetorical devices specific for this author. This classification relies on the thesis that Romanticism was the cultural and historical context of Kierkegaard’s background which influenced his language and style, and that Kierkegaard’s method of indirect communication became in a certain sense a legacy of romantic irony defined by Friedrich Schlegel as “the form of paradox”. Categorizing Kierkegaard as a descendant of Romanticism makes it possible to classify his main stylistic techniques under the term “contradiction”, which means a conscious and even intentional use of different stylistic and conceptual oppositions in the collision of which the author’s thought is revealed. Three types of contradictions can be distinguished in the text of Repetition. (1) The first one is intertextual contradiction between two works. Publishing his books under different pseudonyms, Kierkegaard creates such a situation as though two authors argue with each other. (2) The second one is conceptual contradiction within one work. Kierkegaard confronts in the treatise two opposite characters and two opposite concepts of repetition. (3) And the last type of contradiction are linguistic contradictions consisting of all the stylistic devices that Kierkegaard uses to activate his method of indirect communication and which can be defined as “wordplay” in the most general sense: as playful and witty use of words. Kierkegaard uses puns, different figures of repetition and parallelism, and these stylistic devices take form of contradiction in order to express the fundamental contradictory of life in an ironic and witty form. In such a “struggle” of oppositions, not only an ironic intonation is created, but also the meaning of concepts is revealed in their true-life fullness.

Microblogging in Denmark and Poland — a contrastive analysis. Part I.

The anthology Microblogs global is an international study of Twitter. Fifteen researchers examined tweets in Chinese, German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish regarding the following linguistic phenomena: orthography, spoken language, vocabulary, reduction, syntax, graphostylistics, interaction and the functional aspects. The book was an inspiration for the analysis of tweets in Danish and Polish because the two languages were not included in the original study. Furthermore, a contrastive analysis of the Polish and Danish tweets is included to highlight the differences in the language of the tweets. The following article is the first part of this study. It deals with the social network and microblogging tool Twitter, including the more technical side of microblogging. The many types of tweets and the extensive terminology involved are thoroughly and conscientiously explained. The contrasts regarding orthography and spoken language are analyzed whereas the discrepancies in vocabulary, reduction, syntax, graphostylistics, interaction and the functional aspects will be described in the second part of the study. The basis for the description is a compilation of 640 tweets — 320 Polish and 320 Danish — from an inhomogeneous community that posts mainly in Polish / Danish. Profiles were chosen completely by chance and they belong to various politicians, journalists and individuals. The study covers the period from March 30 to April 6, 2019.

Word and truth — a look at Johannes V. Jensen’s journalism. Part 1

Since the establishment of the Johannes V. Jensen Centre at Aarhus University in 1993, studies of the Nobel Prize winner have shifted from the biographical to the textual. At the same time, the publication especially of early works with critical commentary has intensified. The present article traces some themes throughout a half-century of Jensen’s journalism which was first assembled in book form in 2014 under the title Word and Truth. The material brings more nuance to impressions of the poet’s opinions and positions, also because the anthologizing of his journalistic works has until now and for good reason skimmed only the cream. Now the dregs are considered as well, and even this portion of Jensen’s work impresses with its linguistically seductive energy and fascinating images. Most of the articles Jensen himself agreed to have reprinted and they were included in the so-called mythic volumes. Jensen regarded myth as a special genre, his own reply in all modesty to what H. C. Andersen had done for the fairy tale. Jensen’s journalism spans also biographically from the poet’s native soil in Jutland to distant parts of the world, with the capital as well as rural Tisvilde as important stops along the way. The poet’s efforts to protect nature and the implied archeological interests (not only in a Danish context) are reflected in a number of articles. Just as meaningful, but modernity-oriented, is an enthusiasm for technical development, machinery, traffic on land, sea and air. Life’s origins and the development of the species are viewed in a Darwinist perspective. The present article’s second part deals with Jensen’s tradition-bound understanding of the relationship between the sexes and, in that connection, with his fear of “sexual confusion” often mentioned, most painfully in the 1907 intimidation of his colleague Herman Bang. Finally, attention is given to the part of Jensen’s journalism which portrays his own travels and his writings on others’ contributions to the genre of travel literature.

“&” — “Or” — “If ” — “Then” (“&” — “Eller” — “Hvis” — “Så”) by Solvej Balle: Identifying genre

The aim of this article is to contribute to a deeper understanding of Danish minimalism by performing a genre analysis of Solvej Balle’s four short prose books (brief fictional prose) — “&”, “Or”, “If ” and “Then” — written over a 23-year period, between 1990 and 2013. The four texts are connected by a commonality of motifs and thematic elements, identical form and linguistic structure and therefore they comprise a rather unusual tetralogy. Balle’s texts are viewed in the context of the development of Danish literature of that period with an emphasis on minimalist aesthetics and their origins. Balle belongs to a generation of writers associated with the flourishing of minimalism in Danish literature at the end of the 20th century. The characteristic features of her few works are their intellectual elitism and elaborate, sophisticated form. All of her works are experimental, but the four texts of the “tetralogy” are the quintessence of a genre experiment in search of a new minimal aesthetic. The article deals with the characteristic features of the formal organisation of the four books, including their linguistic structure that indicate the cross-genre nature of Balle’s texts and allow to identify them as a hybrid of a pointillist novel and a prose poem.