”Fuck sådant.” Snabba cash -romaanin monikielisistä voima- ja haukkumasanoista sekä niiden suomen-, saksan- ja englanninkielisistä käännöksistä

Authors

• Mona Enell-Nilsson Vaasan yliopisto
• Minna Hjort Helsingin yliopisto

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61200/mikael.129540

Keywords:

multilingualism, code-switching, swearword, insult, translation

Abstract

In this article, we analyze multilingual swearwords and insults in Jens Lapidus’ novel Snabba cash (2006) in order to discover how these character- and milieu-constructing colloquialisms have been translated into Finnish, German and English. We are particularly curious about whether the multilingualism and taboo language of the original are retained or normalized in the translations, and whether the solutions match the instructions of the author, which were exceptionally also available. The results show that both multilingualism and taboo language are important features that are mostly reconstructed in the translations although the solutions vary on the basis of language, form and semantics.