The importance of a new translation of Karen Blixen’s The African Farm is based on two factors: the book has never been translated from Danish (although the Danish version differs from the English version), and existing translations of the English version contain a number of inaccuracies. Karen Blixen’s book The African Farm was published in English in the UK in 1937 under the title Out of Africa. In the same year, Karen Blixen published the Danish text of the book under the title Den afrikanske farm. This book is not the only example of Karen Blixen’s own translations from English into Danish, as she also translated some of her short stories after their first publication in English. It is still a controversial issue whether her translations may be considered “copies” of the original works or they should be regarded as recreations in Danish. This article presents a comparative analysis of the English and the Danish texts of The African Farm which confirms that we are talking about two different versions of the work, since while creating the Danish text, Karen Blixen used several transformations: transpositions, substitutions, additions and omissions. The notion of “transformation” in this article implies a very wide range of modifications. The author makes significant changes to the original text. The result is a new text with quite a number of differences from English; the text that awaits translation from Danish. Out of Africa has been translated from English into Russian twice. The translations by experienced translators make a significant contribution to the history of literary contacts between Denmark and Russia; however, they contain a number of errors due to misunderstanding of Danish and African realities, as well as disregard for the specific situation. Translation of the Danish version of The African Farm is necessary not only because the Danish version has never been translated into Russian, but also because it would allow for the explication of some themes important for Karen Blixen that were “lost” in the translations from English. The present study does not presuppose consideration of literary aspects. It involves only differences between the Danish and the English versions of the novel, as well as the analysis of existing translations from English
The article investigates a case of color usage in Revelation 6:8 and various ways it has been translated into Danish. The Greek χλωρός used to describe the horse under the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse is polysemic and thus rather difficult to interpret, which resulted in numerous variations among translators. The image of Death on a pale horse has become part of the Western cultural heritage, although linguists have argued if this equivalent is indeed accurate in terms of color meaning comprised within the original lexeme. Fourteen translations, from medieval to modern, allowed to scrutinize some particular features of rendering this intricate color term in Danish, rising the main question of the study: why do so many Danish translations opt for the chromatic meaning of yellow in the given passage? In order to answer that, firstly, all of the translations were examined from the point of view of the time they were made, the primary source that the works were based upon and the special characteristics of chosen equivalents of χλωρός. Secondly, a few external sources were introduced in order to put the issue in a broader linguacultural context, such as the language, color symbolism and early Danish church art. This approach has helped to determine possible reasons for Death’s horse turning yellow, like the influence of German, deadly connotations of the Danish color term gul ‘yellow’ when referring to paleness and the bad symbolic reputation of color yellow itself.
The article focuses on the system of deictic pronouns in Danish. It is argued that in addition to binary oppositions expressing the objective (nearest vs distant) location of objects in the physical space relative to the speaker, like this vs that — denne vs den, a three-term opposition develops in modern Danish. This allows to specify the subjective interaction between the three participants in the communicative act: the speaker (1 st person), the listener (2 nd person) and the objects of the surrounding world (3 rd person). The system of secondary demonstrative pronouns — deictic binomials — is investigated. “Deictic binomial” is used as a term for an analytical combination of a simple deictic pronoun and a spatial adverb. Four possible combinations of such binomials are considered. The Danish Corpus (KorpusDK) analysis made it possible to assert that combinations of proximal deixis indicators — such as denne her ‘this here’ — are subjective markers of 1 st person signaling that the deictic object enters into the speaker’s personal space. Combinations of indicators of distal and proximal deixis (such as den her ‘that here’) are “cohortatives” — subjective markers of the 2 nd person, signaling the common perception of shared attitude to the deictic object by the speaker and its addressee. Combinations of analytical indicators of distal deixis (such as den der ‘that there’) — shift the negatively evaluated object outside the personal space of the speaker and the space of communication, which corresponds to the communicative function of the 3 rd person. The search in the Danish Corpus for the fourth type of combinations, that is, combinations of proximal and distal deixis (such as denne der ‘this there’) gives practically no results. This confirms the conclusion that the paradigm for expressing the speakers subjective attitude to the object of deixis in modern Danish is represented by three categories that correspond to three “spatial areas” — the speaker’s personal space (1st person), the common communication space shared with the addressee (2nd person), an external space into which the speaker subjectively removes the disapproved or alienated objects of deixis (3rd person)
The notion that a language worldview is shaped by a system of key concepts as well as ideas and motifs linking them, which are expressed in the meaning of individual lexemes and phrases, has informed a number of studies of culturally specific words and even entire semantic fields. Comparison of different language worldviews has revealed many differences, which at first sight seem insignificant but may hinder successful communication. The concept of hygge occupies a special place in the Danish language worldview and has become somewhat of a Danish hallmark. Our study uses corpus data to analyse six co-occurrence patterns of words representing the concept hygge, which allows us to explicate the implicit meaning components of the lexemes in question and to identify the most frequent patterns. The material used was the Danish Gigaword Corpus (DAGW), which includes texts collected from the Internet. The corpus covers the Danish language in all its diversity: a variety of genres and types of texts are represented in the corpus (law, social media, subtitles, debates, conversation notes, encyclopaedia articles, fiction, news, etc.). The high frequency of the words representing the concept hygge in the corpus texts once again confirms the importance of this concept for Danish culture. The combinational properties of all the models studied show a striking uniformity: all collocations are characterized by positive connotations and can be categorized into a small set of thematic groups (place, time, atmosphere, hobbies, spending time together and communicating). The above co-occurrence analysis allows us to identify the following set of characteristics of the concept hygge: a feeling of peace, tranquillity and security, enjoyment and good mood that comes from being engaged in active pursuits, presence of close, familiar people, a familiar, wellknown place, a shared time together
The paper focuses on the concept of the Jante law (janteloven), formulated by A. Sandemose in 1933 in his novel En flyktning krysser sitt spor. Fortelling om en morders barndom (A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. A story about a murderer’s childhood), which later became an element of the cultural code of Denmark and Norway. In this study we follow C. Levisen in his distinguishing between the “literary Jante law”, described by A. Sandemose in his novel, and the “linguistic” Jante law, which is a collocation in the Danish and Norwegian languages. This lexicalization of the concept has been brought about by the specific Scandinavian mentality, conditioned by a number of reasons (the agrarian Scandinavian culture, the Lutheran ethos). In the modern Danish and Norwegian languages the concept of janteloven is negative and is used in specific types of discourse (sports, popular culture, business, politics, psychology, schooling, immigration problems, feminism). Besides, there are numerous reformulated Jante laws (den positive jantelov, den omvendte jantelov, antijantelov, jenteloven, Danskerloven), which proves the precedence of the notion in the Danish and Norwegian cultures. The dominating American individualistic culture influences the development of a new system of values (ambition, self-concern, pushiness are no longer viewed as negative qualities), which results in a conflict between the traditional and the new in the Danish and Norwegian cultures: the Jante law comes into conflict with the so-called achievement culture (præstationskulturen). As a social construct and a secret regulator of public relations the janteloven has found its place between the number of other concepts (hygge, trivsel and so on), yet the janteloven has been specifically reflected in political practices, both in its formal expression (development of various “canons”) and in the methods of countering the imposition of certain phenomena on the part of government authorities
The article focuses on three colours among those present in Danish politics: red, blue and purple. While red and blue seem to have a long history, as these political colours have been historically used by socialist and liberal parties, their symbolic meaning in Danish politics over the last thirty years has become more nuanced, due to the fact that they represent something more than mere allegiance to the ideas they stand for. They indicate belonging to the socialist and the liberal bloc that form the two-bloc system, which can be perceived as an attempt to combine some features of a two-party system with the pluralism of a multi-party one. Until the last 2022 Folketing elections almost all parties, regardless of their specific party colours, could be put either on the red, or on the blue scale in election-polls, while the emergence of The Moderates (Moderaterne) led by Lars Løkke Rasmussen, a classical centrist party, has introduced another colour into the mix: purple. The use of political colour and corresponding collocations in Danish media are explored in order to establish, how deeply the red-blue divide has influenced the general understanding of party and government politics. Another goal is to explain the choice of the purple (and not violet) colour, which seems to communicate much more than the aesthetic taste of the party’s leadership. The emergence of new colour collocations in Danish politics and the overall willingness to use them by the Danish-speaking community can be indicative of the long-awaited changes in collective political preferences, not limited to the emergence of the new party. The use of different hues of red and blue also features in the research, as it helps understand the peculiarities of the Danish political life and the aspirations of prospective voters