Публикации автора

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 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

Letters from Russia by Robert Watt, published in Denmark in 1867, were born as a result of the Danish writer’s trip to Russia to cover Princess Dagmar of Denmark’s arrival in Russia and wedding with Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich in 1866. Robert Watt was a journalist, a writer, a translator, and the artistic director of Tivoli Gardens amusement park from 1866 to his death in 1894. Letters from Russia contains seventeen chapters, in which the writer describes his impressions of his trip to Russia, from the moment he said farewell to Denmark standing on the deck of “Mermaid” frigate, which was raising sails heading to Kronstadt, to the ceremonial reception of the Danish Princess. Road diaries of those who travelled across Russia have always been an important source of information about the country and the epoch, and Robert Watt’s book is no exception. Watt’s book is partly a guidebook — he describes all places of interest in Moscow and St Petersburg, but he also ponders on specific features of life in Russia and the national character. Most of his characteristics are highly positive, he doesn’t pay much attention to unsightly sides of life. The observer’s assessment depends on their personality, previous experience, the recipient (in this case the book was aimed at the Danish reader), and the political situation. We could assume that as the writer was sent to Russia to cover Princess Dagmar of Denmark’s wedding he did not intend to pay attention to the ugly sides of the Russian life. Nevertheless, Robert Watt’s book, unknown to a wide audience in Denmark and Russia, is an important cultural monument which supplements the history of relations between Denmark and Russia

Irina Kuprijanova, professor emerita ved Institut for Udenlandsk Litteraturhistorie, en af landets førende eksperter i dansk litteratur, var gået bort i en alder af 95 den 28. december 2024. Irina Kuprijanova gjorde en betydelig indsats for at introducere både de kendte og mindre kendte navne for den russiske læser. De fleste af de bøger, der er udgivet i oversættelse fra dansk til russisk, har Irina på den ene eller anden måde beskæftiget sig med. Hun har skrevet forord og kommentarer til mange oversættelser fra dansk og hun er forfatter til mange artikler om dansk litteratur. Med det imponerende omfang af publikationer havde hun stor betydning som formidler om Danmark — encyklopædisk, kulturelt, videnskabeligt og litterært. Formidling gik begge veje og ud over formidling af viden om dansk og skandinavisk litteratur til russerne også omfattede formidling af russisk litteratur til danskere. Indtil 1981 arbejdede Irina på Nordisk Institut. Derefter fik hun ansættelse ved Institut for Udenlandsk Litteraturhistorie, men fortsatte også med at undervise ved sit gamle institut: hun holdt forelæsninger, underviste i dansk og vejledte ph. d.-studerende. Som leder af Institut for Udenlandsk Litteraturhistorie holdt Irina forelæsninger om den vesteuropæiske litteraturhistorie for studerende fra forskellige institutter