Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 February 16

= February 16 =

Émile Zola translated into only ONE language for Sweden, Denmark and Norway?
Good day dear answerers from everywhere. I'm French and I'm reading a biography of Émile Zola in which they say that in 1901 the Swedish editor Karl Bonnier published the novel "Arbete" for THREE countries: Sweden, Norway and Denmark (in it reads : "1901 - Travail - Arbete (översättning Ernst Lundquist, Bonnier, 1901)"). Which brings me several questions : Q1) Was it exactly the same text, the same translation for the 3 countries? or did it have minor modifications? as it can be found nowadays between US English and British English? Q2) Does it mean that in 1900 these 3 scandinavian countries shared a relatively common WRITTEN language? Danish people told me that now it'is not always easy to speak between Scandinavian people. Q3) I extend my question to other Scandinavian languages; could the people of Iceland and the Feroe Islands read this "common" translation? PS: I have posted the same question on the Swedish Reference Desk but it's not an active one; I hope I don't disturb on posting on this Reference Desk in Anglo-American. I thank you for your patience.--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 11:48, 16 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Arbete, in Swedish, was published by Bonnier in 1901: . Arbejde, in Danish, was published elsewhere in 1900: . I don't notice any Norwegian translation, but of course this doesn't mean that there hasn't been one. For how well speakers of one language can understand another language, see this. -- Hoary (talk) 12:37, 16 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Jojodesbatignoles -- Icelandic is much more morphologically conservative than the Continental Nordic languages, and obviously distinct from them. I don't know much about Faroese, but apparently in some ways it's kind of intermediate between Icelandic and Continental Nordic.
 * The Continental Nordic languages differ from each other more than do standard British and American English; mutual intelligibility probably depends on the exact dialects involved, and to what degree speaker and listener are able to make accomodations for the other.
 * In 1900-1901, formal written Norwegian was still heavily under the influence of Danish. It wasn't until a major spelling reform in 1907 that the two written languages started to become clearly distinct... AnonMoos (talk) 17:19, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * See also the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden, which happened in 1905, a few years after the publication. Mikenorton (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Note that a Norwegian language teen-drama, Skam, has recently become cult-viewing across the Nordic countries - see Nordic Council - The Nordic languages. Alansplodge (talk) 21:10, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yet more evidence that "cult" (in this sense) has changed its meaning. It used to mean something that attracts a relatively small number of highly devoted followers. But I see that Skam broke viewing records (!), so it now means virtually the opposite, exactly as people have been using it for some years now. The dictionaries seem to be lagging here. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:37, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, in this day and age of social media marketing, we can't have the same expectations for "small number" and "highly devoted" that we used to (or expectations for any connotation of prestige not to be butchered by monoculture PR's exaggerations on short notice). 89.172.57.225 (talk) 23:00, 18 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Back to the initial question. In terms of writing, especially at the time given, distinct translations for Norwegian and Danish would probably have not been done.  While spoken Norwegian is very different from spoken Danish, the official written forms at the time were basically identical to Danish, and I imagine one would not have had to do distinct translations between the two, see Bokmål  There is a native written form of Norwegian which more closely follows the spoken form, Nynorsk, which did not exist at the time. I have greatly oversimplified things here, but I suspect that, in 1900, one could get away with doing only two translations since it was assumed that Bokmål was close enough to standard written Danish. See also Norwegian language conflict. -- Jayron 32 16:39, 19 February 2020 (UTC)