In this presentation, I will critically discuss the language ideologies of two contemporary Swedish/Nordic translations of the Bible. The first one is the Swedish state-sponsored translation Bibel 2000, which was initiated in the early 1960s by a member of the Riksdag and commissioned by the Social Democratic Government. By the governmental representatives, as well as by the translators, the translation was framed as a bible for all of the Swedish people. I argue that this discourse was centered on an “ethno-linguistic” conception of the Swedish people (Harding 2007), with the national language Swedish as its most important definer. In other words, the argument on the intended readers of the translation was informed by a monolingual language ideology, which still in the early 1960s was a cultural and political reality.

However, the second translation project I will discuss in the presentation testifies to the gradual disestablishment of such an ideology. This project is a cooperation between the Nordic Bible Societies on translating the biblical texts into the different Sami language varieties (North, Lule, and South Sami). I argue that the project, which was initiated in the early 1980s, should be understood against the background of sociopolitical changes in the postwar period and the rise of officially acknowledged multilingualism and multiculturalism. While the project illustrates these changes, it can also be studied in order to understand retrospectively the extent of the monolingual language ideology underlying the Bibel 2000 translation. 

References

Harding, Tobias. 2007. Nationalising Culture: The Reorganisation of National Culture in Swedish Cultural Policy 1970–2002. Linköping: Linköping University.

Richard Pleijel

About the Higher seminar in Research on Bilingualism