LC: 'What matters it how far we go?' his scaly friend replied.

     'There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. The further off from England the nearer is to France – Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance' . (p. 134).

1875: 'Hvad siger det, hvor langt vi gaa?' saa svarede dens Ven, 'Er der ikke en anden Kyst hvor vi ville komme hen? Fjærne vi os fra Sjællands Strand, ville vi jo snart med Glans! betræde Skaanes, derfor kom og faa dig en lille Dans!'. (p. 120).

1946: 'Hvad betyder dog den lange Vej,' bedyrede hans Ven, 'for der findes jo en anden Kyst, hvor sagtens man når hen. Er du alt for langt fra vores, gir den næste dig en Tjans – altså ikke blive bleg, min Ven, men kom og faa en Dans!’ (p. 95).

1972: The text is completely changed, and this stanza is not translated. There are a number of new puns like 'sådan går vor livsens dans alt for tit i fisk' ('Thus the dance of our lives all too often comes to nothing' – 'gå i fisk' is an idiom that literally means 'disappear into [or be eaten by] fish').

1982: Not included.

1999: Almost identical with 1946.

2000: 'Pyt da med, hvor langt vi kommer ud!' sa' sneglens fiskeven,

         'Vi har ovelevet hver gang, og du klarer det med glans!

         Der er andre lande, mange steder man kan komme hen.

         Kom nu, kom nu, sære snegl og træd den vilde hummerdans (p. 167).

As will be seen, most of the translators have chosen a neutral translation that does not necessitate references to the Channel or any other geographical location. 1875, however, substitutes the Sound for the Channel, and Scania for France, thus localising the text.

Culture

There are several subheadings in this category and, as we have seen, it necessarily overlaps with the preceding categories, because culture is dependent on time and place. In the following, we shall discuss some prominent examples of cultural problem areas typical of Alice: the transference (or not) of material and social phenomena, allusions, and stylistic level(s).

Material culture markers: Food

There are several references to food in Alice, and some of the things mentioned are not Danish, and seem – or at least must have seemed – rather strange. When Alice compares the taste of one of her magic potions to ‘custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffy and hot buttered toast’ (LC, p. 31) she refers to phenomena well known in England at the time. But custard and hot buttered toast were unknown in Denmark (the former still is), and in the 1875 translation, flødekage ('pancake with cream') is no more an equivalent of custard than ristet Smørrebrød ('roast bread-and-butter') is for toast; and although 'kalkunsteg' is a more or less literal rendering of roast turkey, the translation does not refer to something well-known to and liked by children. A true equivalent would rather be andesteg ('roast duck') which is a typically Danish dish. At least for toast, the situation has changed. In our international world, every middle-class child knows what toast is, and the English word is frequently used in Danish. But even 1999 keeps the faintly exotic varmt ristet brød med smør ('hot roasted bread with butter').

Social culture markers: Schools

The Mock turtle's account of its school days obviously refers to typically 19th century public school education, which is far from the experience of most Danish children, especially today. Some of the problems are linguistic, and will be dealt with below, but some are social. For instance, Danish has no word for 'day school', because this presupposes 'boarding school',

which is a very unusual phenomenon in Denmark. 1875 simply translates 'skole' (school), which gets only part of the meaning of the original.

Allusion

All texts presuppose a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the recipients of the matters they refer to. Needless to say, these presuppositions do not necessarily hold for the recipients of a translated text. In the example below there are two problems, which the various translators have chosen to tackle in different ways. First, there is an allusion to William the Conqueror and '1066 and all that' which a contemporary English schoolchild would know about, and secondly, the frame of reference is English: it is not very meaningful to talk about 'understanding English' (1972, 1999), when the text is in Danish.