War , Patriotism , and Nationality in the Nor wegian and Swedish Translations of Cherry Ames
than to a wartime airbase , and this is interesting , bearing in mind that the Swedish translation was not published until 1957 , compared to the American original , which was published in 1945 and the Norwegian , which was published in 1952 . In 1957 , the war , in which Sweden never participated , was already quite distant , and even more so for the book ’ s intended readers .
Moving on from the book covers to the purely textual level , there are a number of passages about war , patriotism , and nationality that are interesting for further study . In the following episode , an omniscient narrator tells the reader of Cherry and her team ’ s everyday routines :
When Cherry ’ s team flew to battle areas to pick up the wounded , they would never fly an empty plane but would haul troops or vital cargo . With such military cargo , they would have no right to the protection of a Red Cross painted on their aircraft . Instead , the white star of American combat forces was painted on its broad dark side . ( Wells , Flight Nurse 11 )
The star in the quotation is the star that we find on the cover of the Norwegian translation and it is obvious that this is where the artist has taken the idea from . The Swedish cover , on the other hand , seems erroneous since the airplane has a Red Cross painted on it . The narrator clearly states that there is no Red Cross on the airplane , but the publisher has still chosen to use it on the cover , and hence indirectly brand the more caring side of Cherry . In fact , the Swedish translations often tone down the war on the textual level . Passages where the war is spoken of in too easy-going terms are toned down or even omitted . At the beginning of Flight Nurse , there is a
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