Stieg Larsson’s three books in the Millennium series have the following titles in Swedish: Män som hatar kvinnor, Flickan som lekte med elden, and Luftslottet som sprängdes. I do not know whether these were the titles Stieg Larsson himself gave his books or titles that the Swedish publisher came up with – I can’t recall ever having seen any information about that.
However, I have been pondering a little the titles given to Stieg Larsson’s books in England and the US. The English language titles shift the “meaning” and message about the books quite a lot compared to the original Swedish titles.
Let’s first look at the literal translations of the Swedish titles and the English titles: “Män som hatar kvinnor” would, translated directly, become something like “Men who hate women”. In English it is entiteled “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”. “Flickan som lekte med elden” translates into “The Girl Who Played With Fire”. And indeed, that is the English title! And “Luftslottet som sprängdes” translates into “The Castle in the sky that was blasted apart” (approximately). The English title is“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest“ (see What is the name of Stieg Larsson’s third book and the comment from the translator Reg Keeland).
So, one of the books have retained it’s original Swedish title – “The Girl Who Played With Fire“. But two books have been given relatively different titles: “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”. These titles signify a considerable shift in focus, in terms of the “marketing message”. The focus in all the three books is now on “The Girl .. “, meaning that Lisbeth Salander is the focal figure for people reading it, and to some extent indicating it’s a series of crime fiction books or thrillers with a female main character – possibly a female James Bond – for potential readers looking at the titles.
But in Swedish the titles indicate that the books are about men hating women, a girl mixed up in something possibly too complex to handle, and some elevated structure being exposed or blown apart. That is actually significantly different.
You could, of course, say that names don’t matter all that much, and why bother? Well, I happen to think that names matter a lot – that’s why artists take on artist names, why corporations spend millions on finding just the right name for their products, and so on. And to my mind, the names chosen for the English translation of the Millennium trilogy reposition and reframe the books in a manner which I think is very unfortunate and probably not at all beneficial for the sales of the books in the English speaking world.
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Actually the titles Stieg gave the manuscripts of books 2 & 3 were longer, more or less well rendered in the French titles: Actes Sud in France was the first to translate the books, and they used the titles that were on them in 2006 when I was working on the English translation of all 3. Something approximately like this: The Girl Who Fantasized About a Gasoline Can and a Match, which deals more with Lisbeth’s desire for revenge on her abusers, one in particular whom I will not reveal here in deference to American readers who have yet to catch up. The title on the MS of book 3 I was given to translate from in May ’06 was The Queen in the Air Castle (Castle in the Air), but it went through several changes before it went to press in Sweden, ending up as The Castle in the Air That Was Detonated or something like that, none of which worked in English.
The title of the first book was indeed invented by the team at MacLehose Books/Quercus; they obviously did not think that Men Who Hate Women would fly in English, with its reverberations of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus lending it a self-help sort of sound. Knopf went along with the title for their US edition. I acquiesced on the title change in the interests of marketing, but when I later got a proof of the book I was sorry to see that the cover artist hadn’t read the book. At the beginning of chapter 23 in my translation, Blomkvist, in bed with Salander for the first time, describes her tattoos:
“He looked down at the dragon that stretched across her back, from her right shoulder blade down to her buttocks. He counted her tattoos. In addition to the dragon on her back and the wasp on her neck, she had a loop around one ankle, another loop around the biceps of her left arm, a Chinese symbol on her hip, and a rose on one calf. Except for the dragon, the tattoos were small and discreet.”
Checking the UK printed book, I find on page 377: “He looked down at the dragon on her shoulder blade. He counted her tattoos. As well as the wasp on her neck, she had a loop around one ankle, another loop around the biceps of her left arm, a Chinese symbol on her hip, and a rose on one calf. Except for the dragon, the tattoos were small and discreet.” [Nor does the cover show a loop around her left arm.]
So it wasn’t the cover artist’s fault after all! Was the editing done first? Or was it done to match the cover, once it had been received with a small Chinese dragon on the left shoulder blade? Yet another quandary for academics of the future to ponder. I did see one blogger comment that she bought the book because she was sure it was about China; she was incensed that China was never mentioned in the book at all.
I agree with you that names matter a lot, as do cover images. In this respect, it was something like working on a movie.
Hi! Thanks for an extremely interesting comment! I can see how it was difficult to use the titles as they were in English. Very interesting to see some of the thinking and arguments as well. And – great job on the translations! I’ve read them in Swedish/Norwegian, but have looked quickly at the translated books
Thanks,
Ive been wondering about this books titles, since I was very confused at first: my mother language is spanish, but I read in english. So, when I visited stores in my country (Panama) I saw the books with titles in spanish, wich is translated from the nordic. Then on Amazon I saw the english titles, wich are so different; got me some time to understand wich is wich, and were to start reading. Wich makes me wonder, why publishers dont write a “book 1 of the series” in a little corner?
cheers