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Comment by vidarh

3 days ago

No, but many of the names are different, and stylistically they are very different. Depending on whether a translation tries to be fairly literal, or sound as if it is written for the language it is translated to the way the result feels will be very different.

An example is the name Bilbo Baggins. In the "canonical" Norwegian translation, he's become Bilbo Lommelun. "Lomme" means pocket, and "lun" means snug, warm, or comfortable. It's not literal, but it fits the nature of hobbits well while referencing the "bag" in Baggins", and the connotations comes immediately in Norwegian without having try to deconstruct the name.

In this case, I think the newer "canonical" translation is generally considered unambiguously the best, but people often have favourite translations. E.g. my favourite Scandinavian translation of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass isn't even Norwegian, but an old Danish translation which sounds much "softer" (it's hard to explain)