This course is designed to prepare graduate students for reading and translation in the three core Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.

Native speakers of a Scandinavian language usually acquire the ability to comprehend written and spoken forms of the other Scandinavian languages gradually and informally through exposure over many years. While this ability is taken for granted in many contexts, non-native speakers and learners of a Scandinavian language often find it challenging to acquire. This course therefore aims to strengthen the competence and confidence with which learners of one Scandinavian language approach the neighboring languages. The course will equip students with strategies and tools that enable students to read sources and literature written in their language of specialization as well as the neighboring languages. Furthermore, the course will introduce students to a wealth of online resources with the aim of fostering pan-Scandinavian linguistic confidence and belonging. This will also reinforce the students’ abilities in their language of specialization. The course will provide a solid theoretical understanding of the structure of each language as well as of their common and independent historical development and the differing traditions of linguistic standardization and regulation in the three countries. Contrastive analyses of linguistic patterns will highlight the lexical and syntactic similarities between the languages as well as their differences equipping students with a diachronic understanding of factors that have been decisive for the linguistic variation as well as giving them the ability to move synchronically between texts in the three languages. This will help students reduce the time needed to read primary and secondary sources as some of the comprehension strategies could be automated. In addition to this philologically grounded training, a general discussion of translation strategies and AI/machine translation will be introduced.

Students must have a B1 or Intermediate High level of reading proficiency in their main Scandinavian language; in either Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The course is open to native-, near-native-, or heritage speakers of Nordic languages.

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