Translation errors and oddities in LTROI - a compilation

[Siggdalos]

Could be. The text maintains something of a mocking distance to the characters throughout the church scenes in LDRKI, similar to the way JAL writes about Max in Little Star. However, he doesn't do this with any of the other minor POV characters in LDRKI like Maud or Benny, whom he only refers to by their full names once or twice as opposed to every sentence, so my assumption was that the Ardelius case is more like how someone with a title like "Doctor", "Sir", or "Queen" might be consistently referred to by that title every time they're mentioned in a text.

It still seems slightly weird to me to think of "Bror" as his name rather than his title, but I'm willing to concede being wrong on this.

[Siggdalos]

Sunday 8 November (Evening)

In LDRKI, Oskar's realization that Eli and Håkan are behind all of the murders involves a memory of the conversation he had with Tommy about the Vällingby murder, a memory that's left out of LTROI.

I artikeln stod att polisen hade starka indicier på att mannen i isen mördats av den så kallade ritualmördaren som drygt en vecka tidigare infångats i Vällingbyhallen och som nu var på flykt.
Var det ... gubben? Men ... killen i skogen ... varför?
Oskar kunde se Tommy framför sig där han satt på bänken nere vid lekplatsen, rörelsen med fingret.
Upphängd i ett träd ... uppskärd i halsen ... schvitt.
Han förstod. Förstod alltihop.

My translation:

In the article it said the police had strong indications that the man in the ice had been murdered by the so-called Ritual Killer who had been captured at the Vällingby pool about a week earlier and was now on the run.
Was that ... the old guy? But ... the boy in the forest ... why?
Oskar could picture Tommy where he sat on the bench down by the playground, the way he moved his finger.
Strung up from a tree ... his throat slit ... phhhhhssst.
He understood. Understood all of it.

The official:

In the article it said the police now had strong indications that the man in the ice had been killed by the so-called Ritual Killer who had been captured at the Vällingby swimming pool about a week earlier, and who was now on the loose.
Was it ... the old guy? But ... the kid in the forest ... why?
A light bulb went on in his head. Understood everything.

This is yet another example of a piece of the text disappearing in translation. Leaving it out makes Oskar's realization about Håkan's role in the entire thing less clear.

When Oskar had tapped the last message he rested his head on the pillow. For a moment he concentrated on formulating words that he had forgotten.

Seems to be based on a misreading of the original, which says that: För ett ögonblick, koncentrerad på att formulera ord, hade han glömt, "For a moment, concentrated as he was on formulating words [to tap to Eli], he had forgotten [about the realization he got from the paper]".

‘Don’t tell him it was me, OK?’

Tommy actually tells Yvonne: Säg inte till han att jag är där, "Don't tell him [Staffan] that I'm there [in the basement]". "Don't tell him it was me" doesn't make much sense since Staffan already knows that Tommy was the one who pulled the prank in the church and Tommy knows that Staffan knows.

Virginia tried to resist. But Lacke and the will of her sickness were the same, and they were stronger than she.

LDRKI uses the word smittan, which in the rest of LTROI is translated as "the infection" rather than "the sickness". A closer translation would be: "But Lacke's will and that of the infection were the same".

Also, while I'm on the subject, a couple words about the terms smittan versus "the infection". The former has connotations exclusively related to the spread of diseases; a smitta (noun) is a contagious/infectious disease or epidemic, and to smitta (verb) someone is to transmit a disease to them. However, you would never describe, say, an infected wound as being smittat; you would say that it's infekterat. I would also say that smittan sounds more mundane and less scientific than "the infection", but the former is still used in medical contexts, so maybe I'm off on that assessment. There isn't any better option for translating smittan than "the infection", but I figured some might find the distinction to be interesting.

Oskar [...] flipped through his mum’s record collection and found it. The Vikings. The whole group was assembled in something that looked like the skeleton of a Viking ship, misplaced in their shiny costumes.
[...]
A pretty long intro, and then the singer’s soft voice began rolling out of the speakers.
‘The girl puts flowers in heir hair
as she wanders through the field
She will be nineteen this year
And she smiles to herself as she walks’

"The Vikings" is a translation of Vikingarna. The album is Det går som en dans 5 from 1973 (part of a series of albums by different dansbands released by the same company, hence the "5" at the end) and the song is Flickan i hagen ("The girl in the pasture"). I'm assuming that pretty much all of the regulars on this forum know all this already, but it would feel wrong not to mention it for completeness' sake.

Now buckle up, friends, for it is once again time to look at the translation's use of pronouns for Eli. I was originally going to split the relevant parts into smaller quotes and comment on each one individually, but I think it's simpler if I quote the whole section from both LTROI and LDRKI (though heavily abridged to only focus on the relevant parts, of course) so you can compare them for yourself. Instances where Eli is referred to with female pronouns are marked red, male ones are blue, and places where he's talked about in gender-neutral terms are black.

Note how Swedish is able to avoid specifying gender here. One aspect is the gender-neutral "sig"/"sin"/"sitt", which I've described before. Another is that, unlike many cases in English, it's grammatically permissible to write things like "Eli bent the neck" (Eli böjde nacken) or "Eli opened the mouth" (Eli öppnade munnen) without having to constantly specify "his neck/mouth" or "her neck/mouth", because it's automatically implied that the neck or whatever in question is Eli's own. Finally, throughout the book, JAL often writes sentences in a slightly "broken", clipped fashion that lets him get away with leaving out the initial pronoun, a style of writing that's preserved for the most part in the translation.

»Du har ju ... ingen snopp.«
Eli böjde nacken, tittade mot sitt mellangärde som om detta var en alldeles ny upptäckt. [...] Eli slog ut med armarna och sköt upp underläppen över överläppen.
»Glömde den på tunnelbanan.«
»Äh. Vad larvig du är.«
Utan att titta på Eli gick Oskar förbi honom, till badrummet för att kolla att det inte fanns några spår.
[...]
Oskar höll upp påsen med hennes kläder. »Ska jag slänga den här?«
Eli drog på sig badrocken, knöt skärpet.
»Nä. Tar den sen.« Hon rörde vid Oskars axel. »Du? Du förstår att jag inte är nån flicka, att jag inte ...«
Oskar tog ett steg bort från henne.
[...]
Eli lät axlarna sjunka, körde ner händerna i badrockens fickor, tittade som hypnotiserad på LP-skivans hål av mörker. Öppnade munnen för att säga något, stängde den igen. Tog upp högra handen ur fickan, sträckte ut den mot skivan och tryckte sitt pekfinger mot den så att den stannade.
»Akta. Den kan bli ... förstörd.«
»Förlåt.«
Eli drog snabbt tillbaka fingret och skivan tog fart, fortsatte snurra. Oskar såg att fingret hade efterlämnat en fuktfläck som kom till synes varje gång skivan snurrade in i ljusgården från taklampan. Eli stoppade tillbaka handen i badrocksfickan, tittade på skivan som om han försökte lyssna på musiken genom att studera spåren.

‘But you don’t have a ... willie.’
Eli bent her head, looked down at her groin as if this was a completely new discovery. [...] Eli waved her arms to the side and pulled her lower lip over the upper one.
‘I left it on the subway.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
Without looking at Eli, Oskar walked to the bathroom to check that there were no traces.
[...]
Oskar held up the bag with her clothes. ‘Should I throw these away?’
Eli pulled on the bathrobe, tied the belt around the middle.
‘No. I’ll get it later.’ She nudged Oskar’s shoulder. ‘Oskar? You understand now that I’m not a girl. That I’m not ...’
Oskar stepped away from her.
[...]
Eli let her shoulders fall, pushed her hands into the pockets of the bathrobe and watched the LP’s dark hole in the middle as if hypnotised. Opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it again. Took her right hand out of the pocket, stretched it towards the record and pushed her finger on it so it came to a stop.
‘Watch it. It can get ... damaged.’
‘Sorry.’
Eli quickly pulled his hand back and the record sped up, kept turning. Oskar saw that his finger had left a damp imprint behind that could be seen every time the record spun through the strip reflected from the overhead light. Eli put his hand back in the robe’s pocket, watching the record as if trying to listen to the music by studying the tracks.

The differences should be apparent. In LDRKI, the change in how Oskar views Eli's gender is a process, not instant. Following the disrobing, Oskar first thinks of Eli as "he" when going into the bathroom ("Without looking at Eli, Oskar walked past him"), before then switching back to "she" for a little bit. The text is ambiguous during the section where Eli looks at the record and is noticeably written in such a way that it avoids gendered pronouns, almost like a short transition process where Oskar doesn't think of Eli as male nor female, before he finally settles on calling Eli "he", which he then sticks to through the rest of the novel.

In LTROI, the switch is more sudden. The first mention of "he" is left out, and Oskar's POV continues describing Eli in unequivocally female terms before changing to "he" after Eli touches the record.

Of course it's impossible to replicate the Swedish text with 100% accuracy here. The text pretty much has to use either "she" or "he", so the switch is going to be abrupt no matter how you do it. However, I don't see why the first "he" mention was left out, and I think that if it was up to me, I would maybe have tried to sneak in the permanent switch to "he" slightly earlier in the text to try to make it feel more gradual and less jarring. Maybe mid-sentence, such as: "Took her right hand out of the pocket, stretched it out towards the record and pushed his finger on it so it came to a stop". Then again, maybe that would be even worse. I don't envy Segerberg (or any other translator) for having had to decide how to deal with this issue.

Remember when I wrote at the start that I wouldn't get long-winded on this very topic? Turns out, unbeknownst to my younger self, I was lying. Moving on.

‘I left it on the subway.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’

I think "Don't be stupid" is too aggressive compared to the original: Äh. Vad larvig du är, which can be translated as "Ah. You're so silly".

Eli thrust his hand through the air as if he was holding a knife, said, ‘“What are you looking at, idiot? Want to die, or something?”’
Stabbed the air with his empty hand. ‘That’s what happens if you look at me.’

Here, Eli is meant to be quoting Oskar's lines from Thursday 22 October verbatim. In that chapter, the lines are translated as "What are you looking at, you fucking idiot? Do you want to die?" and "That's what happens if you so much as look at me", respectively. I think the versions in the quote above are more accurate to the Swedish text, but both versions are fine; the more important thing in this case is to have the book be internally consistent.

‘Be me a little.’

Bli mig lite more literally means "Become me [for] a little [while]". That said, I don't have any issue with "Be me a little". It's iconic, memorable, and conveys the message just fine.

Oskar tries to pull his head back, leave the kiss. But Eli, who was prepared for this reaction, cups one hand around the back of his head, pushing his lips against his, forcing him to stay in Eli’s memories, continues.

In LDRKI, this paragraph from the midst of the memory-sharing kiss is separated from the rest by paragraph breaks and is written in past tense without italics, creating a distinction between the "present day" events (1981 events, but you know what I mean) that are really happening and that Oskar is trying to escape back to and Eli's memories, which are written in present tense and italics. In the English version of the scene, the two are mixed together by being presented in the same style.

‘They weren’t the ones who —’

The Swedish version of this is phrased as a question since it includes the difficult-to-translate word väl. Metoo explained it in this old thread better than I can.

‘I don’t know. Excuse me. Excuse the whole ... thing. I wanted you to ... I don’t know. Please excuse me. It was ... stupid.’

I would've gone with the simpler "Sorry"/"I'm sorry" to represent the phrase Förlåt/Förlåt mig here, rather than "Excuse me".

Inside the ambulance there are three people. Lacke Sörensson is sitting on a folding seat and is holding a bloodless, lacerated hand belong to Virginia Lind.

In LDRKI, Virginia's surname is Lindblad (meaning "Linden leaf"). I guess the "blad" part disappeared to the same place as Oskar's memory of his talk with Tommy.

[Siggdalos]

Sunday 8 November (Evening/Night)

The start of the scene where Eli buys blood from Tommy, when Tommy is wasted out of his mind, features a lot of silly wordplay and alliteration related to the words papp ("cardboard") and papper ("paper(s)"). A lot of this naturally gets lost in translation, so I figure it could maybe be fun to show the original sentences that the English ones correspond to.

Watch out! The cardboard policeman! With his cardboard gun! And his cardboard head!

Pass på! Papperspolisen! Med papp-pistolen! Och pappskallen!

Pappskalle ("cardboard head") is a slightly old-fashioned word for a stupid person.

Penis-dummy, cardboard-mummy.

Penisattrapp, gjord av papp — "Penis decoy, made of cardboard".

He recognised the voice, couldn’t place it. Not Staffan, at any rate. Not paper-Papa.

Papp-pappa — "cardboard-dad".

His head was full of lead.
Concrete cap.

Translation of betongkepsen, a slang term for a heavy hangover.

The concrete floor tilted dreamily to the right, to the left, like in the Funny House.

Refers to Lustiga Huset, a funhouse at the Gröna Lund amusement park in Stockholm.

‘What, are you, like, going to ... swish, and then ...’
The girl nodded, eagerly.
Swish? Wait a minute. WAIT a little now ... what was it ... pigs ...

"Swish" is a translation of the onomatopoeic schvitt. Nothing wrong with that, but in the aforementioned conversation between Tommy and Oskar in Saturday 24 October, the word is translated as phhhhhssst. Ideally, both instances should've been translated to the same word, since Tommy's realization in this scene is tied to his memory of the conversations he had with Robban/Lasse and Oskar. See my rant about sjabbla earlier in the thread.

‘[...] All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. [...]’

"Other people" is a substitute for the word människor, the plural of människa, which as previously mentioned can mean either "human being" or "person". In this case, the infected woman simply says människor and not andra människor ("other people"), so I think it would've been more accurate to translate it as "humans"; she's making a distinction between humanity and vampires and (at least in my reading) doesn't seem to consider herself part of the former category anymore.

And Eli had fled from that wonderful idea. As before. As later.

The Swedish sentence uses Och Eli hade fått fly, meaning "And Eli had had to flee"/"And Eli had been forced to flee". Slightly different implication than simply "fled".

His hand went up to his mouth to smother a giggle as he imagined Santa Claus, the Disney version —
Hohoho! Say ‘Mama!’
— come staggering through the corridor with his enormous bag on his back.

The Disney short that this references, Santa's Workshop (1932), is probably more familiar to Swedish (and Norwegian) readers than it is to Anglophone ones. This is because it's included in the From All of Us to All of You special shown once every year as part of SVT's traditional Christmas Eve broadcast. Watching the special is a central part of the Christmas celebration for many families, and many of its scenes and quotes are deeply ingrained in Swedish culture.

The undead. Eli knew nothing about them. Didn’t know if the creature in front of her was limited by the same restrictions as she was.

The female pronouns here are an error. LDRKI uses male ones in this passage, just like in the rest of Eli's POV sections in the chapter.

The burglar alarm at the ICA grocery story on Arvid Mörne’s Way ...

Another minor inconsistency: in Friday 30 October, Arvid Mörnes väg is translated as "Arvid Mörnes[sic] Road".

... three plastic bottles of T-red ...

T-Röd (röd = "red") is a brand of denatured alcohol produced by the company Kemetyl. The name is often used as a generic trademark for denatured alcohol in general.

The kitchen door was open and in the kitchen there were no blinds in front of the window.

This should say "blankets" and not "blinds".

... while he screamed in fits and starts, like an animal.

LDRKI uses the description "barked like a roe deer" (skällde som ett rådjur). Here's a video of what that sounds like. Coincidentally, roe deer noises were also used to create Eli's barks in the film.

A little elephant, an animated elephant, and here comes (toooot) the BIG elephant and then ... trunks up! ... and toot ‘A’ and then Magnus, Brasse and Eva enter and sing ‘There! Is Here! Where you are not ...’
[...]
Again the big elephant who raised his hat and with his nasal voice said, This is the eeeend! Blow the trumpet, trunk, toooot! This is the end!

Refers to Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter ("Five ants are more than four elephants"), a Sesame Street-inspired children's show from the '70s in which the hosts Magnus, Brasse, and Eva teach children about numbers and letters. The show includes many animated segments, notably ones where big and small elephants represent the upper- and lowercase version of whatever letter is being talked about in the episode. Each episode ends with an elephant trumpeting and saying Nu är det slut ("Now it's over", or as in LTROI, "This is the end").
Me and my brother watched the series when we were little and I have fond memories of it, but looking back on it now, it could be pretty psychedelic at times.

Monday 9 November

Larry slunk away, taking a few steps towards the platform. Morgan reached him and said, ‘You’re pretty childish, you know that?’
‘Absolutely. Now, run the whole thing by me again. From the top.’

Larry is supposed to be the one who speaks the first line and calls Morgan childish, not the other way around.

A clattering noise as the blinds were raised, and she was sucked down into a vortex of fire.

LDRKI uses the description "sea of fire" (hav av eld).

So Staffan pulled on his work clothes, the winter jacket, checked in the mirror to see the impression he made and found it pleasing.

The Swedish sentence uses befann det gott ("found it good") for the last part. I'm not sure, but I think this is an allusion to Genesis 1 and its Och Gud såg att det var gott ("And God saw that it was good"). Worth mentioning that using befann in this sense sounds pretty archaic. I think "saw that it was good" would've captured the feel of the original sentence better than "found it pleasing".

‘Two hundred and seventy-four elephants
On a teensy spider weeeee —
(Thud.)
— eb!
They thought it was
Such jolly good fun
That they went and got a friend! ...’

Tommy is singing En elefant balanserade på en liten spindeltråd ("An elephant was balancing on a tiny spider's thread"), a song sung by small children. It is a cumulative song, similar to 99 Bottles of Beer: for each time you repeat the lyrics, you increase the number of elephants balancing on the thread by one. In Sunday 8 November (Evening/Night), the lyrics are translated as "An elephant balancing on the little, little thread of a spider web", which is closer to the original.

On the way to the subway he saw the class line up in straight rows. Tomas shouted ‘buuuuu!’ at him.

In LDRKI, the class is described as standing in racka led. This is an intentional misspelling of raka led ("straight lines") and a callback to Friday 30 October when Johan says the same thing as a way of making fun of Ávila's accent and his trouble with getting some vowel sounds right. The word bu is the Swedish equivalent of "boo".

In a box at home he had a couple of Big Jim dolls that he had played with quite a bit when he was younger.
About a year or so ago.

LDRKI says när han var liten, "when he was little". In other words, Oskar is reflecting on the fact that he would've been considered (or considered himself) a young child only recently. The passage loses some of its oomph with the translation's use of "when he was younger" since, yes, obviously he was "younger" a year ago than he is now, but that in itself doesn't say much.

... Morgan was trying to coax over a bird that was sitting on the railing ...

LDRKI specifies that it's a bullfinch (domherre).

‘You’re not going to do anything stupid now are you?’ he said. ‘You have us, you know that.’
‘Yes, I know. Of course I won’t.’

In LDRKI, Lacke replies: Ja, ja. Nej, nej, literally "Yes, yes. No, no", though Ja, ja is often used to express the sentiment "sure, whatever, I already know". The line is ambiguous because it's not entirely clear what parts of Morgan's line Lacke is replying to when he says "Yes" and "No". You can either read it the way it's represented in the English translation ("Yes, I know I have you two and no, I won't do something stupid"), or as him sneakily admitting "Yes, I'm going to do something stupid and no, I can't rely on you two".
I admit that I may be reading too much into the original line, though, since Ja/"Yes" as a reply to Morgan's first question doesn't quite make grammatical sense.

His legs took him stumbling past [...] the coconut factory ...

Refers to the famous kokosboll factory I mentioned right at the start of the thread.

That's it for Part Four. Onward and upward to the last part.

[metoo]

‘What, are you, like, going to ... swish, and then ...’
The girl nodded, eagerly.
Swish? Wait a minute. WAIT a little now ... what was it ... pigs ...

"Swish" is a translation of the onomatopoeic schvitt. Nothing wrong with that, but in the aforementioned conversation between Tommy and Oskar in Saturday 24 October, the word is translated as phhhhhssst. Ideally, both instances should've been translated to the same word, since Tommy's realization in this scene is tied to his memory of the conversations he had with Robban/Lasse and Oskar. See my rant about sjabbla earlier in the thread.

Regarding translations of schvitt, I think neither of the ones is particularly good.
The short vowel and the final plosive of the original schvitt gives the impression of something very quick, which phhhhhssst certainly does not.
Since schvitt isn't a proper Swedish word, I think it would have been better to simply use the same sound but spelled in English, i.e. shvitt or shwitt.

[Siggdalos]

Fair. My thinking is that "shwitt" might bring a reader's thoughts to the word "shit" rather than the sound of a knife, but I dunno. I think that "swish" is serviceable, or at least the less bad of the two. I probably wouldn't have brought it up at all if it wasn't for the inconsistency. It feels to me like there should be an established onomatopoeic word for this in English that could've been used as a substitute, but I haven't been able to think of any and haven't had any luck when searching for one online.

[metoo]

I think both translations lack the ominous finality the Swedish original evokes, thanks to the final t sound.

Note: schvitt sounds very similar to the proper Swedish noun snitt (English: cut).

In the original Swedish text where it first appears, Oskar asks if Tommy knew how the boy that Håkan murdered was killed:

”Den där killen. Som blev mördad. Vet du liksom ... hur han blev mördad?«
»Ja. Han blev upphängd i ett träd och uppskärd i halsen.«
»Han blev inte ... huggen? Att han hade huggit i honom liksom. I kroppen?«
»Nä, bara halsen. Schvitt.”

"That guy. Who was murdered. Du you know like … how he was murdered?"
"Yes. He was hung up in a tree and cut open in his throat."
"He wasn't … stabbed? That he had stabbed him, sort of? Into his body?"
"No, just the throat. Shvitt."
My translation.

To the native English speakers of this forum: What expression and spelling would you suggest?

[Siggdalos]

PART FIVE: Let the Right One Slip In

In Swedish, Part Five has the exact same title as the novel itself—Låt den rätte komma in—and not Låt den rätte glida in, which would be the equivalent to "Let the right one slip in". Thus, this part should've simply been titled "Let the Right One In" in English as well.

These days this is
my only chance to say my piece ...
BOB HUND, ‘STRUGGLING AGAINST THE CURRENT’

The song is En som stretar emot (2001).

He was tracked down in a basement office in Blackeberg, in west Stockholm.

"Basement office" is a translation of källarkontor. Kontor indeed means "office" in most cases, but in this case (as far as I can find) it's actually an archaic synonym for förråd, "storage". That's not why I'm bringing it up, though, but rather to point out that "basement office" is inconsistent with the rest of the novel, which mostly uses the description "storage area" or "storage unit".

From the television news programme ‘Current Events’ ...

Translation of Aktuellt, which is still one of the major Swedish news programs.

Monday 9 November

For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was .... himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love.
For a few seconds.

I have some issue with this. In terms of preserving the literal meaning, it's ... fine. Close enough, at least. My issue is with the structure of the "Only much better ..." sentence, which I think comes across as a bit ugly compared to the smooth flow of the original. Normally I wouldn't bring up things like this, but I think it matters when it comes to pivotal scenes like this one. The Swedish original, for comparison (emphasis mine):

Oskar såg för några sekunder genom Elis ögon. Och det han såg var ... sig själv. Bara så mycket finare, vackrare, starkare än vad han själv tyckte att han var. Sedd med kärlek.
Några sekunder.

Vacker = "beautiful".
Fin = (in this context) also "beautiful", but in a more delicate sense. If that makes sense.
Stark = "strong".

Note that in the Swedish text, all three adjectives end with -are, a comparative suffix equivalent to the English "-er". For example, snabb means "fast", while snabbare means "faster". The fact that there are three -are words in a row creates a repetition and rhythm in the sentence, in contrast with the English one which has one "-er" word, followed by a "more", followed by another "-er". It would have been easy to preserve the flow of the original by using "handsomer" instead of "more handsome".

"Only so much better, stronger, handsomer than what he thought of himself". There. Much better.
I also think "Only so much better, stronger, more beautiful" would've worked, and that would've been closer to the original meaning as well.

With that said, given how many times I've seen others cite this passage as one of the most beautiful ones in the book, I guess it doesn't matter that much. The sentiment that JAL wants to communicate shines through anyway, in spite of the translation's IMO clunky wording. And this is all a matter of taste, anyway.

Oskar holds his hand up against the wall.
‘Eli ...’

In LDRKI, he says Du, "You" (in contrast to how Eli says Jag, "I" before kissing him in the preceding passage). It's obvious to everyone who Oskar means when he says "You", so changing it to "Eli" seems unnecessary to me.

Tuesday 10 November

He opened the lid and took out his copy of Firestarter, smiled at the title and slipped it into his bag.

It's worth mentioning that the Swedish title of this Stephen King novel is different from the English one but still fire-related: Eldfödd ("Fireborn").

Wednesday 11 November

Took them out one by one, played The Boy with the Gold Pants until he grew tired of it.

"The Boy with the Gold Pants" is a literal translation of Pojken med guldbyxorna, a 1967 book by Max Lundgren that got adapted into a very popular 1975 miniseries. It tells the story of a boy who finds a set of pants that magically produce banknotes whenever he reaches into their pockets. See this thread by metoo.

Then it sneaked up on him again.
I won’t ... be here.

In this case, Jag ska ... inte vara här is better translated as "I shouldn't ... be here".

Thursday 12 November

How much had actually been destroyed?
Something to ask ...

Should be "Someone to ask".

The bite that Jonny had just taken from his shrimp sandwich lodged halfway down his throat ...

LDRKI says that Jonny is eating a tunnbrödsrulle—a wrap made of tunnbröd, a type of flatbread—with shrimp salad in it.

Prebbe [...] was a big guy. Spilling out over the edges, cropped hair. An out-of-shape paratrooper.

In LDRKI, he's compared to a fjälljägare—that is, a hunter (jägare) from the mountainous northern parts of the country.

He had looked into Jimmy’s eyes for a few seconds and they looked completely crazed. So filled with hate.

LDRKI says they're "So filled with hate that they were impossible to look at" (Så fyllda med hat att det inte gick att titta på).

A speck of light was visible in the dark middle window and a split second later it shattered.

LDRKI says mikrosekund, "microsecond", as in a millionth of a second. This should probably not be taken literally, but either way, changing it to the more general "split second" is justified.

The reinforced glass didn’t shatter like regular glass. It exploded into thousands of tiny rounded fragments that, after flying out into the hall, over the water, glittering like myriad white stars, landed with a rustle at the edge of the pool.

Just like "Seen with love", this last pre-epilogue sentence of the novel is accurate to the original in terms of literal meaning, but once again my issue is with the structure. In LDRKI, "white stars" is at the end of the sentence:

Säkerhetsglaset sprack inte som vanligt glas. Det exploderade i tusentals pyttesmå rundade fragment som föll rasslande mot bassängkanten, flög in i hallen, över vattnet, glittrade som en myriad av vita stjärnor.

[The reinforced glass didn't shatter like regular glass. It exploded into thousands of tiny rounded fragments that fell rustling against the edge of the pool, flew into the hall, over the water, glittered like a myriad of white stars.]

This is part of JAL's Divine Comedy homage that I mentioned in an edit to an earlier part of the thread, wherein three of LDRKI's five parts end on the word stjärnor ("stars"). Even if you ignore that aspect, ending the chapter with the comparison to stars—a poetic description that stands in stark contrast to the bloodbath the reader knows is going to unfold off-page moments later and which gets described after the fact in the epilogue—IMO makes for a much better conclusion that stays in one's memory more than the mundane description of the rustling noise the fragments make when landing. Again, this is of course a matter of taste, but I feel pretty strongly about this particular case.

EPILOGUE: Friday 13 November

Gunnar pressed his hands against his temples so his eyes narrowed, glanced down at his notes [...] and the only thing he managed to think was, I should go away for a while.

In LDRKI, he thinks Jag borde resa härifrån ("I should travel away from here"), which to me feels more definitive. At least in the way I read the original, Gunnar is thinking that he should permanently move away from the western suburbs after all the stuff he's witnessed the past three weeks, and not just go away "for a while".

Afterword

All Swedish editions of the novel include a short afterword by JAL, which for some arcane reason is excluded from the English versions.

The user Klesk posted a translation of it all the way back in 2010. It's translated from the German edition but matches the Swedish text well enough that I don't feel the need to make my own version.

Should anyone get the idea to check the weather conditions in November 1981, he will find out that it was an unusually mild winter. I have taken the liberty to reduce the temperature a few degrees. Otherwise, everything in the book is true, even if it happened in a different way. I would also like to thank some people. Eva Månsson, Michael Rübsahmen, Kristoffer Sjögren and Emma Berntsson have read the first version and have given comments, which were very helpful.
Jan-Olof Wesström has read it and refused to comment it. But he is my best friend. Aron Haglund has read the story and liked it so much that I have found the courage to submit it. Thank you.
My thanks goes also to the staff of the Public Library of Vingåker, which has tracked down with a lot of patience and kindness unusual books for me that I needed to write. A small library with a big heart.
And of course I also thank Mia, my wife, who has been listening to me when I read to her from the increasing manuscript, who has convinced me to change what was bad, to develop what was okay. I don’t dare to mention scenes that would not have been removed without her. Many thanks to you all.

John Ajvide Lindqvist.

And that is all, I believe. That is all of the errors and differences between the two versions that I managed to spot and found significant enough to bring up. I hope that this has been of at least some interest and that this could help deepen your understanding of the novel (at least a little bit) if you have only read the English version. Or something.

Listo, as our favorite Spanish gym teacher would say.

[metoo]

Prebbe [...] was a big guy. Spilling out over the edges, cropped hair. An out-of-shape paratrooper.

In LDRKI, he's compared to a fjälljägare—that is, a hunter (jägare) from the mountainous northern parts of the country.

Actually, fjälljägare is a popular albeit incorrect name for elite soldiers specialised in arctic warfare. The term is not used by the Swedish army.
Still, paratrooper hits the mark quite well.

EPILOGUE: Friday 13 November

Gunnar pressed his hands against his temples so his eyes narrowed, glanced down at his notes [...] and the only thing he managed to think was, I should go away for a while.

In LDRKI, he thinks Jag borde resa härifrån ("I should travel away from here"), which to me feels more definitive. At least in the way I read the original, Gunnar is thinking that he should permanently move away from the western suburbs after all the stuff he's witnessed the past three weeks, and not just go away "for a while".

This is the way I read it, too.

[Siggdalos]

Actually, fjälljägare is a popular albeit incorrect name for elite soldiers specialised in arctic warfare. The term is not used by the Swedish army.
Still, paratrooper hits the mark quite well.

Oh. Oops. I stand corrected.

[gkmoberg1]

And that is all, I believe. That is all of the errors and differences between the two versions that I managed to spot and found significant enough to bring up. I hope that this has been of at least some interest and that this could help deepen your understanding of the novel (at least a little bit) if you have only read the English version. Or something.

Listo, as our favorite Spanish gym teacher would say.

Your undertaking has been eye opening. You've provided a correction or alternative for so many phrases and sentences along the way, where a good number fall at moments that those of us who have taken in for a very long time the English translation, I (and I'm sure others) find as a result of all you've done here a to reconsider bits I've long held close.