On Translating H. C. Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen lived to see his tales translated into dozens of languages, and often he knew that the results were deplorable. Some translators "improved" Andersen's prose, and other didn't know Danish well enough to translate it correctly. Long before Disney, a sad ending was made happy; a moral might be added, and sometimes Victorian sensibilities demanded a bit of bowdlerizing. It is a wonder that the stories survived all of this. Even for a skilled and serious translator, Andersen writing is tricky. This essay examines the challenges of getting this trickiest of writers into English.