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Scholars have long known that Jain authors from the early centuries of the common era composed their own versions of the story of Rāma, prince of Ayodhyā. Further, the differences between Jain and Brahminical versions of the narrative are well documented. Less studied are later versions of Jain Rāma narratives, particularly those composed during the early modern period. This paper examines one such version of the Rāma story, the fifteenth-century Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa by the Digambara author Brahma Jinadāsa. The paper compares Jinadāsa’s work with an earlier text, the seventh-century Sanskrit Padmapurāṇa, authored by Raviṣeṇa, as Jinadāsa explains that he has at hand a copy of his predecessor’s work and is recomposing it to make it “clear”. The paper thus demonstrates the multiple strategies of abridgement Jinadāsa employs in recomposing Raviṣeṇa’s earlier narrative and that, to Jinadāsa, this project of narrative abridgement was also one of clarification.

Ever since the 19th century it has been assumed that Recensions B and C of the 'Kaiserchronik' are motivated primarily by the desire to modernize the early MHG rhyme and metre of A, and that C implements this tendency more successfully than B. Comparative close reading of key episodes (including Julius Caesar, Crescentia, Theodosius) facilitated by the digital edition of the 'Kaiserchronik' shows that the retextualization is motivated by narratological as well as formal considerations, and that the abridgments and refocusings of B evince a greater concern for narrative coherence than the changes of C, which aim more at the smoothing of rhyme and metre.

This article examines processes of knowledge production around mass violence in 1970s Cambodia including media reportage and coeval scholarly debate, developing a conceptualisation of colonial abridgment. It assesses operations by which Cambodia as a country is violently essentialised, the occurrence of mass violence taking on metonymic grandeur that works to deny imperial legacies, entomb modern Cambodia in a hermetically sealed past and thereby maintain global order within existing racial-colonial logics.

This paper examines Swedish translations of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), a novel that has maintained the status of a children’s classic in the Scandinavian countries for more than a century. I explore the background conditions of this long-lasting reception by analyzing significant differences between source and target text within this series of translations. All the translations have been adapted to the context of their target culture in general and shaped to address an audience of young female readers in particular. Many of the interventions correspond to general patterns in translations for children and reflect contemporary assumptions about the needs of young readers: they emphasize domestication over foreignization and add clarifying comments and explanations to cultural elements unfamiliar to Swedish readers. Some minor inconsistencies point to turbulences within the translation process and highlight the low esteem for children’s fiction within the literary system. Other, more consistent changes can be attributed to programmatic decisions that affect the very premises of Anne of Green Gables. The handling of intertextual references and some major abridgements reveal a tendency to disambiguate the protagonist’s cross-over status between girlhood and adulthood, and clarify her often blurry position between the realms of imagination and reality. This results in the seemingly paradoxical result that the success of Anne of Green Gables in Sweden is founded on decisions that have narrowed down its literary scope.

Pojo Chinul (1158–1210) is considered a great harmonizer of the conflicting Buddhist trends in the late Koryŏ period. Although diverse philosophical and soteriological aspects of his texts have been examined, the Hwaŏmnon chŏryo, a seminal text that demonstrates his effort to mitigate the tension between the Sŏn and Kyo schools, has not been given due scholarly attention. By revealing the drawbacks in previous scholarship on Chinul, this article emphasizes the importance of a correct understanding of Li Tongxuan’s (635–730) Xin huayan jing lun, the primary text that exerted an enormous influence on the formation of Chinul’s thought. Chinul’s text, however, sometimes omits the rich symbolism as represented in Li’s text. Moreover, the Hwaŏmnon chŏryo does not adopt indigenous philosophical frameworks for the explication of the Flower Garland Sūtra as introduced in its source text Xin huayan jing lun. Chinul, instead, faithfully accommodates Li’s fundamental philosophical and soteriological theses in this abridged text. Although Chinul does not accept every detail of Li’s exegesis and his text shows the characteristics of selective abridgement, he has a critical attitude toward the contemporary Buddhists just as Li does. This attitude may explain his adoption of this “unorthodox” text which was written by a layman and disregarded by both of the mainstream Sŏn and Kyo schools.

Einem seit dem 19. Jh. bestehenden Forschungskonsens zufolge manifestiert sich die Bearbeitungstendenz der Fassungen B und C der ‘Kaiserchronik’ vornehmlich in der Modernisierung von Reim und Metrik der frühmittelhochdeutschen Fassung A, wobei die formale Erneuerung dem C-Bearbeiter besser gelungen sei als dem Bearbeiter von B. Eine auf der Grundlage der digitalen ‘Kaiserchronik’-Edition durchgeführte vergleichende Textanalyse herausragender Episoden (darunter Julius Caesar, Crescentia, Theodosius) zeigt jedoch, dass beide Retextualisierungen der Chronik sowohl von narratologisch-inhaltlichen als auch von formal-sprachlichen Momenten geprägt sind und dass die Kürzungen und Neuakzentuierungen von B ein stärkeres Interesse an narrativer Kohärenz an den Tag legen als die eher auf die Glättung von Reim und Metrum ausgerichteten Änderungen von C. Ever since the 19th century it has been assumed that Recensions B and C of the ‘Kaiserchronik’ are motivated primarily by the desire to modernize the early MHG rhyme and metre of A, and that C implements this tendency more successfully than B. Comparative close reading of key episodes (including Julius Caesar, Crescentia, Theodosius) facilitated by the digital edition of the ‘Kaiserchronik’ shows that the retextualization is motivated by narratological as well as formal considerations, and that the abridgments and refocusings of B evince a greater concern for narrative coherence than the changes of C, which aim more at the smoothing of rhyme and metre.

This case study discusses constraints related to the image of girlhood and gender roles evident in the abridged and adapted Swedish translation of L.M. Montgomery’s girls’ classic Emily of New Moon published in 1955by Gleerups. The 1950s are called the golden age of girls’ books in Sweden because their publication peaked during this period. However, the popularity of girls’ books during the 1950s did not correlate with high status. Adaptation of translations was common, which indicates the low status of the genre. The Swedish translation of Emily of New Moon was adapted for a younger target audience than Montgomery’s original, and abridged to a lower page count required by the publisher series in which the book was included. The publisher imposed didactic constraints on the book, and these constraints are a sign of conservative and protective strategies and authoritarian attitudes. The adaptation reflects what kind of books the publisher wanted to present to girls, and largely involves purification of unconventional behavior and sexuality. This was consistent with didactic translation norms, reflected in the origin of girls’ books in educational literature. The translation presents a clear, unambiguous and conventional model for the appropriate behavior of girls, and female characters represent more restrictive gender roles than in the original.