Richard Pleijel

I am a researcher at the Institute for Intepreting and Translation Studies, where I am conducting the project "A secular Bible: 'Bibel 2000' at the intersection between religion and politics in postwar Sweden", funded by the Swedish Research Council (2021-02108) and scheduled for three years (2022-2025). The project concerns "Bibel 2000", the latest official Swedish Bible translation which was funded and organized by the state. The aim is to investigate different aspects of the state's involvment with the translation of the Bible during the postwar era, focusing on the arguments for a new translation, arguments on who should be the patron for the translation, but also on the intended recipients of the translation. The way the translation was contested by different groups in society shows that "the Bible" was as much a text as an idea that different groups sought to define. These negotiations are a way to understand the place and function of the Bible in the Swedish postwar era. In the project, I engage with theories from translation history and translation sociology, as well as with recent research in biblical reception studies.