For translators, text passages in one or several foreign languages in a literary work are particularly challenging. Translators must make choices with regard to both method and translation strategies when dealing with such passages in the source text: are they to be transferred, translated or explained? This article studies the translation of one of the most famous novels written by the Dominican–American author Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and its translations to three Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. This comparative study of translations constitutes an interesting case, as both the languages and sociocultural settings in the three countries are similar. Notwithstanding, this study shows the translators of the novel have chosen very different approaches when they translate the shift between the languages in the original text.