<p>The aim of this study was to identify the strategies used to render the literary dialect in A State of Independence into the Swedish translation. In order to systematically study the translation solutions, a number of ‘coupled pairs’ consisting of source text ‘problems’ and target text ‘solutions’ were extracted from the original text and the translation. The ‘coupled pairs’ were then analysed in order to detect regularities in the translation solutions. The study showed that the major strategy used by the translator was the use of ‘eye-dialect’, i.e. non-standard spellings that simulate non-standard speech. Moreover, some passages in the translation had been standardised, whereas eye-dialectal spellings were found in other passages where the original did not contain any non-standard features. Finally, a comparative count of dialectally marked utterances in both texts was made. The count showed that the dialectal markers were in the majority in the translation, which might indicate that the translator has tried to compensate for the lack of equivalent target language features.</p>

This study investigates the translation process of three translator students and their production of translated non-fiction texts. The students are followed from an initial examination task over a period of time of 5 years. The translated texts produced during this period are analysed with selected methods of text analysis, which is compared to their source texts. The text analysis focuses on certain grammatical features that are known to generate problems for translators with the language pair Russian – Swedish. The results of the analysis show that the systematic differences in the languages involved are not as problematic as expected for the participants. Writing skills in the TL, translation principles and initial beliefs as well as the individual’s approach concerning the task of a translator turn out to have the most significant influences on the participants’ performance. In a complementary analysis, introspection data obtained from concurrent verbalisations are analysed according to a model that allows indicating and classifying marked processing in the translations. The role of contrastive language knowledge is especially emphasised in this part of the study. The results are put in relation to each other to obtain a picture of the individual development of the participating translator students. The three case studies show that each participant developed his/her competence during the time of the study. They also show that this development stays within a conceptual frame set by the participants before they started their training as translators. The implications for translator training that can be drawn from this study are mainly concerned with the importance of writing skills in the TL, contrastive language knowledge and the importance of questioning individual beliefs and principles concerning the task of the translator as well as approaches to translating.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English