No description available.

No description available.

This essay was underpinned by the premise that the proverb plays an important role in language teaching as a part of gaining cultural knowledge, metaphorical understanding and communicative competence. The purpose with this essay was to examine whether proverbs are a part of the EFL (English as Foreign Language) teaching in the county of Jönköping, Sweden. The investigation focused on the occurrence of proverbs in eleven textbooks for the English A- and B-courses, and on the attitudes toward using prov-erbs in the teaching among nineteen teachers at seven upper secondary schools. Descriptive methods were used, which combined quantitative and qualitative approaches, i.e. content analysis and close read-ing of the textbooks and a questionnaire answered by the teachers. The result showed that proverbs are a small part of the EFL teaching regarding both the textbooks and the use in the classroom by the teachers. Proverbs are mainly used as bases for discussions in the text-books, and by the teachers as expressions to explain, to discuss the meaning and to compare to the Swedish equivalents. There is a positive attitude toward using proverbs and the result showed awareness among the teachers regarding proverbs as a part of the language and the culture as well as for communi-cation. The conclusion of the result was that the knowledge has to increase among educators and text-book authors about how proverbs can be used as effective devices and tools, not only as common ex-pressions, in every area of language teaching.

This essay deals with translation issues arising when translating a German source text – situated within the field of media communication and political science – into Swedish. More specifically, it focuses on translation problems and solutions in regard to extended participial modifiers and metaphorical expressions.From a translation perspective, complex German pre-nominal participial modifiers are known to pose a challenge to Swedish translators. This depends on language-specific restrictions within the nominal domain. In linguistic translation literature, it is commonly held, that complex pre-nominal participial modifiers cause – in Vinay & Darbelnet’s (1977) terminology – 'transpositions', yielding a Swedish relative clause. This widely held assumption again proved to be right. In some cases, however, other structural options were made use of such as abbreviated (participial) clauses. Also, depending on the complexity of the modifier, transpositions were involved which crossed one or more sentence boundaries. In contrast to complex nominal phrases with pre-nominal participial modifiers, metaphors are usually considered to be stylistically inappropriate in academic discourse. However, a closer examination of the metaphorical expressions appearing in the source text showed that they are almost without exception lexicalized or conventionalized and, therefore, not particularly artistic or daring. The analysis of the translation procedures involved when translating metaphorical expressions was limited to metaphors linked to the area of politics and career, mainly stemming from the conceptual domains: POLITICS IS WAR/A GAME and CAREER IS A JOURNEY. The analysis shows that German and Swedish have similar metaphors, building on those exact concepts. Still, literal translation was not applied in each and every case. In some cases, a neutral periphrasis or a formal equivalent was employed which resulted in a loss or change of some of the semantic aspects inherent to the original metaphor. Keywords: translation, nominal phrases, extended modifiers, metaphors

The following essay is an analysis of a translation from English into Swedish of two articles concerning tourism, travelling and the environment. The language of the articles is expressive and rich in metaphors, which evokes images in the mind of the reader. The translation was performed with the aim to transfer this effect into the translated texts and the aspects to be examined in the analysis were chosen with this in mind.One of the three aspects to be examined is the use of metaphors and how they are translated into Swedish. Many of the metaphors bear reference to travelling and the environment which gives them a function of enforcing the message and engaging the reader in the text. In order to obtain the same effect in the Swedish translations several translation strategies had to be used.The second aspect to be examined is the terminology used within tourism and the environment.  The environmental concern is a growing trend which inevitably influences the language and requires a new set of useful and understandable terms. This becomes clear when reading and translating the articles at hand. The environmental terms are fairly new and sometimes hard to distinguish. In this study focus is set on the translation strategies and the procedures used in order to find the Swedish equivalents of the terms in this context.The third aspect is the translation of hyphenated pre-modifiers. This aspect is particularly interesting, since the phenomenon is more or less unknown in Swedish. Of the fifteen hyphenated pre-modifiers in the source texts none were translated into hyphenated pre-modifiers in Swedish although five of them were translated into regular pre-modifiers. The analysis is based on the translation strategies applied and the comparison of syntactic structures of the expressions in English and Swedish.

The general field of interest for this study is the Swedish public’s level of awareness of non-literal and figurative language, such as idioms and metaphors, in English. The English language can be considered to be evolving into Sweden’s second language, since it is present in so much more than school, for example, on television, computers and radio. This study aims to gain an insight into the degree of understanding of common idiomatic expressions in popular English song lyrics by native Swedish speakers. University students were chosen as the sample group and twelve of them were asked to explain their understanding of selected English idioms which occur in songs with which they were likely to recognize. The results have then been analyzed and it was possible to establish the degrees of understanding, misunderstanding and failure to understand. Firstly, the participants have explained the expression out of context, and secondly they were asked to explain it in the context of the song. This was to see whether the expressions appear to have been easier to understand out of context or in context. Earlier research show difficulties in defining the term idiom, and in this survey the term idiomatic expression has been used and defined as a way of speaking or writing that does not make any literal sense, even though the expressions are used all the time and people familiar with the language generally recognize them and understand their meaning. Earlier research has facilitated the analysis by the use of terms, theories and definitions on various ways of understanding metaphors, metonymy and idioms, and how these might, or might not, differ between Swedish and English. The results of this survey show that most of the expressions appear to have been easier to explain and understand when seen and heard in the context of the song. Although, some expressions appear to have been very alien to the participants, which has resulted in misunderstandings and failure to understand both in and out of context of the song lyrics in question.

The aim of this study is to compare metaphors from the 1970 edition of Joseph Conrsd's Heart of Darkness (originally published in 1902) with their Swedish translations in Mörkrets Hjärta, by Einar Hecksher (2006), to see how mwtaphors have been translated from English into Swedish, i.e. to see if there are any structural differences which cause semantic differences to the metaphors. By comparing the original metaphors with their translations, it is possible to point to difficulties, which may cause problems in the translation process. One example indicates that homonyms can be a problem. Nearly all of the English metaphors have been translated as metaphors in Swedish as well. About half of the metaphors studied have been semantically changed in their translations, yet without any pragmatic differences compared to the originals. It seems not that important which theory about metaphors (e.g. Lakoff, Leech, Levinson, Black) is more 'applicable' than the others with regard to translation. The result of translation of metaphors is more likely due to the translator's perception of the source language, rather than to theories about metaphors per se.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how three idioms, in English, French and Swedish, despite different lexical compositions are capable of conveying the same meaning. The idioms in question are a thorn in the side, une épine au pied/dans le pied and en nagel i ögat. This study is concerned with how different metaphorical images are used to express the same meaning. Furthermore, it examines what it is in the semantics of the lexical items that enables these idioms to express the same idiomatic meaning. Using a cognitive linguistic approach the analysis is conducted at a linguistic and a conceptual level. The analysis shows that these three different idioms are capable of conveying the same idiomatic meaning because they are motivated by the same conceptual metaphor.

The present study offers an initial exploration of the implications of metaphoric competence in L2 writing in the Swedish educational context. Metaphors from a cognitive perspective, are a core part of our daily lives. Moreover, they are a reflection of our thoughts and cognition, and an important part of every student learning path towards mastering a second language. The development of metaphoric competence, which includes the ability to understand and produce metaphors, can contribute substantially to second language proficiency. This paper examines the extent to which students obtaining the highest grades in the Swedish national test for grade 9 use metaphors in comparison to students who get the lowest grades and see whether there is a difference in the metaphoric comptence among students. For the study, 20 essays were analysed using the metaphor identification procedure (MIP). Finally, the paper explores the educational implications of these results in the EFL classroom.

In this thesis, I examine the practical challenge of constructing communication at the Arabic Translation Service (ATS) of the UN through the process of translation. Unlike in English in which "communication" has only one equivalent, in Arabic it has many depending on the context. My analysis focuses on analyzing the occurrence of two translation equivalents, namely ittissal and tawassul given that their use in translation sometimes proves to be cultural. I conducted participant observation over the course of a two-month internship at the UN Headquarters in New York. Using grounded theory, I pieced together insights from a database of occurrences of the term "communication," interviewed staff members about their opinion about previous translations of "communication," witnessed staff interactions during their weekly meetings, and participated in a communication framework to create closer relationships between the ATS and other duty stations outside the UN. The way this framework is designed helps define how communication is understood as both theoretical concept and word used for translation purposes. Adopting an ethnography of communication approach, I illuminate the cultural differences involved in translating the term "communication" into Arabic in UN documents by an Arab multicultural team. By means of exploring translation issues, I aim at defining the prominent model of communication in the UN ATS community, and showing how this community's talk reflects tensions between different culturally embedded models. My conclusion is that ittissal is preferred over tawassul, the first involving more technical meaning and less contact among people. Some translators disagree with some translations. The UN ATS has its own language, given that it communicates to particular audiences. I aim at finding out why ittissal is the preferred term, why is standard Arabic not used for communication among the staff, and what aspects during translation are cultural.