The purpose of this experimental study is to examine the translation processes and the resulting translations of eight translators performing translation tasks from German into Swedish. The data about the translation processes were collected with the think-aloud technique, i.e. the translators were asked to verbalize as much of their thinking as possible while translating. The translators – four of whom had long working experience and the others substantially shorter experience – were asked to translate the same source text (a news item) for two different fictitious audiences: first for a morning newspaper and then for a children’s magazine. With regards to the translation process, the results showed that the two categories of translators did not differ considerably from each other, neither in their dictionary use, nor in their overall accomplishment of the translation tasks. However, they did differ in their attitude. The less experienced translators were more involved in the process, which also led to quality improvements. At the same time, individual differences were substantial regarding all of the criteria examined. The resulting translations (the products) were evaluated both by the researcher and by journalists from the newspapers or magazines in which the texts, according to the briefs, were to be published. The results showed small differences in text quality for the two categories of translators. According to the journalists, the less experienced translators even produced slightly better texts for the morning paper.

The style of the Swedish writer Harry Martinson is characterised by a large number of conspicuous and creative word-formation units, which have a special function in his writing. One single word might summarise and denominate an experiance or a complex emotion, sometimes using an exact description, sometimes using a metaphor. The content and the novelty of such nonce forms catch the reader´s or listener´s attention, achieving the intended effect: to make the reader understand what Martinson wants to convey. The present study is an analysis of the neologisms used in two of Martinson´s semiautobiographical novels and their German translations. The object of the study is twofold: firstly to show that the great variety of nonce words-formations as well as their semantics provide the special stylistic markers of the texts, and secondly to draw more general conclusions about the effect of target languages regarding the form, content and function of the units in the texts, as well as their effect on the reader, the concept of equivalence is central. Correspondences and deviations are analysed applying a model specifically designed for the purpose and based in relevant theories. The results illustrate both the various problems a translator must seek to solve and the consequences that simplifications, omissions, and paraphrases might have on the meaning and effect of the text.

The aim of this thesis is to comprehensively describe and evaluate the linguistic work of the German grammarian and teacher Max Wilhelm Götzinger (1799–1856). Götzinger‘s work has been little considered in linguistics and historiography of linguistics apart from some articles mainly on his grammatical theory. The first editions of Anfangsgründe (1825) and Die Deutsche Sprachlehre für Schulen (1827), which up to now have been considered to be lost, could be retrieved and used for this study. Aspects of Götzinger‘s didactics and grammar can still today be re-garded as modern. In many respects his didactic ideas were opposed to the methods of teaching inspired by rationalist grammar and prevailing in the schools of his time. His own method is inductive and the aim of teach-ing was mainly to make pupils familiar with the structure of the German language. Götzinger‘s grammatical system was inspired by his experience as a teacher. The logical judgement and the subject-predicate concepts were replaced by a verb centred concept of syntax and Götzinger‘s system of word classes began with the verb instead of the noun. He did not regard correct thinking, which was the main purpose of rationalist grammar, but communication as the basic aim of the teaching of grammar. His notion of the verb as the centre of the clause has basic features in common with modern dependency theories introduced by Lucien Tesnière. Götzinger performed pioneering work in the field of dialectology and he is understood be the first to include a comprehensive description of the dialects of the German speaking countries Even if there also are good reasons to criticise many aspects of his work, e.g. indistinct terminology, inconsistency in sticking to his theory, and subjectivity in the description of the dialects, Götzinger‘s achieve-ment as to the state of the art of his time and also with regard to modern linguistics must be considered remarkable.

This study examines the functions of phrases with the word missverstehen in any inflected form in German discussion groups. The corpus consists of about 600 different messages with a phrase containing the verb missverstehen from all kinds of discussion groups speaking the German language. The hypothesis is that those phrases do not always refer to a factual misunderstanding in the communication. There is no such thing as total understanding in communication, since people cannot fully know how other people are thinking. Instead understanding is a social construct. Misunderstanding occurs when a group member cannot interpret a message so that it correlates with what the sender has meant. This understanding contains both the discussed theme as well as the relation between the group members. Relevance occurs when interpretable information is communicated through contextualization cues. Some cues carry information about the discussed theme, others communicate face work. A misunderstanding is caused by missing contextualization cues, i. e. the message is irrelevant. The study shows how the communicators can construct a disagreement as a misunderstanding, which it in turn has an impact on face work. The phrase is then being used together with added contextualization cues in order to construct a common understanding. Thereby the communicators can influence the interaction. This is done in a sequence in the discussion group. Hence the script theory (Schank/Abelson 1977) aims to describe the phenomenon of how a phrase with the word missverstehen can be used for different purposes. One script is defined for each purpose. The difference between the scripts is being maintained by the contextualization cue that carries the information about how the relations between group members are interacted.

<p>Based on current research in historical and cognitive linguistics this thesis examines the German semantic field <fromm> (<pious>), partly contrasting it with its Swedish correspondent <from>. Starting at the time of Old High German the analysis follows the historical development of word and concept, exploring how attitudes to the Christian religion are verbalised in different ages. One important assumption is that ideas and attitudes are accessible to us through the lexicalised items of a language.</p><p>The thesis is part of the interlingual research project “Ethical concepts and mental cultures”, which, by applying a pluralistic method, examines various ethical fields, and assumes as central the oppositions a/o (action directed to others vs. to oneself), right/wrong (virtues vs. vices) and too much/too little vs. the ideal mean.</p><p>This study shows that true piety, in order to be classified as a virtue, has to include both trust and critical thinking in equal proportions and that if either of the two outweighs the other the virtue will become a vice. Furthermore, it is shown that a shift in meaning has taken place from ‘profitable’ or ‘advantageous’ in Old High German, through ‘excellent’, ‘righteous’, ‘virtuous’ into ‘religious’, with Luther’s usage as the critical factor in giving the word its religious meaning. As a result of Secularisation and Individualisation negative connotations have developed in modern German usage which do not seem to exist to the same extent in modern Swedish. This is confirmed by two corpus studies, evaluating the usage of <i>fromm/from</i> in German and Swedish newspaper texts, according to which <i>fromm</i> tends to be transferred to profane contexts, meaning for example ‘hypocritical’, ‘uncritically credulous’ and ‘uncritically obedient’ more frequently than its Swedish equivalent.</p><p>Based on results from socio-psychological research the study also identifies some strategies that speakers employ in order to mark distance or adherence to a group of believers or non-believers, for example metaphors (i.a. GOOD IS UP ÷ BAD IS DOWN) or stereotypes, which are often used to ridicule, criticise or insult a member of another group in order to strengthen the speaker’s own social identity.</p>

<p>This dissertation deals with how didactic fiction and writers of child literature of the 18^th and 19^th centuries tried to strike terror into their young listeners to make them obedient to the social and moral norms of adults. Particular attention is devoted to texts where children themselves function as protagonists. Fairy-tales by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm but also by Ludwig Bechstein and Charles Perrault are taken into consideration as are examples of child literature by Johann Baptist Strobl, a less famous didactic philanthropist at the end of the Enlightenment.</p><p>The theme of horror and intimidation is followed and analyzed with special regard to narrative techniques, but also to objectives of educational and socialisation processes. The dissertation argues that many of the recurring stereotypes and <i>topoi</i> in these horror stories for children can be traced back to popular superstition and other notions of an early preliterary and oral society.</p>

The present study investigates the translation of dialectal elements in literary texts from the German and Swedish linguistical and cultural areas. Translation theory generally advises against the translation of dialectal elements in standard language texts thereby implicitly questioning their creative and communicative function. The aim of the study is to investigate to what extent the dialectal elements in the source text are translated by corresponding dialectal elements in the target text thereby promoting a "cultural transfer" or whether a translation method based on translation theory is used. The linguistic material from the novels Die Räuberbande by the German author Leonhard Frank, Tjärdalen by the Swedish author Sara Lidman and Kapten Nemos bibliotek by the Swedish author Per Olov Enquist is microanalyzed. In doing so, the phonetical-phonological, morphological and syntactical dialectal features in the three source texts are treated methodically and are exemplarily and systematically presented together with their translation variants in the target language. The study focuses mainly on the translations of dialectal lexicology, which is investigated according to its contrastive function regarding the translations of standard language, thereby examining its adequacy. By including all the dialectal lexemes appearing in the works and their translations empirical dates have been compiled as a result of the translation methods. The study´s analyses demonstrate that dialectal elements are mainly translated into standard language, that a large part of dialectisms is paraphrased and that a small part is rendered by spoken language without regional limits. A tendency towards increasing use of dialectal elements through the times can be detected as well as a propensity to adapt the translation to the stylistical preferences in the receiving country. Thus, "cultural transfer" is not promoted.

This study is a thematic-descriptive investigation of the reproduction and transformation of norms in the theoretical discourse on the novel during the 1960s. Primary literature consists of articles and essays published in West German literary and cultural journals 1959-1967. The term ‘discourse’ is applied partly in accordance with Busse/Hermanns/Teubert (1994), the term ‘theory of the novel’ chiefly in accordance with Lämmert (ed. 1984). ‘Ideology’ is not used in the sense of ‘false ideology’ but rather as an umbrella term for various types of value-related statements. From this, the theory-of-the-novel discourse is perceived as an aesthetic-ideological discourse, containing statements directed at the contemporary novel which have clear programmatic function and significant thematic width. The objective of the investigation is to show that specific comprehensive thematic fields – Werteverlust (breakdown and loss of values), Subjektproblematik (‘problematisation of the concept of the subject’), Sprachproblematik (language related problems) and Realitätszerfall (reality loss, breakdown of the reality concept) – bear discursive significance as regards the discussion of literary norms during the 1960s, and that this discussion realises itself as two aesthetic-ideological discourses competing for interpretative precedence. The major issues are: Which reiterated patterns of argumentation, i.e. norm-related categories, concepts and rhetorical patterns, are used in the discourses for diagnoses and programmatic imperatives? How are the comprehensive thematic fields accentuated? What is treated, postulated or set aside as ‘truth’? How - based on the above – is the novel formulated as a ‘problem’ (‘crisis of the novel’)? The investigation confirms that the comprehensive thematic fields are particularly central to the theoretical discussion of literature in the 1960s. This manifests itself as a discursive re-evaluation process which may be characterised as a conflict between an ‘aesthetic-conservative discourse’ and a ‘discourse of change’ (‘Veränderungsdiskurs’) where the right to define and evaluate the novel in terms of literature is at stake. It is in the collision between these two discourses and their largely incompatible concepts of literature that the novel discursively becomes a ‘problem’. The discourses are maintained by specific reiterated patterns of argumentation which in the investigation are subsumed under the following headings: die negative Modernität (negative modernity), das bloß Moderne (phenomena of ‘fashionable character’, simply expressing trends) and das Überzeitliche und das Ganze (the timeless and the totality); respectively die traditionelle, bürgerliche Gesellschaft (traditional bourgeois society), die technisch-sprachliche Realität (technolinguistic reality) and der subjektive, sprachliche Realitätsausschnitt (‘subjective language based slice of reality’). The first group of argumentation patterns is linked to universal, ‘eternal’ and essential categories and inherited norms, ethical-aesthetical educational grounding and a ‘rhetoric of the spirit’ or of ‘mankind’, oriented around a specific reception of German Classicism and Idealism, a downgrading of the present and an upgrading of the past. The other group embraces an incipient constructivism, contextually bound and societal categories and norms as well as implicitly critical programmes of enlightenment, devaluing the past and ‘acknowledging’ rather than criticising the present. In doing so they tend rather to realise a rhetoric of the linguistic and political reality and of more modest programmatic proposals.

Based on current research in historical and cognitive linguistics this thesis examines the German semantic field &lt;fromm&gt; (&lt;pious&gt;), partly contrasting it with its Swedish correspondent &lt;from&gt;. Starting at the time of Old High German the analysis follows the historical development of word and concept, exploring how attitudes to the Christian religion are verbalised in different ages. One important assumption is that ideas and attitudes are accessible to us through the lexicalised items of a language. The thesis is part of the interlingual research project “Ethical concepts and mental cultures”, which, by applying a pluralistic method, examines various ethical fields, and assumes as central the oppositions a/o (action directed to others vs. to oneself), right/wrong (virtues vs. vices) and too much/too little vs. the ideal mean. This study shows that true piety, in order to be classified as a virtue, has to include both trust and critical thinking in equal proportions and that if either of the two outweighs the other the virtue will become a vice. Furthermore, it is shown that a shift in meaning has taken place from ‘profitable’ or ‘advantageous’ in Old High German, through ‘excellent’, ‘righteous’, ‘virtuous’ into ‘religious’, with Luther’s usage as the critical factor in giving the word its religious meaning. As a result of Secularisation and Individualisation negative connotations have developed in modern German usage which do not seem to exist to the same extent in modern Swedish. This is confirmed by two corpus studies, evaluating the usage of fromm/from in German and Swedish newspaper texts, according to which fromm tends to be transferred to profane contexts, meaning for example ‘hypocritical’, ‘uncritically credulous’ and ‘uncritically obedient’ more frequently than its Swedish equivalent. Based on results from socio-psychological research the study also identifies some strategies that speakers employ in order to mark distance or adherence to a group of believers or non-believers, for example metaphors (i.a. GOOD IS UP ÷ BAD IS DOWN) or stereotypes, which are often used to ridicule, criticise or insult a member of another group in order to strengthen the speaker’s own social identity.

This dissertation deals with how didactic fiction and writers of child literature of the 18th and 19th centuries tried to strike terror into their young listeners to make them obedient to the social and moral norms of adults. Particular attention is devoted to texts where children themselves function as protagonists. Fairy-tales by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm but also by Ludwig Bechstein and Charles Perrault are taken into consideration as are examples of child literature by Johann Baptist Strobl, a less famous didactic philanthropist at the end of the Enlightenment. The theme of horror and intimidation is followed and analyzed with special regard to narrative techniques, but also to objectives of educational and socialisation processes. The dissertation argues that many of the recurring stereotypes and topoi in these horror stories for children can be traced back to popular superstition and other notions of an early preliterary and oral society.