The present study deals with the French gerund and the Swedish syntactic correspondences in a parallel corpus. The analysis is based on 3,988 authentic instances of the gerund and their corresponding structures in Swedish texts. These are collected in a corpus consisting of 13 original contemporary French novels and 13 original contemporary Swedish novels, including their respective translations. The main purpose is to identify the Swedish corresponding structures and consider how, and to what extent, they transmit the integrative function and the adverbial interpretations of the French gerund.   Nine Swedish reoccurring structures are discerned, including the most common: coordinated clauses and adverbial clauses. The study shows that the nine Swedish structures share the integrative capacity of the gerund to different degrees, as well as how they transmit the adverbial interpretations in various ways. Some Swedish syntactic structures correlate with particular adverbial interpretation of the gerund. Another aim is to contribute to the existing research on the French gerund: the semantic analysis of the corpus has led to question – with authentic examples – the alleged absolute inability of the gerund to denote an eventuality that is the consequence of the eventuality denoted by the superordinate clause. The study also reveals, in light of Swedish corresponding structures, the relationship between certain adverbial interpretations of the gerund and more independent syntax in French.

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.