One of the characteristics of German scientific language is the frequent use of noun phrases containing multiple modifiers. A common type of modifier in German scientific writing is the NP modifier in genitival case. Although not uncommon in the Swedish language, these so-called genitival modifiers are found more frequently in German texts, not only because of the grammatical differences between the two languages, but also due to the German preference for a more nominal writing style. This study focuses on the translation of German genitival modifiers into Swedish. The first aim of the study was to determine which syntactic structures can be used to translate German genitival modifiers into Swedish, as well as to establish the most frequently used translation structure or structures. The second aim was to identify the factors that prevented the direct transfer of a genitival modifier. For the purposes of this study, a section of Wolfgang Mertens popular scientific book Traum und Traumdeutung was translated into Swedish, after which it was analyzed with the above-mentioned aims in mind. The study has shown that about a third of the genitival modifiers found in the source text were translated using prepositional modifiers. Another third were translated with a corresponding Swedish genitival modifier. For the translation of the remaining genitival modifiers six additional types of structures were used. The main factors that prevented a direct translation were the grammatical inability to use certain types of genitival modifiers in the target language as well as the preference of the target language for more verbal expressions.

One of the main characteristics of German technical language is the nominal style, which includes complex pre-nominal and post-nominal extended modifiers. A commonly held view is that these are less common in Swedish due to language-specific restrictions and preferences. As such, they may pose a challenge to Swedish translators. This essay examines this particular problem and focuses on the translation of four different complex extended modifiers: adjectival, participial, genitival and prepositional.The aim of this study was to determine which syntactic structures are used when these modifiers are translated into Swedish and to identify shifts using the concept “grammatical metaphor”, thereby focusing on the degree of grammatical metaphoricity. For the purposes of this study, a chapter of the technical book Neues Bauen mit Stroh in Europa by Gruber, Gruber and Sentler was translated into Swedish and then analysed with the above-mentioned aims in mind.The study showed that out of the 117 noun phrases with extended complex modifiers in the source text 21 were transposed into a less explicit, direct structure and more metaphorical language. The metaphorization was in some cases a result of simplification/omission of less dense semantic material and/or the translation into compounds. In 46 cases, the extended modifiers showed the same degree of grammatical metaphoricity as the source language expression and thus were re-metaphorized. In the remaining cases, a verbal or more explicit structure was chosen in the translation. This especially proved to be the case with pre-nominal extended adjectival and participial modifiers.