This paper focuses on three aspects of the recipe minilect in translation from Swedish to German. These aspects concern illocutionary speech acts, reader address and ellipsis. The study aims to find out how frequently different translation strategies are used when translating illocutions, reader address and ellipses and to determine why these translation strategies were chosen. The analysis is mainly based on theories on minilects by Nordman (1994), on reader address and illocutionary acts by Rathmayr (2009) and on ellipsis by Teleman et al. (1999) This theoretical background facilitates the classification of the occurrences of illocutions, reader address and ellipsis quantitatively. Also, a qualitative analysis of representative examples is carried out in order to investigate the reason behind the chosen translation strategy. The results show the primary use of infinitives in illocutionary speech acts in German cookbooks in contrast to the imperative in Swedish cookbooks as well as the prominent avoidance of direct reader address in German. Moreover, ellipses are as frequent in German as it is in Swedish cookbooks, the study shows.

This paper focuses on two aspects of the recipe minilect: clause-initial adverbials and object and determiner ellipsis in the translation from English into Swedish. The aim of the study is to find general tendencies on how clause-initial adverbials are translated and how this affects the information structure. In addition, the occurrence of object and determiner ellipsis in translations is studied, to see if there are differences between English and Swedish. Based on a theoretical background by Hasselgård (1997) the translation of clause-initial adverbials is identified and structured, according to Hasselgård’s (1997) model of word order correspondence. The structures are then studied quantitatively, through different examples in English and Swedish, and with regards to Lindquist’s (1989) definition of adverbial placement. The theoretical background for the study on object and determiner ellipsis is mainly based on the work by Nordman (1994), Hultman (2003) and Biber et al (1999). The occurrence of ellipsis is identified and then studied quantitatively. The results show that different kinds of word order restrictions govern the translation of clause-initial adverbials and that changes in adverbial placement can affect the information structure. The occurrence of object ellipsis is somewhat higher in the present study than in the analyzed parallel texts, possibly due to influence from the ST. Due to Swedish rules on definiteness, there is a low occurrence of determiner ellipsis in the TT.

This study examines explicitness and implicitness in the instructions of eight English baking recipes and their translations into Swedish. The aim is to investigate whether the degree of explicitness changes in the translation. Additionally, the translation of reader address is examined to determine if it leads to an increase or decrease of the recipe explicitness. Illocution and speech act theory provide a theoretical framework for the analysis. In the examination of translated instructions, the study presents five analyzed verb constructions: the imperative, the passive, the modal auxiliary, the finite verb and the adverbial -ing-clause. In the examination of reader address, the study analyzes the translation of the English subject pronoun you. The results show that the translation keeps close to the ST structure and often renders the instructions with the same verb construction. However, there are instances for each analyzed feature where the translation provides more explicit instructions than the ST. Further, the results indicate that the translation of reader address is closely linked to the translation of the instructions; if the ST verb construction is altered in the TT, the ST reader address may either be translated or omitted in the TT. Additionally, the translator needs to interpret whether the address is aimed at a specific reader or a group of readers, as Swedish can translate the English pronoun you into either du, man, ni or det. The translation of the recipes was performed by the author of this paper, a beginner translator, which may have affected the results.