<p>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.</p><p>Keywords: <em>translation, nominal phrases, extended modifiers, metaphors</em></p>

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 &amp; 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

Cette thèse est consacrée à l’étude des syntagmes nominaux sémantiquement pluriels en chinois mandarin et aux interprétations collective et distributive qui leur sont associées. Elle offre une analyse des formes de pluralité suivantes : le syntagme coordonne par gen, les nominaux modifiés par le suffixe -men, ainsi que les sujets ou les objets des groupes verbaux modifies par quan (‘tout’-flottant). A propos du syntagme coordonne par gen, nous montrons que la conjonction gen dans le syntagme ‘A gen B’ lexicalise une contrainte de pluralité nominale par le biais de restrictions sur les conjoints. Notre argument est bâti sur trois points principaux, à savoir que la catégorie des conjoints est nécessairement [+N], que le syntagme coordonne par gen n’introduit que des individus pluriels dans le discours et que ce syntagme porte la valeur sémantique pluriel [+Pl]. Nous passons aussi en revue différents types de prédicats afin de retracer la distribution des interprétations collective et distributive des syntagmes coordonnés par gen. Ensuite, nous nous penchons sur le suffixe -men et sur l’expression formée par ce suffixe et un nom commun ou un nom propre. Notre examen couvre principalement deux questions, celle de la nature de -men et celle de la (in)définitude de l’expression suffixée par -men en mandarin. Nous soutenons que -men n’est pas un marqueur collectif mais plutôt un marqueur pluriel. Cependant, ce marqueur n’est pas obligatoire, à la différence des marqueur du pluriel tels que -s dans les langues occidentales, le mandarin étant une langue à classificateur. Quant à l’(in)définitude de l’expression suffixée par -men, nous admettons que c’est un pluriel défini, mais ceci du fait que -men ne s’attache qu’aux pronoms personnels et aux noms d’humains, noms qui occupent le hautde la hiérarchie d’animacité. Donc l’expression suffixée par -men hériterait de la définitude en partie de la nature de son domaine fortement individué. Enfin, nous nous intéressons a l’interprétation distributive des syntagmes nominaux dans la phrase ou figure l’adverbe quan (‘tout’-flottant). Nous affirmons que quan impose la lecture distributive de manière autonome et nous en proposons une analyse en tant que modificateur de prédicat d’évènement. Quan cible un nominal relie par un θ-rôle et encapsule dans ce rôle l’instruction de distribution. La distributivité renforcée par quan implique une relation distributive entre deux entités : le nominal qui est sémantiquement pluriel et l’évènement pluriel / The thesis invested the research on the semantically plural nominal phrases in Mandarin Chinese and on their collectif and distributif interpretations. It offered an analysis of the following form of pluralities : the coordinated phrase with gen, the nominals modified by the suffix -men, and the subjects or the objects of the VP modified by quan (the floating quantifier). Concerning the coordinated phrase with gen, we will show that the conjunction gen of the phrase ‘A gen B’ lexicalize the constraint of the plurality via the restrictions on the conjoint elements. Our argument is mainly based on three points : 1) the category of the conjuncts is necessarily [+N] ; 2) coordinated phrases with gen introduce only the plural individuals in the discourse and 3) this nominal phrase characterizes the semantic plural value [+Pl]. We will also examine the different types of predicates in order to retrace thedistribution of collective and distributive interpretations of the coordinated phrases with gen. Then, we look into the suffix –men and the expressions formed by this suffix and a common noun or a proper noun. The investigation will mainly concern two questions : the question of the nature of –men and the question of the (in)definitude of the expressions suffixed by –men in Mandarin Chinese. We will argue that –men is not a collectif marker, but preferably a plural marker. However, different from plural markers in the western languages for exemple –s, the marker –men in Mandarin Chinese which is typically a classifer language, is not obligatory. Regarding the (in)definitude of the expressions suffixed by -men, we will admit that they are definite plurals, because of the fact that –men attaches only to only to personal pronouns and humain nouns, the nouns which occupy a high hierarchy of animacity. In consequence, the expressions suffixed by –men partly inherit the definitude of the nature of its considerably individuated domain. Finally, we are interested in the distributive interpretation of the nominal phrases in the sentences wherethe adverbial quan (the floating quantifier) appeares. We will claim that quan imposes the distributive reading in an autonomous manner and we will put forward an analysis of adverbial quan as a modifier of event predicate. Quan targets nominals linked by θ-roles and encapsulate in this role the instruction of distribution. The distributivity reinforced by quan involves a distributive relation between two entities : the nominal which is semantically plural and the plural event.