The aim of this paper is to carry out a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the semantic and pragmatic aspects of a translation from Spanish into Swedish. Taking advantage our extensive knowledge of the local area we selected a book about the cultural heritage of Seville. Owing to the differences in the two cultures we expected to find numerous foreign cultural words – that we call culturemes – throughout the book that have no direct equivalence in Swedish. Our intention was to detect them and describe by means of several examples the translation techniques we used in order to adapt the target text to the Swedish reader. At the end we also carried out a quantitative analysis of the 252 culturemes we found, with a table showing which translation techniques dominate, and the frequency of occurrence of other techniques. We aimed to transfer as many culturemes as possible in order to give the target text some local color. This is the strategy called foreignization, recommended by Venuti. Throughout the translation and analysis process we concluded that the translator must have a sound linguistic and cultural knowledge of both the source and target languages in order to successfully resolve cultural differences and create an idiomatic and pragmatic translation.

This study analyses the comparative frequency of “direct reader address” in English and Swedish walking guidebook texts. Through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of specific linguistic features that constitute “direct reader address”, the study aims to highlight the importance of considering reader expectation of a text, i.e. the target culture’s text conventions when translating. The linguistic features in focus are those which help to establish a familiar relationship between reader and writer and thus set up an imaginary dialogue. These are: second-person pronouns, first-person inclusive plural pronouns and verbs in the imperative mood. A translation corpus of walking-guidebook extracts (10 English originals, 11 Swedish originals and their English translations) and my own Swedish-to-English translation of such a text were analysed in order to a) determine to what extent “direct reader address” is used in Swedish and English original walking guidebooks; b) determine to what extent “direct reader address” is retained and used in English translations of Swedish walking guidebooks; and c) discuss the implications of this for translators of such texts. The results of the investigation show that although “direct reader address” does appear in both Swedish and English original guidebooks, it is more prevalent in English ones. Imperative verbs are the most common of all the relevant linguistic features. The results also show that the trend is not only to retain in English translations what “direct reader address” existed in Swedish originals but also sometimes to add “direct reader address” for reasons of syntax and idiomatic usage. The implications are that a target culture’s text conventions are consequential when translating a walking guidebook because they relate to reader expectation, in particular in relation to linguistic features of “direct reader address”. To translate well, and where deadlines allow, it is recommended that a translator’s strategy should try to address reader expectation.