This essay deals with translation changes taking place when translating two information-dense German texts into Swedish. The study focuses on the preverbal position of V2 declaratives, i.e. on the so called pre-field in German and Swedish sentences. This position plays an important role for the structuring of information, both at the intra-sentential and at the inter-sentential level. The aim of the study is therefore to investigate to what extent the information structure of the source text is carried over to the target text. A quantitative sentence-by-sentence analysis of the pre-fields of the source and target text shows many cases of re-structuring and re-writing have taken place during the translation process. A closer examination of those changes reveals some tendencies regarding the translation of the German pre-fields. In many cases text-initial rhematic (not previously mentioned) subjects of the source text have been replaced with time adverbials which function as so-called frame topics in the target text. Also, heavy, information-dense pre-fields of the source text have been split into two or more sentences in the target text. Furthermore there has been a “neutralization” of so-called marked structures of the source text. While those marked structures are used to achieve communicative effects in the source text, equal effects are mostly achieved by lexical means in the target text. The genre and style of the texts proved to play an important role for the choice between keeping and abandoning the information structure of the source text.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-20890 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Johansson, Emmelie |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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