Translating complexity: Noun phrases in English-German-Swedish contrast

This corpus-based project explores complex noun phrases (NPs) in English, German and Swedish.

These languages possess similar repertoires of modifiers, but even a cursory glance at authentic data reveals that the three follow different information-packaging principles.

Thus, English and German make extensive use of premodification, as exemplified by English noun sequences (the climate change denial movement) and German extended premodifiers (die von ihr verordnete Mischung).

Swedish, in contrast, prefers postmodification, for example with prepositional modifiers (rörelsen för klimatförnekelse). Our project takes a dual approach, analyzing both original texts and comparing these to their translations. Firstly, we will explore to what extent there are systematic structural differences between the three languages.

Secondly, we will investigate to what extent translations correspond to originals, and how factors pertaining to the translation process – such as explicitation – impact translations of complex NPs. The material comes from the Linnaeus University English-German-Swedish corpus, which contains popular non-fiction text.

This is a genre characterized by complex NP structures and is therefore suitable for our project.

The results will be relevant to linguists working contrastively on grammatical structures, ​​and we will produce hands-on teaching materials for active and trainee translators, illustrating the most frequent translation correspondents for each language pair.