INSERTIONS IN POPULAR HISTORY TEXTS - A contrastive study on translation from English to Swedish and from Swedish to English

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to compare the frequency of insertions in an English popular history text and a Swedish popular history text. Moreover, the purpose is to compare the English text with its Swedish translation and the Swedish text with its English translation as regards the status of the insertions as clauses, phrases or (in the translation) something else than a clause or a phrase. Finally, the purpose is to compare the syntactic position of the insertions in each original text and its translation, and to attempt at estimating whether the translation of the insertions affects the readability of the translation compared to its original. The theory is based on previous research regarding translations and readability, and on what counts as an insertion. This includes the assumption that insertions occur between commas, brackets and dashes, and make the text harder to read. Little research was found on the syntactic position of insertions. The insertions found in the first 9000 words of an English popular history book and its Swedish translation (starting from chapter 1), and in the first 9000 words of a Swedish popular history book and its English translation (starting from chapter 1), were compared regarding what is mentioned above as the purpose of this essay. As for the syntactic position of the insertions and their translations, they were presented in two tables, each table representing a certain original and its translation. The English original contained 111 insertions per 9000 words, whereas the Swedish original contained 72 insertions per 9000 words. As for the type of insertions, the most frequent pattern was that an English inserted phrase became a Swedish inserted phrase and vice versa. The most frequent syntactic position of the insertions was that between subject and finite verb in both the original and the translation, although in translation from Swedish to English an equally frequent position was the so called “Other position”. Because some insertions were not rendered as insertions in the translations or put in the beginning or at the end of the translation, the translations might be more readable than the original texts in that regard, although this might be compensated by potential insertions that are only in the translations.