Text conventions in comparable and parallel texts : English and Norwegian. A
case of strong foreignization in pragmatic translation.
Bergljot Behrens
A pilot study of highly comparable scientific texts in English and Norwegian demonstrate a significant
difference in use of a number of text conventions. Of particular interest is the use of event
nominals/nominalizations, English showing a markedly higher frequency of use than Norwegian(an
excerpt of about 250 words in each sample). Yet a multitranslation corpus of Norwegian translations
of the English excerpt , collected by Øverås and Johansson () shows that Norwegian professional
translators demonstrate strong leanings towards the English text conventions in their translations,
deviating from text conventions used by Norwegian professionals in the same scientific field. The
present article makes a closer study of event nominalizations in a larger, more representative
excerpt of the texts. If the preliminary findings are verified, it means that translators follow a
different/(foreign) strategy of scientific text production than professional scientists in the field. The
differences will be illuminated with the aim of establishing recommendations for alternative
translation strategies that may improve text readability.
Behrens, Bergljot. 2011. Norms in expository text translations, English –Norwegian. A fist
investigation. Paper ms. presented at Symposium on Translation, ILOS, UiO.
Johansson, Stig. 2007. Seeing through multilingual corpora. J. Benjamins
Øverås, Linn. 1998. In search of the third code. An investigation of norms in literary translation. In Meta,
43:4, 571-588.