Rechercheintensive Werbemittelerstellung und sozialversicherungspflichtige Onlinemarketingagenturen : A German-Swedish translation study of noun compounds and adjective compounds

Compounds, i.e. combining two lexical morphemes, are used for various reasons, e.g. naming, reduction of letters and words, drawing attention and producing expressive and humorous effects, etc. Compounding is not a unique concept to the German language, but is regarded as one of its characteristic features. As the stylistic norms differ from language to language, it renders the task of translating compounds challenging. There are various translation strategies for translating compounds, the tendencies of which are explored in this study. The analysis is based on a Swedish translation of Kühn’s (2016) Das Handbuch für digitale Nomaden and focuses on noun and adjective compounds, as they are the most frequent compounds in German. Concerning noun compounds, the study shows a tendency towards translation strategies, which are close to the source text material in form and meaning, whereas translations of adjective compounds tend to use strategies, which are similar in meaning, but not in form, e.g. a paraphrase. On this basis, it is concluded that even though German and Swedish share linguistic similarities, they differ when it comes to stylistic norms, as German is considered more nominal, whereas Swedish has a more verbal mode of expression