From to-infinitives to gerunds : - an essay on the translation of non-finite clauses

Abstract Title: From To-infinitives to Gerunds – an Essay on the Translation of Non-finite Clauses Author: Sanna Evaldsson The aim of this study is to find out how non-finite clauses are translated into Swedish and what translation strategies are applied in the process of translation. Non-finite clauses are very effective stylistic devises providing condensed and concise language, which is useful in academic texts. Even though English and Swedish are both languages of Germanic origin and share similarities, the translation of these clauses into can be difficult due to the languages’ different uses of non-finites. To provide with material for this essay, a translation of a text written by Nicholas Cook has been made by the author of the essay and the two texts have been compared in order to make generalizations. The to-infinitive, the present participle, the past participle clauses and the gerund are features which are treated in this study. They are treated separately and their translations are compared with the secondary literature, which include grammars and books on translation theory. The results for this study show that the translation strategies used for these types of clauses are ‘equivalence’, ‘structural shift’, ‘correspondence’, ‘transposition’ and ‘level shift’. The former three seem to be the most common, while the latter two are less frequently used. Keywords: non-finite clauses, to-infinitive, present participle, past participle, gerund, translation