Translating sentence openers : An analysis of the potential risk of syntactic interference in a translation from English to Swedish

Sammanfattning: In this paper the changes that occur in the translation of initial sentence elements regarding clause element function as well as thematic structure are analyzed. The first part of the aim is to investigate how these functions and structures change in translation. The second part of the aim is to analyze the potential risk of syntactic interference from using thematic or word order solutions that are too close to the SL or too uncommon in the TL. To answer this the source text and translated text were divided by individual sentences and categorized by word order, thematic structure and differences between ST and TT. The results were compared to previous research by mainly Altenberg (1998) and Hasselgård (1998), with additional use of primarily Bohnacker (2010), Munday (2012) and Tirkkonen-Condit (2014) for further definitions of syntactical interference. The quantitative results suggested that there may be syntactical interference. This can be found mainly in the lack of ASV→SV word order structures, possibly due to a fear of deviating too far from the ST structure, and by an abundant use of formal subject (det), due to overcompensating by using TL specific structures that are perceived as common. However, it is not easy to find examples of translationese in syntax from only a cursory glance and the in-depth qualitative analysis was necessary for this conclusion.