Aux frontières des langages administratifs : Des aspects structurels et terminologiques de la traduction en suédois d'un texte français portant sur l'espace Schengen

Sammanfattning: The present study aims to analyse, from a functional perspective, the Swedish transla­tion of an administrative text about how the border control in France is organised in cooperation between the border police and customs authorities. It is an informative text produced by French authorities at the request of the European Commission, and the translation for a Swedish-speaking audience in a national context (as opposed to a supranational, institutional one) will have a slightly different aim – or skopos, referring to the concept developed by Vermeer. The translated text is an excerpt from a survey, containing both questions and answers, that was sent out to various member countries. It is considered to belong to the text variety category that the Swedish EU translation units refer to as “communications” (meddelanden). Texts belonging to this category have a content that is political or administrative in nature, rather than legal or judicial. The source and target texts are studied in a contrastive manner, focusing on two major aspects: referential coherence and organisation terminology. Both aspects are examined in a quantitative and qualitative way, with the aim or skopos as a guiding principle when deciding on which translation strategies to adopt. More specifically, the first part of the study aims to examine if a reinforced referential coherence could contribute to attain the aim of “clear language” (klarspråk) which is a key feature in the language used by Swedish public authorities. The second part of the analysis focuses on terms referring to different organisational levels, and the functional equivalents that best suit the skopos of the target text, e.g. through the study of organisational charts. In conclusion, reinforced referential coherence seems to be one of the ways in which clear language can be achieved, and consideration of different hierarchical relations between terms is important when translating organisational terminology. The study overall highlights the importance of adapting the target text to its context and intended readers, for example by studying parallel texts.