A case study of text conventions in comparable and parallel texts: English and Norwegian

Abstract

A case study of highly comparable scientific texts in English and Norwegian demonstrate important differences in use of a number of text comventions. Of particular interest is the use of event nominalizations, English showing a markedly higher frequency of use than Norwegian. A Multitranslation corpus of Norwegian professional translators demonstrate leanings towards 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 atudy of the degree of complexity in nominalizations in the comparable texts and discusses the variability of the translations in view of the Norwegian conventions established on the basis of quantitative measures. The study indicates that translators follow different linguistic strategies of scientific text production than professional scientists in the field.