Editing nominalisations in English−German translation: when do editors intervene?

Abstract

The work of editors and their influence on translated texts is an under-researched phenomenon in translation studies. We usually attribute the language we encounter in translated texts to translators, ignoring any intervention that another agent might have made when producing the translation. This paper deals with editors' influence on nominalisation in English to German translation. There is a conflict between language users' preference in German for a nominal style and the demand by house styles to avoid nominal formulations, based on journalistic presumptions of readers' aversion to that style. Studying expressions that translators nominalised, I investigate when editors intervene to change those expressions into verbal structures and when they decide to retain the nominalisation. I use a corpus of manuscript and published translations of business articles to differentiate translators' and editors' actions. Findings show that editors systematically intervene in the text based on readability considerations. At times the only change they make is turning noun into verb, especially when function verb complexes or preposition-noun-constructions are involved, but often they reformulate the entire sentence. While translators are shown to nominalise a lot more than editors, there are some instances where editors nominalise constructions, again along with significant changes to the sentence.