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 ...
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.
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