Etude contrastive des syntagmes nominaux démonstratifs dans des textes traduits du français en norvégien et des textes sources norvégiens

A contrastive study of demonstrative clauses in texts translated from French into Norwegian and in Norwegian source texts. Translation strategy or translationese? This study, which is based on a corpus of non fictional texts, aims at describing how the use of demonstrative clauses differs in texts translated from French into Norwegian and Norwegian source texts. The target texts contain 30% more demonstrative clauses than the source texts. The study shows that in many cases demonstrative clauses in the target texts correspond to other types of expressions in the source texts. The target texts add information that is implicit in the source texts and the use of demonstrative clauses can therefore be considered as the result of an explicitation strategy. The study also reveals a stylistical difference in the use of demonstrative clauses in French and Norwegian. These clauses are often used in French to introduce new information about a referent, a discourse strategy which is much more seldom used in Norwegian. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the frequent use of this particular type of demonstrative clause in texts translated from French into Norwegian can be described as an instance of translationese.