This essay throws light on the translation strategies used for a German-Swedish
translation of compounds in a non-fiction book, which connects the concepts of
time, efficiency and climate change. The focus lies on discrepancies in nominal
compounding and ad hoc compounding – a productive word formation method in
both languages, but especially so in German (Pavlov 2009: 165; Dargiewicz 2017:
121). The study examines the different translation strategies that are used to render
German established nominal compounds and ad hoc compounds into Swedish, and,
more specifically, how the word class and complexity of the first constituent in the
compound influences the strategies used. The first part of the analysis shows that
although a slight majority of the established nominal compounds are rendered as
compounds, many are paraphrased, often through noun phrases. The ad hoc
compounds are paraphrased or otherwise structurally transformed to an even great
extent – in two thirds of the cases. In the second part of the analysis, patterns are
identified to illustrate the preferences that lead to these structural shifts in Swedish
where German uses compounds. Overall, reasons identified are morphological
limitations for some first constituents, language-specific norms for how new
information is presented in a phrase, as well as a general clarification tendency in
translations. The ad hoc compounds whose meaning has been introduced
previously in the text, thereby establishing coherency, tend to more often be
retained as compounds than those which appear without being previously context-
specifically introduced.