Subordinatorless supplementive ing-clauses (as in Hitler exploded, demanding examples) are characterized by their “considerable indeterminacy as to the semantic relationship to be inferred” ( irk et al. 1985: 1123; cf. also Biber et al. 1999: 820; Malá 2005) and may induce, for example, temporal, causal, conditional, concessive or circumstantial readings ( irk et al. 1985: 1124; Kortmann 1991: 114–141). is puts a heavy interpretation load on translators, the translation task becoming more intricate with target languages lacking a similarly productive form. us, it is not unexpected that previous studies on the translation of ing-clauses into Swedish highlight the multitude of translation equivalents found in target texts (Lindquist 1989: 120–128; Blensenius 2006: 36).

is multi-target-language study provides insights into how di erent translators interpret and render the very same instance of an ing-clause. It draws on data from a new corpus being compiled by the authors. It comprises recently published English, German and Swedish non- ction texts and their translations into the respective languages. In order to compare original English with translated English, the study also includes ing-clauses used as equivalents of German and Swedish source-text structures. Preliminary findings indicate that the position of the ing-clause a ects the dis- tribution of translation equivalents. e rare sentence-initial ing-clauses more o en show congruent, i.e. formally and semantically matching, translations, both target languages o en opting for causal or temporal nite subclauses (e.g., Feeding bread to the ducks, I noticed [...] rendered as Als ich die Enten mit Brot fü erte (‘when I the ducks with bread fed’) in German and similarly in Swedish När jag matade änderna med bröd, or a PP expressing manner (e.g., Using this set up, Ellington’s team could [...] rendered as Mithilfe dieser Vorrichtung (‘by means of this device’) in German and Med detta upplägg (‘with this set-up’) in Swedish). e equivalents of sentencenal ing-clauses are more varied and non-congruent, ranging from in nitives to relative clauses, separate or coordinated main clauses, adverbial nite subclauses and prepositional phrases. Also, the translations more often differ semantically in this position. Overall, nite structures dominate in both target languages, which indicates that translators are producing more explicit structures. Moreover, our ndings suggest that ing-clauses are much rarer in English target texts (in particular from Swedish originals), indicating a potential case of translationese.