Reader Address and its Translation in a Gardening Guide : Pronouns, Modals and Imperatives

Abstract: This study examines the translation of three forms of reader address from English to Swedish in a gardening guidebook – the pronoun you as a second person reference and generic reference, modal verbs, and imperatives. The translation was made by the author of this study. The aim of the study is to investigate how the three forms of reader address is translated. The quantitative analysis shows that the most used form of reader address out of the three investigated are imperatives, while the pronoun you followed closely behind. While modal verbs were used frequently in the ST, the modality was not translated in the TT. The qualitative analysis shows that the pronoun you was translated into second person du, third person generic man or was omitted in the translation in almost equal measure. How the pronoun you was translated in the TT depended on how the translator interpreted the author’s target audience. Only two modal verbs occurred frequently in the ST, and in the TT they were either translated as modal verbs or into present tense. Lastly, the imperative verbs were most commonly translated as imperatives in the TT. About 10% were translated into tensed verbs. Furthermore, half of that was translated to form suggestions.