From the midst of darkness to a nugget of hope : Post-nominal of-phrases in translation

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to analyze how post-nominal of-phrases are translated from English to Swedish in a non-fiction text about the musician Dave Grohl and his band Foo Fighters. The analysis is both quantitative and qualitative. The of-phrases are categorized according to Keizer’s (2007) categories, and the results show that most of-phrases are translated to prepositional phrases, although it differs which prepositions are used, depending on the type of ofphrase. For of-phrases of the possession-type, i is the most common preposition, and for compound-like of-phrases, av is the most common preposition. Of-phrases of possession-type are also frequently translated into genitive constructions, especially if the possessor is animate or syntactically light. Other structural changes also occur in the translation, although no pattern was found for this strategy in the analysis.