The Linnaeus University English-German-Swedish Corpus (LEGS)

In the LEGS research group, we compare linguistic structures across English, German and Swedish. For this purpose we are compiling a balanced trilingual parallel translation corpus.

Our research

The corpus that we work with in the Linnaeus University English-German-Swedish Corpus (LEGS) research group contains English, German and Swedish non-fiction originals from the 2000s and their translations into the respective languages. The texts range from popular science and history to self-help and cooking. The multi-lingual approach enables comparisons between two translations, thus providing new insights into the nature of translated language as well as language-specific preferences and structures.

Our research includes grammatical structures, punctuation and reader address in translation:

  • premodification in noun phrases (corporate-driven renewable projects; his Palo Alto garden; the climate change denial movement),
  • acronyms in translation (the RSPB > RSPB (Kungliga fågelskyddssällskapet)),
  • phraseological structures (line by line / en rad i taget),
  • punctuation (Ich finde: zu Recht! > And, I think, quite rightly so.),
  • reader address (wenn Sie auf den Zehenspitzen stehen / när du står på tå)

The translation corpus is a useful tool in our translator training, enhancing translator trainees' awareness of different translation alternatives, both standard and more creative ones, in authentic contexts.