The Swedish MFA Design Programme Curriculum and its Translation in English

Abstract

In this essay the language of the Curriculum of the MFA Programme in Design at the University of Gothenburg is investigated. The approach is a Systemic Functional Linguistic approach and a comparison between the Swedish original and its translation in English is made. The investigation shows that the generic structure and the register of the source and the translation are the same but there are some differences found on the lexico-grammatical level. On the textual level there are some differences found in Theme and Rheme structures and on the interpersonal level there are differences in the way modality is realized and how the third person possessive pronoun is translated. Those differences are probably due to language differences. On the experiential level, there are differences in the translation of processes and participants. The differences on the experiential level are probably due to the ambiguity of the word design.