Reviewed by Lea Cyrus, University of Münster

Within the discipline of translation studies, it has become somewhat unpopular to deal with exclusively linguistic questions, and those researchers who do tend to concentrate entirely on the linguistic features of the translated language, irrespective of the source language. Studies in which translations are compared with their source texts seem to have fallen into disgrace altogether. Refreshingly, in this volume, Monika Doherty describes in minute detail the structural changes that occur in the translation of twelve English texts into German. Although her emphasis is on the translation of nominal groups, in many cases the translation may affect the entire clause structure and can even lead to cross-sentential changes.

To pinpoint the effect that individual translation decisions have on the adequacy or acceptability of the translation as a whole, D uses control paraphrases: a series of translations in which each version differs from the preceding one in only one aspect. Her assumption is that structural changes that go beyond what is required by the grammar can be justified by an increase in discourse appropriateness and processing ease. One important result of her investigation is that most structural shifts in information structure can be attributed to the different typological compositions of English (a subject-object-verb [SVO] language with rigid word order) and German (a SOV language with flexible word order).

The book is well written and clearly structured. Each chapter presents the examples in ascending complexity and concludes with a list of main points. After introducing the key concepts in Ch. 1 (1–33), D outlines the language-specific differences in the discourse-appropriate distribution of information in Ch. 2 (35–71). She then details the increasingly complex shifts that are necessary to ensure that the source and the target versions are informationally equivalent. Ch. 3 (73–104) deals with structural changes that occur within the noun phrase itself, such as changing the class or position of modifiers. Ch. 4 (105–30) covers cases in which shifts alter dependencies within the clause, such as when a source modifier is realized as an adverbial or even a complement in the target version or vice versa. Ch. 5 (131–57) examines phenomena in which the process of restructuring crosses sentence boundaries—for example by extracting a modifier from a noun phrase and either integrating it into an adjacent sentence or even realizing it as a sentence of its own. Finally, in Ch. 6 (159–83), D suggests some topics for further research.

In spite of its clear structure, this book is not an easy read. It requires considerable concentration to actually follow the meticulous descriptions of the structural changes that occur in the translations. However, if one does follow the discussion through to the end, one will be rewarded by a number of compellingly consistent insights into the way the structural propensities of two languages—even those as closely related as English and German—determine discourse appropriateness. This volume demonstrates that contrastive studies are worth the effort and certainly deserve a place in the discipline of translation studies.