Spending Time in English and Swedish

Abstract

The starting-point for my paper is the observation by Martin Gellerstam (1996: 59) that the Swedish verb tillbringa (‘spend [time]’) is overused in translations from English, presumably under the influence of the English verb spend. The same is true of Norwegian tilbringe; see Figure 1. For spend in expressions of time there is an opposite translation effect. These translation effects show that there is a tendency for translators to move on the surface of discourse and resort to formally similar structures where this is possible, rather than find forms that are more in line with usage in original texts in the target language. The question I would like to ask is this: what do Swedes and Norwegians do when they do not spend time? What alternatives are there for conveying the English notion of spending time? But first we must examine how the English verb is used.