À la frontière entre simultanéité et contraste – traduction de marqueurs de simultanéité, de contraste et de concession

Abstract

This article examines the hypothesis that the use of these French markers alors que and tandis que is more generalized in an adversative and concessive context than the use of the Swedish markers medan et samtidigt som, similar to the French markers concerning their syntactic function and semantic value of simultaneity. The aim of the study is to identify different tendencies in the translation of the French markers alors que and tandis que and the Swedish markers medan and samtidigt som, which can all be considered to be ambiguous and have a double function. Their temporal signification of simultaneity has developed in an adversative or a concessive use. Our hypothesis is however that these markers are at different stages in the procedure of grammaticalisation, and that the French markers can more easily occur in a purely adversative or concessive context.

This study, based on the occurrences of these markers in two bidirectional corpora including texts of specialist literature, ParaFraSe-HumSam (Svensson 2010), and novels, Corpus Parallèle Suédois-Français : version 2010 (Andersson 2007 ; Hellqvist 2015), shows a tendency to make explicit the adversative or concessive relation when translating the French markers tandis que and alors que, especially in the case of alors que. A difference in the use of verb tense in the clauses linked by the French and the Swedish conjunctions can also be confirmed; the French conjunctions sometimes link clauses in different verb tenses, which is rare in the case of the Swedish conjunctions medan et samtidigt som. This difference could indicate different levels of grammaticalisation of these conjunctions.