Subtle grammatical problems in translated texts: How can language acquisition research inform translator education?

This paper attempts to relate translation studies and the theory of language acquisition, two research areas that have traditionally developed separately, by looking at recent findings on some grammatical properties of translated texts on the one hand, and the results of acquisitional studies dealing with those same properties on the other. In addition to reviewing research on the long known phenomenon of pronoun overuse, it focuses on a less explored problem, namely the overuse of possessive adjectives, reporting preliminary data from English to Serbian translations. Based on a comparison with the results obtained in acquisitional studies of possessives, it is argued that the different cases of patterning between translation and language acquisition, in particular second language acquisition and first language attrition, point to a similarity in the linguistic systems of translators and language acquirers, or attriters, and speak in favour of closer collaboration between the fields. In particular, we suggest that such collaboration could be of benefit to future translators, whom the knowledge of language acquisition theory could help become more aware of the domains of grammar that are particularly problematic.