The principal activity of the Department is the teaching of languages as elective subjects in NHH's four-year degree programme. The Department also offers two-year programmes at postgraduate level as well as one-year business language studies in English, French and German. In 1986 the Ministry conferred the responsibility for the administration of the national translators' exam on NHH. One staff member is specially assigned to its supervision and organisation.

The research profile of the Department is characterized by the specialized context in which language is taught and practised, i.e. economics, business administration and related fields. It is thus focussed on terminology, language for special purposes (LSP), translation studies, lexicography and civilization.

Terminological research deals with both applied and theoretical projects. In the field of economics, business administration and related domains there is a lack of reliable bilingual or multilingual terminological tools designed in accordance with accepted terminological principles. Some members of the staff have thus devoted considerable efforts to bilingual domain studies in order to measure and establish the terminological and phraseological equivalence central to the communication and translation process. A powerful tool in this respect is the Termbank NHH, based on software designed specifically for terminology management. The results of these projects are normally published as specialist dictionaries. These applied studies also give rise to theoretical research involving semantics, morphology, naming principles, theory of terminology and theory of translation. Research into the problems of establishing conceptual and lexical equivalence is in this respect a central issue.

LSP, closely related to terminology, is a broader concept in as much as it focusses on the syntagmatic level, thus transcending the purely paradigmatic angle. The object of study is principally the text level analyzed from a communicative and functional point of view. The study of syntactic and semantic features at text or phrase level aims at describing by what specific means language conveys specialized knowledge. Methods from syntax, text linguistics and pragmatics are applied in this type of research, which involves discussion of methodological issues.

Translation, an activity facing increasing demand due to extensive international communication within most specialized fields, has during recent years become a central domain of linguistic investigation. LSP translation is a key discipline at the Department of languages for obvious reasons. Studies of the translation process and of the linguistic means used to convey specialized communication imply a wide range of variables. They include, but exceed by far, terminological issues, embracing the language system itself as well as pragmatic and socio-cultural implications. A field where theory and application are interdependent, is machine assisted translation. A project dedicated to the elaboration of transfer rules for English-Norwegian machine assisted translation is presently being conducted by professor Magnar Brekke.

Some members of the staff address issues related to vocabulary viewed as lexical units or as names (in the broader sense). Studies in this field are either monolingual or bilingual (comparative), synchronic or diachronic. In an LSP context the distinction between terminology and lexicography is more of a methodological question.

Due to the fact that a language encompasses both a socio-cultural and a historical dimension, and that mastering a language presupposes a satisfactory command of these dimensions, the staff pays considerable attention to developments in the economic and political life of the language countries concerned. This information is made available to students in the form of tailor-made teaching material forming part of their curriculum.