1,720,970 research outputs found
Legal Machine Translation Explained - MT in Legal Contexts
No full textMachine translation (MT) has made huge strides in the last few decades. In the legal field, however, there are only a few academic works dedicated to exploring how MT can be successfully applied in legal translation practice. There is currently a gap in the literature that concerns studies on the automated translation of legal documents drawn up by international law firms and/or tackled by legal translators. This book bridges this gap by providing an in-depth analysis of MT in legal practice. It explores whether, and to what extent, MT can be considered reliable, or at least acceptable, in the legal field and in legal practice. It investigates whether MT target texts can be used as drafts to be processed further (i.e., post-edited), how we might tackle MT’s shortcomings, and how MT tools could be supplemented with other language resources
Keywords and n-grams in English and Italian terms of service
No full textQuesto articolo si propone di far luce sugli ngrammi e sulle parole-chiave che caratterizzano corpora comparabili in lingua inglese e italiana. I corpora sono composti da testi in cui sono definiti i termini e le condizioni di vendita di servizi di web hosting, necessari per la creazione e sviluppo di siti web. Il presente contributo si propone di esplorare la possibilità di evidenziare somiglianze e/o discrepanze nella terminologia giuridica attraverso analisi linguistiche. Allo stesso tempo, il contributo presenta e discute possibili traducenti. I risultati evidenziano che è plausibile dedurre informazioni linguistiche dall’analisi di parole-chiave e n-grammi in entrambe le lingue. Le informazioni ottenute, infatti, rivelano interessanti uguaglianze a livello semantico e negli effetti giuridici prodotti dai termini inglesi/italiani. Tuttavia, le parole-chiave e gli n-grammi inglesi tendono ad essere più vari rispetto a quelli italiani, probabilmente perché questi ultimi sono tendenzialmente ripetitivi e, quindi, presentano frequenze più elevate. La terminologia settoriale, al contrario, è meno pervasiva in entrambe le lingue. I risultati ottenuti in questo articolo mettono in luce formule giuridiche ed usi di parole in un contesto giuridico. In questo modo, si contribuisce allo studio del linguaggio giuridico e della traduzione giuridica
Is the European legal English legalese-free?
No full textThe European Union institutions are expanding their legal and authoritative powers in many sectors and fields. As a consequence, their legislative and judgement activities have increased. This paper focuses on European legal English in order to explore whether it is hallmarked by the technicalities and verbosity that characterise the legal jargon, also known as legalese. Legalese encompasses lexical terms, phraseology and syntactic structures that make it incomprehensible to the layperson. Literature reports that the European legal language is also hallmarked by abstruse and archaic words. This paper will analyse European legal English and explore whether, and to what extent, the Euro-language can be a source of legalese or of plain legal terms. In order to do so, a corpus analysis of legalese will be carried out. The terms will be sourced from some European corpora, namely the European Constitution corpus; the Treaty of Lisbon; the European Parliament Proceedings corpus and the Bononia Legal corpus (only in the European Directives and Judgements sub-corpora). The paper findings will highlight that, to some extent, European legal English is free from the most pedantic forms of archaism, although some verbosity can still be found. What one may hope for the future is that European legal drafters and judges will continue to implement plain English in order to obtain a boundary-free legal language that could be used across Europe
La Corrispondenza nell'Europrogettazione: Comunicare in Inglese con i partner di progetto e con l'Autorità preposta
No full textNell'ambito dell'europrogettazione la comunicazione tra partner di progetto e con l'Autorità competente assume un ruolo importante, soprattutto quando si è il coordinatore di progetto.In questo ebook si presenteranno le comunicazioni tra partner di progetto e quelle (più o meno ufficiali) con l'Autorità preposta al finanziamento.L'aspetto meno “formale” della progettazione europea è forse quello inerente allo scambio di comunicazioni con i partner, mediante posta elettronica. Non per questo però è il meno importante. Comunicare ai potenziali partner il proprio interesse a presentare un progetto, o informare i partner di un progetto avviato sui dettagli di un prossimo incontro transnazionale, nonché dare loro istruzioni su come compilare un “time-sheet” sono informazioni necessarie per la vita e la continuazione di un progetto. La corrispondenza con l’Autorità preposta, invece, è generalmente curata dal coordinatore (o ente capofila). Non si verifica di norma un frequente “scambio epistolare”, se non per l’invio della documentazione necessaria prevista dal Manuale, dal contratto (relazioni, budget finanziari etc.) o per richiesta di chiarimenti. Tuttavia, a volte si deve contattare l’organo competente qualora si abbiano dubbi riguardo a certi aspetti contabili, finanziari o di espletamento delle proprie funzioni (ad esempio di disseminazione dei risultati di progetto)
How (un)readable are the European and UNESCO Cultural Conventions in the digital era?
No full textIn 1954, the Members of the Council of Europe adopted the European Cultural Convention. In 2005, UNESCO ratified a Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. In 2017, the Conference of Parties at the 2005 Convention approved the Operational Guidelines on the Implementation of the Convention in the Digital Environment. How different, or similar, are these documents in terms of (legal) language and contents? The literature has long discussed the features hallmarking the language of the law. Do these characteristics also apply to international conventions? Are these documents somehow affected, or influenced, by the digital era and media discourse? This paper aims to answer these questions by exploring the (dis)similarities among these important documents in terms of content and use of legal terminology vis-à-vis the global media landscape. It will shed light on the accessibility and intelligibility of these documents to the layperson in terms of clarity, content, sentence structure and syntax. It will explore whether any form of legalese is applied and whether the drafting style is either formal or informal; solemn or simple, and (un)influenced by media or digital language. The paper findings will remark that the European Convention and, surprisingly, the more recent UNESCO Convention, are characterized by a formal, detached and rather archaic style, being addressed to its member states. To some extent, instead, the Operational Guidelines are more reader-friendly and accessible to the (digital) layperson. They contain, in fact, more elements of plain English and cater for the new rights of Internet users
Corpus-based translation in the tourism sector: a case study with final year bachelor students
No full textThis paper presents a case study with final year students enrolled in a bachelor programme in translation studies. The students were asked to revise the English translation of a tourism text originally written in Italian (their first language). They corrected the text autonomously by resorting to the language resources they were acquainted with. Afterwards, they dealt with the same text by consulting a pre-compiled offline corpus. In this way, they had the chance to explore collocations, word usage in context and verify whether their translation candidates were acceptable. However, some students carried out the corpus analysis too hastily or superficially and either overlooked relevant synonyms, or proposed infrequent translation candidates. This paper highlights that corpus analysis can improve translation quality and help users make appropriate translation decisions, provided that they have developed corpus analytical skills. It also highlights that corpora can be valid complementary translation tools to be used in conjunction with other language resources
AVT in Italy: Successes and Failures
No full textToday audiovisual translation (AVT) occupies an important place in our lives. In a country like Italy, where all foreign films are dubbed, an analysis of how AVT does justice to original films has become compelling. Audiovisual translations can in fact be very challenging, as AVT professionals act not only as language translators, but also as cultural mediators. In this paper, the pitfalls of AVT will be brought to the fore, together with successful instances. Translation patterns will hence be highlighted, together with some possible reasons for adaptations, modifications and unfaithful renderings. Conclusions will be drawn, on the basis of the gathered evidence. In particular, what will emerge is that most of the times the greatest impediments to a faithful rendering may lie in cramped budgets, time constraints, cultural adaptations, adherence to fixed translation norms and technicalities. A final call for change in AVT will be urged, mainly focussing on the importance of raising the audience's awareness and on not reducing AVT to a mere “business as usual” matter
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