1,721,018 research outputs found
Federica Scarpa’s research on specialised translation: Notes on, and sketches from, a “special” career
No full textThe chapter provides an outline of the main themes in Federica Scarpa’s body of research on specialised translation. Firmly and lucidly rooted in the empirical/descrip- tive paradigm of translation studies, Scarpa’s research can be seen as an attempt at identifying and describing the “core” features of specialised translation. Her general approach is characterised as resting on three pillars: the value of (self-)reflection, the dialogue between translation research and professional translation practice, and a strong belief in the potential and effectiveness of training. The chapter lists some highlights in Scarpa’s career at the University of Trieste in her organizational and research roles, and also provides details on her work on the specific domain of legal translation
Horizontal Denominative Variation in an EU victim-related English-Italian Parallel Corpus
Full text linkThe present study considers terminological variation from a bilingual perspective by analysing a parallel corpus made of EU texts in English and Italian concerning the criminal law subfield of crime victims. After providing a brief chronological overview of different terminological schools of thought questioning the univocity principle postulated by the traditional theory of terminology, the paper introduces denominative variation, i.e. the linguistic phenomenon in which different denominations are used to refer to the same concept (Freixa 2006). The aim of the paper is to present a case study on a specific form of denominative variation, i.e. horizontal denominative variation, which consists of the coexistence of more than one designation for the same concept in a set of texts which are to be considered homogeneous as regards their degree of specialization, and to propose a tentative classification of the horizontal denominative variants extracted from the corpus
National law in supranational case-law: A linguistic analysis of European Court of Human Rights judgments in English
Full text linkThe focus of the corpus-based and corpus-driven study presented in this book is on a supranational institution that has received relatively little attention in linguistic research: the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). After briefly illustrating the functioning of the ECtHR and its historical development, the first part of the book delves into the Court’s language regime, which consists in the use of only two official languages, i.e. English and French. The linguistic study presented in the second part of the book concerns the presence of Italian national “system-bound elements” (SBEs) in ECtHR case-law. SBEs are elements originally embedded in a legal and judicial system that are recontextualised in a different legal environment. To extract Italian SBEs from a corpus of sixteen ECtHR judgments published in English, an innovative methodology was proposed combining event templates with keywords. This allowed the retrieval of 401 expressions referring to different Italian SBEs, which were analysed in terms of their frequency, distribution, and linguistic form. The study reveals that a variety of national and international sources co-exist in the corpus and that translation plays a fundamental role in the drafting of supranational case-law, which requires the creation of “stipulative corresponding expressions”
Terminological equivalence in European, British and Italian criminal law texts: A case study on victims of crime
Full text linkSince the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, cooperation in the fields of justice and home affairs has become a matter of high priority for all Member States of the European Union. This cooperation finds its concrete expression in a number of important legal instruments adopted by the Council of the European Union, which are already, or are currently being, implemented in the Member States. Framework decisions represent a single source of law used to approximate the laws and regulations of the Member States by binding them as to the result to be achieved but they leave the choice of form and methods to the national authorities. The freedom they provide allows for differences to be identified in the conceptual system resulting from their implementation into the Member States’ legal systems. A terminological analysis of the Framework Decision 2001/220/JHA on the standing of victims in criminal proceedings allows the identification of differences in the Italian and British implementation strategies and in their way of conceptualising even relevant key elements such as “victim”. My paper will show a few examples of such a cultural gap, which necessarily needs to be taken into account when translating or mediating between the two cultures/languages
Disseminating National Legal Knowledge via European English: The Translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure
No full textThe aim of the English translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure is to make the content of the Code available to a wide English-speaking audience, with European citizens as its main target audience. Hence the challenging choice of European English as the target language (TL) for the translation. This paper focuses on the terminological units designating legal concepts that are embedded in the Italian legal system for which either 1) no established translation equivalent was found in the reference corpus, or 2) one or more translation equivalents were found but eventually discarded for different reasons. Concrete examples of terminological choices are provided to show the methodology applied by the interdisciplinary translation team to exploit European English linguistic resources for disseminating legal knowledge that is rooted in a national legal system
"Interview with Katia Peruzzo", in Why is terminology your passion? The second collection of interviews with prominent terminologists
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Diachrony in legal terminology: a case study on the rights of victims of crime in the EU
Full text linkCouncil Framework Decision 2001/220/JHA was the first legal act adopted by the European Union to lay down general provisions addressing victims of crime and their rights. Significant progress was achieved a decade later by adopting Directive 2012/29/EU, which established minimum standards on the rights, support, and protection of victims of crime. This article presents a study conducted on the terms starting with the head element “right” extracted from both acts. The aim was to determine whether the legal progress experienced in a decade was accompanied by an evolution in the terminology used. The study revealed that, when legal terminology is analysed from a diachronic perspective, different phenomena can be observed: in this case, instances of stability, formal neology, and complete neology were identified. Diachronic evolution phenomena in legal terminology are then considered from a didactic perspective: students of law, legal translation, and legal terminology are deemed likely to benefit significantly from the inclusion of the diachronic dimension in their studies
European English and the challenges faced by the interdisciplinary team involved in the translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure
No full textThe English translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure (Gialuz, Lupária, and Scarpa 2014) represents a step forward in fostering judicial and police cooperation in Europe. This is made possible by making the content of the Code accessible to a wide English-speaking audience. Given the informative purpose of the translation (Cao 2007), whose intended readers are mainly European citizens, the target language chosen by the translation team is European English, i.e. the English used in European Union texts, the international English used in the Council of Europe texts, the English found in the translations of the Codes of Criminal Procedure of other European countries and the English used by law scholars (Scarpa, Peruzzo, and Pontrandolfo 2014).
The European continent is a multidimensional and multilayered legal reality in which different languages co-exist and legal transplants and terminological transfers are commonplace. Based on such premises, however, the embeddedness of the Code of Criminal Procedure in the Italian legal system poses several translation difficulties, especially in the search for supranational/international English translation equivalents for terms that refer to nationally developed legal concepts. For these terms, established translation equivalents are not necessarily available. The aims of this paper are threefold: to describe the features of the interdisciplinary translation team consisting of ten members (linguists and lawyers), to lay out the peculiarities of the translation process in which professionals with a different background were involved, and to illustrate the methodology applied as regards terminological choices. To do so, a concrete example from the translated text will be provided to lay out the challenges faced by and solution adopted by the translation team
Legal system: an additional variable in the analysis of short-term diachronic evolution of legal terminology
No full textThe inclusion of specialised corpora in terminological studies since the early 1990s has allowed for the observation and description of the behaviour of terminology in authentic linguistic contexts. As a result, what is nowadays known as “Textual Terminology” (Bourigault & Slodzian 1999, Pour une terminologie textuelle. Terminologies Nouvelles 19. 29 –32) has become commonplace practice in the study of terminology. This new approach to terminology has led to the development of alternative paradigms to the General Theory of Terminology and to increasing interest in terminological variation, i.e. the existence of multiple terms to refer to a single concept. In this paper, the focus is on terminological variation in legal terminology. Variation in terminology can be studied from a number of perspectives and the one undertaken here is diachronic. The aim of the paper is to determine whether legal terminology, being “the most visible and striking linguistic feature of legal language ” (Cao 2007: 53, Translating law. Clevedon/Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters) but also deemed to change very slowly (Lemmens 2011, The slow dynamics of legal language: Festina lente? Terminology 17(1). 74 –93), is subject to terminological variation in the short term and, if so, what type of variation it experiences. To do so, European Union legal acts in English and Italian and national legal acts in Italian dealing with the topic of victims of crime and their rights were examined and concrete examples of denominative and conceptual variation were extracted. The presence of two legal systems in the analysis made it necessary to add the ‘legal system ’ variable to the methodological framework to provide a more comprehensive picture of the types of short-term variation detected. The inclusion of this variable led to the classification of the variants into two types, i.e. ‘intra-systemic ’ and ‘inter-systemic ’ variation. Moreover, an attempt was also made to classify the variants discussed in the paper against Picton ’s typology for the description of short-term knowledge evolution through terminology (Picton 2014, The dynamics of terminology in short-term diachrony. A proposal for a corpus-based methodology to observe knowledge evolution. In R. Temmerman & M. Van Campenhoudt (eds.), Dynamics and terminology. An interdisciplinary perspective on monolingual and multilingual culture-bound communication, 157-182. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins). This attempt resulted in the recognition of the lack of suitable categories for all the types of variation identified and thus of the need for further investigation of the dynamics of legal terminology embedded in a multi-level jurisdiction such as the EU
COVID-19-Related FAQs as a Form of Online Institutional Communication. An Exploratory Study
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone’s life, and COVID-19 prevention and control measures have altered everyone’s daily routine. Such measures have been put in place through legislative and regulatory acts, whose typical linguistic features make them not always accessible to the population they apply to. Therefore, other forms of communication have been used as a form of mediation, for instance by institutions and news media outlets, to share information on and thus facilitate the implementation of such measures among the population. This paper presents an exploratory micro-analysis of an English and an Italian webpage containing frequently asked questions (FAQs), a web genre often used for knowledge dissemination but still scarcely investigated from a linguistic perspective. The aim of the FAQs examined is to explain the provisions adopted to tackle the second wave of the pandemic (the two webpages were available online in September 2020) to a non-specialised and non-better specified audience. After briefly discussing the content distribution, the study adopts a conversation analysis perspective to identify the type of questions used and the (lack of ) question-conditioned relevance in adjacency pairs
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