Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione n.04 - 1999

This article claims that the irnportant works on translation studies which have been published in Italy in the last few years have not been paralleled by a higher quality of the translations from French into Italian. The majority of such translations, published by the most well-known Italian publishers, still display many source-text interpretation errors. It is argued that the blame for the low quality of translations from French into Italian is to be ascribed mainly to Italian universities, where translating into Italian from a foreign language is crucially considered as a very elementary activity. Thus considerably less irnportance is attached to forma1 courses of translation into Italian by both teachers and students as compared to courses focussing on second language acquisition. It is further argued that teaching translation should mean mainly giving trainees the tools to solve any new translation problem they may encounter in their careers - what the author calls a "translating mentality", ie. a well-balanced and homogeneous mix of translation theory and practice giving rise to the translator's specific (and particular) methodological approach.