Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione n.24 - 2022

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the two main trends that have recently developed in the field of translation from Dutch into Italian. The first is that Dutch-language literature in Italy is flourishing in an unprecedented fashion, and the second is that since the 2010s there has been an increasing tendency to (re)discover certain authors considered ‘classics’ that have been included in the Canon of Dutch-language literature. On the basis of both quantitative and qualitative data, an attempt will be made to analyse the work of all agents which have revived titles and authors unfairly neglected.

The present paper aims at analyzing verb voice in a comprehensibility-enhanced text type (ascribable to the Plain Language variety), i.e., the layperson summary of clinical trials. More specifically, the Italian target texts of these documents (originally written in English) were considered and compared to their source texts. Canonical passives as well as less prototypical ones (including passive-related constructions) were examined. The passive voice is particularly significant in language simplification (notably in simplified versions of specialized texts) as it is known to be cognitively harder to process than the active voice; at the same time, though, it is a distinctive feature of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSPs) – one of those linguistic traits that Halliday (1990: 57-58) refers to when he talks about “a typical syndrome of grammatical features” in specialized discourse. For these reasons, it is interesting to delve into this aspect. The main result was that the number of canonical passives increases in the Italian texts, going against the universal of simplification in translation.

This study concerns first language attrition among Greek immigrants in Germany, focusing in particular on the results of two German proficiency tests: a reading comprehension and a cloze test. The data collection took place both in loco, in the cities of Munich, Nuremberg and Augsburg, and during online interviews. The 66 participants of the study (41 female and 25 male participants) were selected based on the age at emigration (mean: 26.18 years; SD: 7.76), length of residence in Germany (mean: 16.23 years; SD: 9.7) and age (mean: 42.41; SD: 9.5). First of all, some data about the participants’ social background, education, L1 and L2 use and exposure will be presented. Then we will discuss the results of the German proficiency tests both with a quantitative approach and by focusing on errors and error categories in the cloze test. Finally, we will present some examples of mistakes made by the participants and draw some conclusions using a qualitative approach.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and sets out children’s civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. From a linguistic and subject-specific perspective, the CRC is a typical international convention, which is most likely incomprehensible to children. To help children understand the Convention, various organisations have reformulated and recontextualised it to create child-friendly (CF) versions in many languages. This paper presents a micro-analysis of four CF posters explaining the rights enshrined in the CRC in English and Italian. The comparison of the CF versions with the original CRC revealed that the reformulation and recontextualization entailed a change in genre (from convention to poster) and a shift in focus (from States Parties to children), which led to the use of different linguistic strategies to refer to the target readers and to various degrees of child-centredness.

The article deals with the lexicalisation preferences in German and Italian verbs referring to the modification of an object. It examines in more detail the subclass of drying and cleaning events. Based on the work by Talmy, by the Copenhagen TYPOlex group and by the IMAGACT ontology, an online survey was conducted involving 30 Italian- and 30 German-speaking subjects. They were shown nine short video scenes and animations in which a person was seen cleaning and drying various objects in different ways, and were asked to verbalise this event in a simple sentence. The data obtained prove that German prefers verbs that contain the manner component, while Italian prefers general verbs with the result component. In German, a higher variation in the choice of verbs as well as a stronger bundling of semantic features could also be observed.

Within the issue of the specificities of the peritexts of translated works in the field of the Human Sciences, where the circulation of new knowledge often gives rise to debates and polemics, my aim is to look at the nature of the translators’ interventions. Here, I choose to analyze the peritexts of the French translations of four works by the American philosopher Judith Butler, which concern the performativity of gender. Through Translators’ prefaces, notes and glossaries, I observe a multiplicity of actions, such as making explicit their reflections on their choice of equivalents or expressing their emotions, their empathy and their positions on Butlerian thinking, etc. I then focus on the untranslatable “perform”, a fundamental concept in Butler’s thought, which requires a complex translating activity. The translators explain and discuss their painstaking search for various equivalents. One of them proposes a neologism, which will be taken up later by other translators. In conclusion, I wonder if translating is “performing”.

The article explores and compares the intralingual translations into Easy English, Easy German and Easy Italian of the authentic English version of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The analysis, based on a selection of relevant parameters taken from the Easy Language (EL) guidelines of Inclusion Europe (2009) and on a set of quantitative (mainly lexicometric) data, aims to identify similarities and differences in the implementation of text design rules as they are proposed by Inclusion Europe, as well as quantitative and qualitative similarities and differences that can point to the degree of comprehensibility that characterizes the various EL translations. Results show that each language seems to aim at a different type of target user and to serve substantially different communicative purposes, as demonstrated e.g. by the overall different length and structure of each version and by the varied use of pictures and simplification strategies in the EL texts (ranging from several to none) – among other features. They also highlight an unresolved issue, i.e. the fact that the line between intralingual translation and full text rewriting for comprehensibility purposes is still too blurred and treated too inconsistently in different EU countries, which might be a problem when dealing with legal texts. This poses the question of whether a systematic structured coordination between EL professionals translating legal texts in different countries should be implemented to ensure an equal transfer of content of the same normative text to the same categories of people in different European countries.

Guidelines on plain legal and institutional Italian often suggest employing the subject-verb-object (SVO) constituent order. While this is indisputably the canonical order of syntactic arguments in Italian, a wide range of reasons exist to opt, in specific cases, for the preverbal position of the object or the postverbal position of the subject. This paper reviews the use of non-SVO sentences in a corpus of Swiss legislation translated into Italian. The quantitative analysis reveals that non-SVO sentences constitute a minority. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis shows that the vast majority of OVS, VOS and VS structures are either imposed by the syntactic nature of the verb (e.g. in the case of unaccusative verbs) or are justified by pragmatic and textual reasons. Indeed, they can foster thematic progression and contribute to the overall cohesion of the text. These results suggest that in addition to readability, comprehensibility must also be taken into account when dealing with plain language. Translation emerges as a key step to reflect on the textual construction of an institutional text and improve potential flaws; this includes rearranging the constituent order to better fit the reader’s mental representation process.

This paper aims to highlight the potential of contrastive analysis in the variety of Leichte Sprache in German and Italian on the basis of a parallel corpus of twelve videos from the Naturmuseum in Bozen. The analysis focuses on the use of the most frequent connectives in the German version (und, aber, weil) and their transposition (e, ma / però, perché) or non-transposition in the Italian version, both in the spoken component and in the subtitles. Connectives are thematised in the guidelines on Leichte Sprache (e.g. Maaß 2015; Bredel & Maaß 2016b; Sciumbata 2022), but with profound differences between German and Italian.

Favole al telefono by Gianni Rodari is a wonderful and – at the same time – very complex children’s book. Unfortunately, children and even adults with intellectual and/or communication disabilities do not always have access to this kind of fiction. Nevertheless, such children’s books may become more accessible by translating them into simplified languages, such as by using Easy-to-Read and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). In particular, in texts in symbols the association between words and pictograms amplifies the meaning of the written text and makes it much easier to understand. To make the simplification more effective, the original text needs to be re-written in Easy-to-Read before being translated into AAC symbols. Thus, narratives in symbols can encourage people with basic reading difficulties to read more and people with communication disabilities to approach their ‘first’ language, i.e. simplified language. At the same time, caregivers are provided with a tool to communicate with people with this type of difficulties and can receive fruitful feedback. Originally, stories in symbols were ‘tailor-made’ books for individuals with specific difficulties, but today the need emerges for standard practices to reach a wider readership.

This paper investigates the history and current situation of Easy and Plain Language in Germany. The development over the last decade has been breathtaking with its arrival in academia in both research and teaching. We give an overview of the development in Easy and Plain Language research and the translation and interpreting market that was decisively pushed by the developments within the legal requirements. At the moment, we are witnessing a professionalisation of text creation processes with inclusive forms of text production being required by the market, which leads to a vibrant supply and demand situation. After providing an outline of Easy and Plain Language research and academic teaching in Germany, the paper also addresses new conceptual developments: Easy Language Plus offers the possibility to create highly comprehensible yet acceptable texts with the option to tailor them to the needs and expectations of target user groups. We illustrate this development using the example of Sign Language-oriented Easy Language Plus.

This paper illustrates contents, methods, and results of the first Italian course on easy-to-read, a model of facilitated writing for readers with intellectual disabilities and other reading difficulties, specifically aimed at the staff of a university. The course was organized by the Department of Legal, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies at the University of Trieste. After an introduction on easy-to-read, the paper focusses on the drafting guidelines provided to the participants, and on the availability of administrative documents in easy-to-read. The structure, purpose, and results of the course are then illustrated through the example of a text written by the participants showing how the principles of easy-to-read were put into practice. Finally, some of the objections and remarks most frequently raised in class are reported as F.A.Q.s (frequently asked questions), as reference for future courses and dissemination initiatives.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the Italian and English titles of Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels. As will be seen, the translated titles exhibit the typical features of title translation in that they are the result of either literal/quasi- literal translation (preservation of the semantic content of the source title, occasionally with minor modifications) or new creation (radical change of the semantic content). Particularly significant is the role played by retranslation: the 75 novels have been published under no fewer than 146 Italian titles and 168 English titles.

This paper will first trace the development of accessibility and inclusion in relation to the parallel development of the definition of the museum. It will then explore how museum audio description (AD) has become one of the means of accessibility and inclusion in the contemporary museum. The main features of both museum AD and Easy and Plain Language will be illustrated. After highlighting the rational and the salient features of Easy Language (EL), the ‘controversial encounter’ between museum AD and Easy Language will be described. Museum AD is a form of audio description, which is a means of accessible audiovisual translation for the blind and the visually impaired. In audiovisual translation, access to products derives from the visual component in combination with other semiotic channels. The integration of Easy Language into museum AD seems to make problematic the simplification of the verbal component of museum AD. However, this area of research has received scant attention so far, as testified by the very few studies conducted. For this reason, I will limit my scope to make some observations and describe the state-of-the art of this area of research.

In this paper we approach the lexicographical treatment of phraseological units in a sample taken from three Spanish-Italian dictionaries regarding the figurative label, or in its absence, other tags that refer to the register or style of the language, and that often do not coincide between one dictionary and another. After a brief introduction on the concept of figurative meaning and the consequent value of the corresponding label, we will observe the presence of this label in a small corpus of multi-word units, trying to detect the application criteria used. The main aim is to investigate the potential benefits that this label may bring to the learner user, especially from the perspective of an Italian speaker who is learning Spanish.

The need to communicate with citizens in an understandable way is of paramount importance, not only for public administrations but also for private companies. In the present article we show that the Netherlands and Germany have made considerable progress in the field of language simplification by developing a fair amount of theoretical and practical knowledge, which has given rise to a plethora of stakeholders and knowledge centres specialized in this type of communication. All these efforts are also linked to the struggle against low levels of literacy, which have an enormous negative impact on all areas of human life governed by public administration. In order to verify the level of simplified language in the Dutch and German health sector, we have analysed some examples of public information on the subject of COVID-19, which turned out to be an interesting test case for institutional communication in plain and easy language. This whole issue is very relevant for traditional translators as well, not only for the common need of getting the message across to one’s audience, but also because of the similarities of translational operations involved.

Exploring language simplification and intralingual translation: insights, results and desiderata. Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione (RITT) The Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione – International Journal of Translation of the IUSLIT Department and Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori, University of Trieste aims at providing a forum of discussion for the multifaceted activity of translation and related issues.