Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione n.04 - 1999

This article focuses on the problem of revision as the last step in the translation process. Revision is here considered not as a synonym of correction and not as made by the translator him/herself but by another translator or specialis of the discipline which is the object of the text to be translated. This fact implies that a certain degree of subjectivity can intervene in the revision if we assume that writing is always individual. The author presents some examples of revision divided into three categories: 1. subjective intervention; 2. necessary intervention to improve the stylistic quality of the text; and 3. necessary intervention by a specialist to improve the quality of the specialized style and/o r to remove eventual errors which are difficult to be recognized by a non-specialist translator. Intervention oftype 2. were found to be the most frequent - which implies that it is necessary to improve the stylistic level in the translation courses at university level.

Dialogue translators have to face a number of problems, lip synch being simply the most obvious. The real challenge is to recreate the illocutionary effect of the SL dialogues in the TL, which is no easy task when dealing with humour. This is why a thorough understanding of the way jokes are created and of the features that make them effective can help translators find solutions that match the humorous spirit of the SL version when a transparent translation just would not work. The author has formulated guideline strategies and techniques which concentrate on resolving the main types of problem that occur in the translation of films. In the article the SL dialogue continuity script is compared with the translated anà the final dubbed version. The main focus, in all cases, is on the translation of jokes and culture-bound language.

This article illustrates the theory and methodology behind the preparation of a specific tiype of dictionary, the syntactic dictionary or lexicon-grammar, in order to demonstrate how lexicography can draw new momentum from transformational and lexico-grammatical studies. The author’s two syntactic dictionaries are presented: the first, monolingual, of Italian frozen adverbs, and the second, French-Italian, resulting from a comparison between the first dictionary and that already developed for French by Maurice Gross (1990). In particular, after defining the notions of adverb and frozen adverb, un account is provided of the various lexicographical results which have been achieved and of the main translational criteria which have been followed in the research.

Software localization, the process of translating and adnpting a software product into another language, is by definition an extreme example of target-oriented translation. This strong target-orientation derives from the very particular nature of the textual components contained in a software product. Typically, these are text strings embedded in the software interface and on-line and printed documentation. These components not only transmit operational information but also help in giving the product its commercial appeal. The translation process is thus subject to a double constraint: on the one hand, it must provide a text which is as effective as the original in transmitting information; on the other, it must ensure that the translated product has the same commercial appeal as the original. A cursory survey of the strategies and techniques adopted by localizers in the translation of software applications from English into Italian reveals that the source-language text is often substantially adapted, if not reworked, to meet the stylistic and cultural requirements of Italian users/consumers. Nonetheless, far from being a special case of language transfer, software localization can be considered as just another example, however extreme, of the cultural and extra-linguistic constraints placed on any act of translation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the future translator with a functional strategy with which he or she can obtain cognitive mastery of the micro and macro patterns of the text before having to reckon with the variable difficulties of the source-language itself . If instead, the translator concentrates on the source-language words and perceives them only at the level of sign, the words can act as a barrier, reducing access to the information load of the text itself. As a solution, the author of this paper emphasises the importance of organising the interpretative reding-translation of the message into a logical process independent of the language code, in essence paraphrasing. Her proposal for a forrnalised inralinguistic pre-translation strategy is based on the analysis of the patterns inherent in special language texts at the various linguistic levels (lexical, syntactic, structural and formal). Only when the trainee translators have accomplished this first pre-translation strategy should they attempt any interlinguistic transposition based on correspondence and/or equivalence.

Temporal distance is a key problem in the translation of old literary texts, though still neglected in the theory of translation. The attempt to define and classify this problem is illustrated through examples from contemporary translations of Italian Renaissance texts. There are no corresponding linguistic and stylistic sources in Serbian literature to draw from, and yet an adequate rendering is possible by creating hybrids (archuic lexical and morphosyntactic forms, stylized neologisms) and associations (to originals and translations which are felt as traditional today - no matter when they were written - in the TL literature. Within temporal distance, primary distance - as sensed and created by the author - should be understood and recreated by the translator, whilst secondary distance relates principally to reader understanding and arises from the time lapse between the origina1 and its contemporary recreation. Both distances can be manifested in nine basic types: frequent and absolute archaisms; poetic archaisms; reminiscences; idioms; jargon; cultura1 interference; genre-constrictions; semantic archaisms; and elements of myth and fairy-tale. The author believes that the results of her research could help translators and translation theorists to gain a clearer insight into the many questions that temporal distance poses, as well as to find more possible answers.

This article presents a case study of translation revision. The author analyses the revised transtation of a handbook on nursing using an adaptation of the psycholinguistic model proposed by Hayes et al. (1987) in order to investigate the relationships between the reviser’s cognitive processes and the quality of the end product. In particular, three factors are analysed: the development of the reviser’s task definition; the relationship between the quality of the translation and that of the revision; and the reviser's tolerance margin. The results highlight therefore that revision is a non-linear and non-uniform process, which is aflected mostly by the way the task definition changes as the revision proceeds.

This paper proposes a study of the process of rewriting in specialised translation through an analysis of the Italian version of an article on EMU from “The Economist” published by the Italian weekly “L'Espresso”. Rewriting includes reformulation of the message, adaptation to the conventions of the TL culture and manipulation to reflect TL ideology and power structures. An inquiry into the strategies carried out in translating the article for “L'Espresso” shows that rewriting a text on econornics in Italian implies selection of a more formal register, hedging of direct statements, omissions and additions, but above all modification of the epistemic degree of forecasts. In conclusion, rewriting in this specialised field presupposes an in-depth knowledge of economic discourse in both languages.

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.

Rivista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione of the Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori, University of Trieste (Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, del Linguaggio, dell’Interpretazione e della Traduzione) is a refereed international journal published once a year. The aim of the journal is to provide a forum of discussion for the multifaceted activity of translation as well as related issues such as terminology and terminography, lexicology and lexicography, contrastive analysis, corpus linguistics, and intercultural communication. The journal is mainly focused - but not limited to – specialized, i.e. non-literary, translation and is open to different theoretical approaches including contributions from qualified professionals operating on the translation market. Articles are mainly published in Italian and English, but articles in other European languages are also accepted, provided they are preceded by an Abstract in English. Each issue of the journal contains a section devoted to a specific topic, but contributions on other subjects as well as papers by young researchers and reviews are also very welcome.

This work is intended to help interpretation and translation teachers place more precisely before their students a text in the speech situation, a conditio sine qua non in order to disentangle sense from the web of linguistic meanings. It is a truism that no utterancel can be correctly interpreted in a vacuum, as a specimen of a language, rather than as an act of speech, i.e. as a specific use of language in a given situation. In specialised literature the crucial distinction is ever more often made between linguistic meaning and extra-linguistic sense - the latter understood, precisely, as the substantive communicative content of a message, what the speaker means to say with what he says: the Paris school's vouloir dire. This sense may be defined, grosso nzodo, as the vector resulting from the linguistic meaning of the message and the sender's communicative intention within the specific speech situation. Of these three factors, the first is the only relatively non-controversial one; the second is already more complex (what about the unconscious intention? and what about the lapsus linguae, the betrayal of conscious intention?); while the third encompasses everything besides the utterance itself, including, at times, the sender's very intention. In order to name it, the term usually resorted to is that jack-of-all-trades "context", which, to boot, also covers the purely linguistic surroundings. So if the conceptual and terminological distinction between meaning and sense is already established (though, unfortunately, not enough), there still prevails in literature an indiscriminate use of "context" and "situation".