Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione n.18 - 2016

Despite the lack of an element comparable to the “definite article” found in major western languages, which is alien to its structure, Turkish is often able to indicate whether a noun phrase is definite or indefinite through morphological, syntactic and suprasegmental resources. This paper examines in detail how an agglutinative synthetic language like Turkish uses these various strategies.

Multilingualism is a founding principle of the European Union enshrined in the Treaties. In order to ensure that this principle is adhered to in the European Parliament, the Directorate-General for Translation has, over the years, developed a resource-efficient approach that guarantees timely delivery of high-quality translations. Technology is one of the key elements in this development, which prompts us to consider different questions and challenges, such as: How do we control our complex environment? What is the profile of a modern translator? How can we continue to deliver high quality on time?

The main objective of this study is to analyze the linguistic phenomenon of false friends from a cognitive perspective in order to better define the concept. To do so, we have analyzed to what extent the thought processes and the cultural context of two Romance languages (Italian and Spanish) have influenced the way some specific false friends have evolved. Major contrast s have emerged due to the pragmatic use of lexical items in different contexts. Following the application of the concept of “dimension ” on various examples, we will be able to compare the characteristic of each lexical item.

Translating in a national institutional setting such as the Italian Ministry of the Interior poses unique challenges to in-house professional translators as they endeavour to convey the “voice” of the public administration to a large and diverse international audience of practitioners and private citizens who interact with the Ministry for various reasons on a daily basis. Starting from an overview of foreign language services provided by the Ministry’s staff linguists, this paper focuses on translation services and explores in detail text types, clients and readership and the special challenges represented by L2 translation along with the strategies and practices adopted by staff translators to cater for the specific translation needs of both central and peripheral offices of the Interior Ministry. To illustrate all this, the two authors have drawn extensively on their own daily experience as staff linguists within two different structures of the Ministry, namely the Criminal Police Directorate in Rome and the Police Headquarters of Gorizia, offering a number of practical examples of translation of Italian texts into English, their L2 and the preferred choice for almost the totality of the Ministry’s communication needs.

Among the translators from Spanish active in the 17th century, a leading role was played by Lorenzo Franciosini, the grammarian, lexicographer and author of the first translation of Don Quijote into Italian. The original text by Cervantes is here compared with Franciosini’s translation, published in 1622, to evaluate a range of translational choices and their rationale. Broadly speaking, Franciosini’s translation can be considered reliable, although mistakes emerge deriving from inaccuracies and miscomprehensions. This study only focuses on the second chapter of part one, pending further investigation on the remaining text.