Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione n.05 - 2000

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 article investigates the use of parallel corpora as part of un integrated approach to translator training and considers its effectiveness in helping to develop a learning environment where static word-for-word equivalence in meaning between target and source text is replaced by a dynamic notion of chunk-by-chunk equivalence in use. The author argues that, far from being a drawback, the different levels of adequacy represented by the target texts in the corpus can be used in the classroom to enhance translation criticism. Moreover, parallel corpora can be used to provide the students with useful insights into the practices of the translation industry, including the ability to revise the translation of a fellow translator. By way of exemplification, the different translations into Italian of the multi-functional item -ing form are investigated.

The focus of this article is on the translation of comics. In the first part the author provides a review of the existing research in the translation of this particular textual genre andfinds that for a long time comics have been ignored by Translation Studies as an object of investigation in their own right. Sometimes used as mere examples to illustrate the technique of "compensation" or a "reader-centred" translation approach, comics have been recently included in a new type of translation called "constrained translation", where the illustration is seen as a constraint for the translator. In contrast to such an approach, the second part of the article proposes a translation approach to comics where the linguistic and the semiological aspects have a parallel status. Translators need therefore to develop their semiotic competence in order to be able to consider the illustration as a fundamental semantic feature of the linguistic message in the creation of the story.