Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione n.20 - 2018

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.

The language of sports journalism is generally characterised by great creativity and lexical wealth. A significant example in this respect is the language used by Track & Field News, an American monthly magazine devoted to athletics. This paper, based on an analysis of over 200 issues, focuses on performances and the multiple ways in which performances are designated, described and, in general, written about in the magazine.

This paper aims at analyzing some passages from two comedies by Lebanese playwright Ziyād ǝr-Raḥbānī in order to point out the difficulties and limits met in translation and how particularly rich in idioms Lebanese Arabic is. All of the extracts are transcribed, part of them translated, whereas the parts containing idioms and other untranslatable expressions are explained in detail and commented so that the reader can grasp the value of such works of art and get a deeper insight into Lebanese Arabic.

This paper illustrates a teaching method used during an Italian to English translation course at the University of Udine, Italy, in 2018, involving BA Public Relations students. During the course, both theoretical classes and exercises were aimed at developing translation skills; however, the main goal was to teach students how to rewrite texts in plain Italian before actually translating them into English. While practicing, students were asked to tackle an intermediate step before translating, i.e. an intralinguistic translation from a more difficult version to a plain Italian version of the source text. The course was not originally meant as an experiment; however, it proved to be a useful testing ground for didactic purposes.

After a brief introduction on the importance of pragmatics in the translation of scientific and technical (sci-tech) texts, which are service texts that are written in a language for special purposes (LSP) in the context of scientific and technological disciplines and are directed to a more or less restricted target discursive community having very specific practical needs and expectations, the concept of ‘pragmatic equivalence’ will be introduced with specific reference to sci-tech translation. Having in mind translation as a professional service activity, the article will deal with the main pragmatic factors exerting a determining influence at the textual and terminological levels of sci-tech texts, which should also inform translation decisions in order to achieve pragmatic equivalence at these levels. These pragmatic factors are ‘situationality’ (i.e. external situational and cultural factors), on the one hand, and ‘intentionality’ of the ST author and ‘acceptability’ of the TT by its final readers (i.e. internal cognitive factors), on the other. The last part of the article contains some examples of pragmatic choices made by scitech translators illustrating instances of the translation strategies that have been adopted to achieve pragmatic equivalence at the different textual levels.