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Article published In: Between specialised texts and institutional contexts – competence and choice in legal translation
Edited by Valérie Dullion
[Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3:1] 2017
► pp. 5–19

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European English and the translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure

 | University of Trieste
Published online: 1 June 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.3.1.02per
Abstract
The English translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure (Gialuz, Mitja, Luca Lupária, and Federica Scarpa, eds. 2014. The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure. Critical Essays and English Translation. Padova: Wolters Kluwer/CEDAM.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) represents a step forward in fostering judicial and police cooperation in Europe. This is made possible by making the content of the Code accessible to a wide English-speaking audience. Given the informative purpose of the translation (Cao, Deborah. 2007. Translating Law. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), whose intended readers are mainly European citizens, the target language chosen by the translation team is European English, i.e. the English used in European Union texts, the international English used in Council of Europe texts, the English found in the translations of the Codes of Criminal Procedure of other European countries and the English used by law scholars (Scarpa, Federica, Katia Peruzzo, and Gianluca Pontrandolfo. 2014. “Methodological, Terminological and Phraseological Challenges in the Translation into English of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure.” In The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure. Critical Essays and English Translation, ed. by Mitja Gialuz, Luca Lupária, and Federica Scarpa, 53–80. Padova: Wolters Kluwer/CEDAM.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).
The European continent is a multidimensional and multilayered legal reality in which different languages co-exist and legal transplants and terminological transfers are commonplace. Based on such premises, however, the embeddedness of the Code of Criminal Procedure in the Italian legal system poses several translation difficulties, especially in the search for supranational/international English translation equivalents for terms that refer to nationally developed legal concepts. For these terms, established translation equivalents are not necessarily available. The aims of this paper are threefold: to describe the features of the interdisciplinary translation team consisting of ten members (linguists and lawyers), to lay out the peculiarities of the translation process in which professionals with a different background were involved, and to illustrate the methodology applied as regards terminological choices. To do so, a concrete example from the translated text will be provided to lay out the challenges faced and the solution adopted by the translation team.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Europe: a multilingual and multilayered legal setting
  • 3.English as Europe’s lingua franca
  • 4.English as Europe’s lingua franca in the translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure
  • 5.Interdisciplinary translation team and the role of the experts in the translation workflow
  • 6.System-specific terminology translated into European English
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (25)
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