Les directives européennes : une ressource pour la formation en traduction spécialisée

Ilaria Cennamo, Università degli Studi di Milano

Abstract: Legal translation is a particular case of specialized translation, which implies the establishment of equivalence between source and target legal systems. However, legal translation practice varies according to the different branches of law to which it is applied. In particular, as a consequence of globalization, legal translation has become a fundamental practice in the context of international organisations and multilingual institutions, such as the European Union. This communication focuses especially on an European directive, which will be analysed here as an interesting pedagogical resource for specialized translation training, from French into Italian. First of all, our analysis will highlight the different kinds of translation difficulties arising from the French version of the directive, by dividing them into three main categories: difficulties pertaining to terminology, phraseology and clear writing. Secondly, the official French and Italian versions of the directive will be compared to our students’ translations. This comparison will point out the need for the adoption of specific translation strategies, on a macro and a micro level, which will be described in the final part of this article. We will finally underline that European directives can be a valid corpus to be studied in order to further analyse the specificities of legal translation in an institutional and multilingual context.