TRANSLATION SEMINAR
2011-12
For the Course “The discourse
of tourism across genres ”,
Alessandro Sabatini
Maria Teresa Prat [email protected]
If you attend this seminar, you can only miss one class
Every THURSDAY or FRIDAY from 10 to 12, CLIFU, Aula Multimediale, until the first
week of May . NO LESSONS ON 5 AND 6 APRIL (EASTER HOLIDAYS) AND ON 12
AND 13 APRIL (because I am taking part in a conference)
Lesson 1 Introduction to the course : resources and translation strategies
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TEXTS
Text 1 “Bed and Breakfast on the edge of Bodmin Moor”, www.trevadlock.co.uk
Text 2 “ Introducing Turin “ (and “ Thorn Tree Travel Forum”) from The Lonely Planet
website
Text 3 “How to deal with bites and stings (while travelling in Asia)” from The Lonely
Planet website
Text 4 “Introducing England”, from the Lonely Planet Website
Text 5 “Adventure touring. Tour India’s Golden Triangle”
Text 6. “Oversight of Cruise Lines at Issue after Disaster”, by Steve Erlanger , The New
York Times, January 17, 2012
Text 7 “Sustainable Tourism”, from the Website of the European Travel Commission
TIMETABLE AND
CONTENTS
Regular attenders are required to read and translate the
set texts, partly in class under the teacher’s guidance and
partly at home. They should prepare a dossier containing
the original texts and their typed traslations in Italian on
the opposite page.
They will be evaluated on their participation to the
seminar discussion, on their ability to read aloud and
translate the texts correctly and effectively, and on their
awareness of the translation strategies adopted. Final
individual “colloqui” will take place during the summer
session. This evaluation will substitute the written exam
and will contribute to the final exam mark.
Methodology and evaluation
DOSSIER
For each text write a short introduction which contains:
1. the source and the author( if identifiable) , the text type, or genre,(e.g.
leaflet, brochure, newspaper article, guidebook, official document ) and its
general purpose(s) (e.g. informative, promotional, argumentative,
descriptive, narrative)
2. Some observations on :
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the register of the text in terms of field (topic e.g. Turin today.
Sustainable Tourism), tenor ( e.g. formal, informal, personal, impersonal)
and mode (e.g. written, in electronic form)
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the organization of the text ( e.g. graphic and iconic features, sections,
paragraphs, types of sentences) and the ways in which cohesion is
achieved ( e.g. connectors, lexical cohesion, reference)
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the vocabulary which is particularly meaningful (e.g. semantic fields,
collocations, idioms, metaphors, word play, cultural references)
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the major translation problems that you have encountered and the
strategies and resources that you have used to sort them out.
HOW TO ANALYSE A TEXT AND
ITS TRANSLATION
Different types of dictionay (e.g. paper or
electronic fomat, general or specialised,
monolingual or bilingual)
Encyclopaedias and specialised literature
The Internet (always check the reliability
of websites)
RESOURCES AVAILABLE in the
faculty library or/and on line
More British-oriented
 Simpson, J.A., Weiner, E.S.C. (eds.) (1989 2nd
edition) The Oxford English Dictionary on
Historical Principles, Oxford: Claredon Press,
vols. 20. + supplements (also on CD-ROM and
as an online version)
 Brown, L. ed. (1993), The New Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon, 2 vols. ,
also on CD-ROM edition
American-oriented
 Gove, P., B. (ed.) (1993) Webster's Third New
International Dictionary, Springfield (MASS):
Merriam-Webster
Inc., Vols.Dictionaries,
3.
Unabridged
Monolingual
to
be used for rare or archaic words or
meanings
(always choose the most recent edition)
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Hornby, A. S. (ed.), Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary of Current English, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Sinclair, J. (ed.), Collins COBUILD English
Language Dictionary, London: Collins.
Procter, P. (ed.), Cambridge International
Dictionary of English, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
O'Kill, B. (associated), Longman Dictionary of
Contemporary English, Harlow: Longman.
Macmillan, English Dictionary for Advanced
Learners Oxford:Macmillan.
General Monolingual Learner's
Dictionaries
General Bilingual (English-Italian)
Dictionaries
(always choose the most recent edition)
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Collins-Mondadori, Nuovo Dizionario Inglese: ingleseitaliano, italiano-inglese, Milano: Harper Collins
publishers.
Oxford Paravia, Dizionario inglese italiano, italiano
inglese, Torino: Paravia.
Hazon, M., Il nuovo dizionario: inglese-italiano,
italiano-inglese, Milano: Garzanti.
Picchi, F., Grande Dizionario Inglese-Italiano ItalianoInglese, Milano: Hoepli.
Ragazzini, G., Dizionario Inglese Italiano ItalianoInglese, Bologna: Zanichelli.
(always
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choose the most recent edition)
Chiampo, L. (a cura di) , (1988), Il Gould-Chiampo. Dizionario enciclopedico
di medicina. Inglese-italiano. Italiano-Inglese, Bologna:Zanichelli
Codeluppi L., A Dictionary of business English. English-Italian,ItalianEnglish. Dizionario Commerciale, Firenze: Le Monnier, ultima edizione
Delfino G. et al. , (1990), Biologia e medicina/Biology and medicine.
Dizionario Enciclopedico di Scienze biologiche e mediche, Bologna:
Zanichelli
Delfino. G. et al. (1997), Dizionario Enciclopedico di Scienze Mediche e
Biologiche e di Biotecnologie on Cd-ROM, Bologna: Zanichelli
Il McGraw-Hill Zanichelli, (1998), Dizionario Enciclopedico Scientifico e
Tecnico, Bologna: Zanichelli (anche in CdROM)
Marolli, G. (1996) , Dizionario tecnico, Hoepli: Milano
Parker S.P. and Edigeo ed. , (1998), Dizionario enciclopedico Scientifico e
Tecnico on CdROM, Bologna: Zanichelli
Picchi, Fernando, (2001), Economics and Business. Dizionario
enciclopedico economico e commerciale inglese-italiano, italiano-inglese,
Bologna: Zanichelli, ultima edizione ( anche on CdROM)
West’s Law and Commercial Dictionary. Dizionario giuridico e commerciale.
Inglese-italiano-spagnolo-francese-tedesco, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1988
Specialised Bilingual
Dictionaries
1. The Free Dictionary by Farlex
http://thefreedictionary.com, run by a private
American company, allows the consultation of
many general and specialised dictionaries and
encyclopaedias in many different languages,
including Italian.
2. Free cross-referenced definitions, spelling
correction, and word searches from WordNet,
Webster's, FOLDOC, and a variety of specialized
sources
http://dictionary.die.net
3. Online bilingual and multilingual dictionaries, list of
dictionaries for Italian, free www.lexicool.com
Websites listing several
 :;
dictionaries
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WORDNET: a lexical database for English run by Princeton University (US), organised
according to sense relations (e.eg. Synonymy, antonymy etc). Can be downloaded and
used freely. There is also a version for Italian, see http://www.ilc.cnr.it/iwndb_php
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The website of Oxford Paravia, http://oxfordparavaia.it
where you can consult the bilingual Oxford Paravia Concise and The monolingual
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. It is free but you are required to register.
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The website of Cambridge dictionaries http://dictionary.cambridge.org. Free
The website of The Webster dictionaries www.merriam-webster.com , of American
English. Free
The website of HOEPLI Dictionaries http://hoepli.it/dizionari.asp
free but registration is required
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OALD, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
www.olad8. oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ free
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MACMILLAN English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
http://www.macmillandictionary.com
English dictionaries on line
Treccani
 www.treccani.it/
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Wikipedia (in the English version)
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Britannica online
Always check different sources of
information
Encyclopaedias and reference
works
http://iate.europa.eu
IATE is the European Commission's
multilingual database containing
technical and specialised terminology
(agriculture, telecommunications,
transport, legislation, finance)
related to EU policy.
Free access
The European multilingual
database
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COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE
(see the CLIFU list)
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AVAILABLE ON THE WEB
- Sketchengine, http://sketchengine.co.uk
YOU CAN REGISTER FOR A FREE 30-DAY
TRIAL PERIOD
- Webcorpus, http://webcorp.org.uk
( Birmingham University, GB)
- Mark Davis’s web site
http://corpus.byu.edu (Brigham Young
University, USA)
TYPES OF CORPORA
1. International Corpus of English:
British 2.East Africa 3. Singapore 4. New Zealand
2
ICAME Collection of English Language Corpora:
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Written:
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Brown Corpus untagged / tagged
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LOB Corpus untagged / tagged
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Freiburg-LOB (FLOB)
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Freiburg-Brown (Frown)
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Kolhapur Corpus (India)
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Australian Corpus of English (ACE)
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Wellington Corpus (New Zealand)
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Spoken:
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London Lund Corpus
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Lancaster/IBM Spoken English Corpus (SEC)
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Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT)
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Wellington Spoken Corpus (New Zealand)
3. Historical:
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The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic Part
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The Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots
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Corpus of Early English Correspondance, sampler
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The Newdigate Newsletters
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Lampeter Corpus
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Innsbruck Computer-Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts (ICAMET)
4. British National Corpus (BNC)
5. International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE)
6 PIXI (Italian/English service encounters in bookshops)
Corpora in CLIFU