Corpora e universali della traduzione in ambito sociologico: il caso degli anglicismi nella rivista “Lavoro Sociale”

Contacts between languages have always led to mutual influence. Today, the position of authority of the English language affects Italian in many ways, especially in the scientific and technical fields. When new studies conceived in the English-speaking world reach the Italian public, we are faced not only with the translation of texts, but most importantly the rendition of theoretical constructs that do not always have a suitable rendering in the target language. That is why we often find anglicisms in Italian texts. This work aims to show their frequency in a specific field, underlying how and when they are used, and sometimes preferred to the Italian corresponding word. This dissertation looks at a sample of essays from the specialised magazine “Lavoro Sociale”, published by Edizioni Centro Studi Erickson, searching for borrowings from English and discussing their use in order to make hypotheses on the reasons of this phenomenon, against the wider background of translation studies and translation universals research. What I am more interested in is the understanding of the similarities and differences in the use of anglicisms by authors of Italian texts and translators from English into Italian, so that I can figure out what the main dynamics and tendencies are. The whole paper is has four parts. Chapter 1 briefly explains the theoretical background on translation studies, and introduces and discusses the notion of translation universals. After that, the research methodology and theoretical background on linguistic borrowings (especially anglicisms) in Italian are summarized. Chapter 2 presents the study, explaining the organisation of the material, the methodology used and the object of interest. Chapter 3 is the core of the dissertation because it contains the qualitative and quantitative data taken from the texts and the examination of the dynamics of the use of anglicisms. Finally, Chapter 4 compares the conclusions drawn from the previous chapter with the opinions of authors, translators and proof-readers, whom I asked to answer a questionnaire written specifically to investigate the mechanisms and choices behind their use of anglicisms.

A comprehensive study on robotic manipulation of deformable linear objects

There are many deformable objects such as papers, clothes, ropes in a person’s living space. To have a robot working in automating the daily tasks it is important that the robot works with these deformable objects. Manipulation of deformable objects is a challenging task for robots because these objects have an infinite-dimensional configuration space and are expensive to model, making real-time monitoring, planning and control difficult. It forms a particularly important field of robotics with relevant applications in different sectors such as medicine, food handling, manufacturing, and household chores. In this report, there is a clear review of the approaches used and are currently in use along with future developments to achieve this task. My research is more focused on the last 10 years, where I have systematically reviewed many articles to have a clear understanding of developments in this field. The main contribution is to show the whole landscape of this concept and provide a broad view of how it has evolved. I also explained my research methodology by following my analysis from the past to the present along with my thoughts for the future.