Traduttori specializzati e business center nel processo di internazionalizzazione d'impresa: Studio esplorativo e prospettive future

This exploratory study aims at investigating the professional opportunities available to a specialised translator within the process of international business development. Firstly, the analysis focuses on a review of the theoretical principles affirming the need of a fine-tuned language strategy, especially in the process of internationalization, managed by professionals with translation, language and cultural skills. Against this background, the focus is on the role played by a specialised translator within this process. With the aim of exploring the translator’s role within this process, the analysis focuses on business centers in Italy, which bring together demand and supply of language services and services for company internationalisation. According to the results that shows the opportunities available to a specialised translator with extra skills, the analysis focuses on the placement of this professional within the process. A specialised translator can be a language and cultural consultant for the internationalised company, as well as a Project Manager working for its international development. The conclusions describe the role which a specialised translator with economic or international marketing skills might play within this framework, and pave the way for future developments of this analysis.

Proposta di traduzione commentata di un articolo scientifico sulla sperimentazione animale: risorse, metodi e terminologia.

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a translation from English into Italian of a highly specialized scientific article published by the online journal ALTEX. In this text, the authors propose a roadmap for how to overcome the acknowledged scientific gaps for the full replacement of systemic toxicity testing using animals. The main reasons behind this particular choice are my personal interest in specialized translation of scientific texts and in the alternatives to animal testing. Moreover, this translation has been directly requested by the Italian molecular biologist and clinical biochemist Candida Nastrucci. It was not possible to translate the whole article in this project, for this reason, I decided to translate only the introduction, the chapter about skin sensitization, and the conclusion. I intend to use the resources that were created for this project to translate the rest of the article in the near future. In this study, I will show how a translator can translate such a specialized text with the help of a field expert using CAT Tools and a specialized corpus. I will also discuss whether machine translation can prove useful to translate this type of document. This work is divided into six chapters. The first one introduces the main topic of the article and explains my reasons for choosing this text; the second one contains an analysis of the text type, focusing on the differences and similarities between Italian and English conventions. The third chapter provides a description of the resources that were used to translate this text, i.e. the corpus and the CAT Tools. The fourth one contains the actual translation, side-by-side with the original text, while the fifth one provides a general comment on the translation difficulties, an analysis of my translation choices and strategies, and a comment about the relationship between the field expert and the translator. Finally, the last chapter shows whether machine translation and post-editing can be an advantageous strategy to translate this type of document. The project also contains two appendixes. The first one includes 54 complex terminological sheets, while the second one includes 188 simple terminological sheets.

Sekundenschlaf e il kabarett austriaco

Cabaret is deeply rooted in Austrian culture, particularly in Vienna, where nowadays this genre can once again live its glory days thanks to the effort of many cabaret comedians like Michael Niavarani, Roland Düringer, Alfred Dorfer and Andreas Vitásek. The starting point for this work is the show “Sekundenschlaf”, of the Viennese cabaret artist Andreas Vitásek. The core of the show is time, a dimension that is not fixed, but time can both fly as well as lengthen almost endlessly. Moreover, Vitásek also speaks about many current issues, like politics and the economic crisis, but the focus of the show is always the author’s personal experience. By means of this work I wanted to identify the difficulties of a potential translation of the show in order to find out whether such a translation might be possible and effective. I chose the examples that were more significant from a thematic and linguistic point of view, transcribed them directly from the DVD and analyzed them in detail. The translation of cabaret proves to be particularly difficult, as it is essential to convey the humorous elements to the target audience. Although humor belongs to all human beings, it is extremely specific for each culture and language. Therefore it is the job of a translator to manage to build a bridge between the source and the target culture. This work is divided into two major parts, one dedicated to cabaret as artistic genre, and the other one specifically dedicated to the show “Sekundenschlaf”. Through the analysis of the transcribed examples I have identified first the linguistic and then the thematic difficulties, pointing out which cultural elements are specific for Austrian culture and which elements can be understood (almost) everywhere.

Tradurre la letteratura per l'infanzia: proposta di traduzione di Flip Flap Safari di Axel Scheffler

This thesis is a proposed translation of the picture book Flip Flap Safari, written by the German author Axel Scheffler and published in 2014. The translation is presented along with an analysis and a commentary in which I analyse and examine the main translation problems of this kind of literature. and I explain the reasons behind my solutions. The translation of a picture book is a creative challenge because it requires translator to use their linguistic and cultural skills together with their imagination and to evaluate the phonetic dimension of the source text and reproduce in the target language. In the first part of my thesis I will introduce an overview of children’s literature in Italy and I will then focus on Flip Flap Safari, analysing the text and providing biographical information about its author-illustrator Axel Scheffler. In the second part of my thesis I will present my translation of the book, which will be followed by a reflection about the main problems I had to face during the translation process.

La traduzione saggistica: tradurre il saggio Light Years Ahead

The aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate how theory and practice are linked in translation. The translation of the essay Light Years Ahead helped me to understand this connection and to develop the two main thesis included in this work, that is the possibility the translator has to choose among all the different theories, without giving one or another the absolute supremacy, and the diversity of the non-fiction genre. Therefore, the first chapter focuses on the different theories of translation, presented in a way which suggests that one might be the completion and the development of another. The second chapter deals with the peculiar issues of non-fiction translation, with particular attention to the way in which this genre gathers different elements of other text types. Despite this variety, it is also claimed that the function at the higher level of an essay is always the informative one. This concept led me to simplify and make more intelligible the Italian version of the text I translated (Light Years Ahead). In the third chapter, this last point is discussed, as well as my considerations about the function, the dominant aspect and the cultural analysis of the text, with particular regard to how the quality of the English translation affected my choices. In the fourth chapter I included some examples of translation, which best demonstrate the distinctive variety of styles of non-fiction texts and the possibility for the translator to choose each time which theory suits them best. Finally, I also included three examples which represent a sort of defeat for me, that is to say three points where the ambiguity of the text obliged me to remove that information for the sake of the dominant informative function.

Videogame localization. A case study: Final Fantasy XII

Globalization has influenced all economic sectors and the demand for translation services has increased like never before. The videogame industry has become a worldwide phenomenon worth billions. Many people around the globe, male and female, children and adults alike, choose this leisure activity and enjoy it like reading or watching a film. It is a global phenomenon capable of producing as much revenue and anticipation as the film industry. Most games are developed in Japanese or English and the new global market requires this product to be translated into many other languages. The scenario has brought about a new field of specialization in translation studies, commonly known as videogame localization. The emergence of this new field calls not only for a review of translation studies, but also a shift in the role that some translators and translated products are expected to play within a globalized world. The aim of this dissertation is to provide an overview of videogame localization and its challenges under the guidance of a professional translator such as Alexander O. Smith, who agreed to provide counsel through several Skype interviews. This provided a first-hand insight into how translation decisions are carried out by game translators. Alexander O. Smith was a former translator for Square Enix, one of the biggest Japanese videogame developer, publisher and distribution company in the market. He now works as an independent translator and in 2003 he founded the localization agency called Kajiya Productions with his friend and fellow translator Joseph Reeder. Together with Alexander O. Smith, the twelfth installment of the Final Fantasy series by Square Enix has been chosen as a very good example of the issues and challenges brought on by videogame localization. The game which revealed itself to be one of the most fun, challenging and rewarding professional experiences of Alexander O. Smith.

Una scossa all'economia: le conseguenze del sisma dell'Aquilano. Traduzione dall'inglese in italiano di un articolo di ricerca economica ed esperienza di collaborazione con gli autori.

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a translation from English into Italian of a specialised scientific article published in the Cambridge Working Papers in Economics series. In this text, the authors estimate the economic consequences of the earthquake that hit the Abruzzo region in 2009. An extract of this translation will be published as part of conference proceedings. The main reason behind this choice is a personal interest in specialised translation in the economic domain. Moreover, the subject of the article is of particular interest to the Italian readership. The aim of this study is to show how a non-specialised translator can tackle with such a highly specialised translation with the use of appropriate terminology resources and the collaboration of field experts. The translation could be of help to other Italian linguists looking for translated material in this particular domain where English seems to be the dominant language. In order to ensure consistent terminology and adequate style, the document has been translated with the use of different resources, such as dictionaries, glossaries and specialised corpora. I also contacted field experts and the authors of text. The collaboration with the authors proved to be an invaluable resource yet one to be carefully managed. This work is divided into 5 chapters. The first deals with domain-specific sublanguages. The second gives an overview of corpus linguistics and describes the corpora designed for the translation. The third provides an analysis of the article, focusing on syntactical, lexical and structural features while the fourth presents the translation, side-by-side with the source text. The fifth comments on the main difficulties encountered in the translation and the strategies used, as well as the relationship with the authors and their review of the published text. Appendix I contains the econometric glossary English – Italian.

La traduzione automatica e i language service provider: il caso di CTI

La presente tesi nasce da un tirocinio avanzato svolto presso l’azienda CTI (Communication Trend Italia) di Milano. Gli obiettivi dello stage erano la verifica della possibilità di inserire gli strumenti automatici nel flusso di lavoro dell’azienda e l'individuazione delle tipologie testuali e delle combinazioni linguistiche a cui essi sono applicabili. Il presente elaborato si propone di partire da un’analisi teorica dei vari aspetti legati all’utilizzo della TA, per poi descriverne l’applicazione pratica nei procedimenti che hanno portato alla creazione dei sistemi custom. Il capitolo 1 offre una panoramica teorica sul mondo della machine translation, che porta a delineare la modalità di utilizzo della TA ad oggi più diffusa: quella in cui la traduzione fornita dal sistema viene modificata tramite post-editing oppure il testo di partenza viene ritoccato attraverso il pre-editing per eliminare gli elementi più ostici. Nel capitolo 2, partendo da una panoramica relativa ai principali software di traduzione automatica in uso, si arriva alla descrizione di Microsoft Translator Hub, lo strumento scelto per lo sviluppo dei sistemi custom di CTI. Nel successivo passaggio, l’attenzione si concentra sull’ottenimento di sistemi customizzati. Un ampio approfondimento è dedicato ai metodi per reperire ed utilizzare le risorse. In seguito viene descritto il percorso che ha portato alla creazione e allo sviluppo dei due sistemi Bilanci IT_EN e Atto Costitutivo IT_EN in Microsoft Translator Hub. Infine, nel quarto ed ultimo capitolo gli output che i due sistemi forniscono vengono rivisti per individuarne le caratteristiche e analizzati tramite alcuni tool di valutazione automatica. Grazie alle informazioni raccolte vengono poi formulate alcune previsioni sul futuro uso dei sistemi presso l’azienda CTI.

Pontypool, traduci e muori. Traduzione di pontypool changes everything di tony burgess.

This work is focused on the translation of the first half of the novel Pontypool Changes Everything, written by Canadian author and screenplay writer Tony Burgess in 1998 and – quite surprisingly – still unpublished in Italy. Although the book disguises itself as a product for general consumption – more precisely as a tale of zombies – it is clear from the very beginning that the author is not interested in conforming to the conventions of the genre to which his work belongs. On the contrary, he seems to exploit the recent success of zombiea-pocalypse inspired stories to build up a more complex type of narrative. Nonetheless, he writes a story that introduces certain innovative elements in the rather repetitive and seemingly outworn genre, like the idea of a language-borne virus. Burgess, who has a graduate degree in semiotics, was by his own admission “insufferably preoccupied with literary malformations” when he wrote the book. As a matter of fact his narrative tackles issues – albeit superficially and always entertainingly – that seem to stem from the theories which originated in the field of linguistics around the second half of the twentieth century. It goes without saying that translating – as much as reading – such a book is both a difficult and compelling operation. As a translator you are required to constantly shift from one strategy to another, paying great attention to the semantic nuances of the written words whilst keeping in mind what the actual intention of the text is. Together with the book translation, this dissertation offers a brief introduction to the fundamental principles of translation and a detailed analysis of some of the translation problems posed by the novel.

Poema of Lieutenant Schmidt’s End: Pasternak’s Dialogue with Tsvetaeva through the Prism of Genre.

Boris Pasternak’s poemy are acutely self-conscious of their place in the epic tradition. Lieutenant Schmidt (LS) represents one attempt at exploring the parameters of the poema itself as the poet makes a “difficult” transition from “lyric thinking” to “the epic.” In this article I examine this transition against a contemporaneous example in the genre, Tsvetaeva’s Poema of the End (PE). In LS, structural elements of the poema are counterposed to those of PE. While PE amplifies the individual voice, LS muffles what is personal for the sake of the public voice. While PE is atemporal, LS is historical. While PE unfolds on symbolic planes, with elements of plot kept to a bare minimum (a single moment of separation), LS is a plot-driven account based on concrete, documentary material. Finally, while PE is an “overgrown lyric”—representing the “lyric thinking” that Pasternak hopes to transcend— LS is an exploration of the possibilities that a more traditional model of the poema can offer. Although in the present analysis I draw on several theories of poetic genres, this is by no means an exhaustive study of epic versus lyric forms of poetry. Instead, my analysis focuses on those structural and thematic features of the poema that the poets themselves perceived as central to their texts. Pasternak, for his part, develops the structure and thematics of his poema in ways that are inspired by PE, but also, as we will see, in more significant ways, contrast with it.

The Visual, the Epic, and Pasternak’s ‘Devjat’son pjatyj god’

In this study I consider the role of poetic description in Pasternak’s ‘Deviat’sot piatyi god’ (‘1905’) in the context of the genre of the poema. Descriptive passages in poetic narratives, as a rule, provide a static setting for a protagonist’s actions. In the absence of any single hero in Pasternak’s poema, topography itself begins to move. I examine the categories of stasis and motion, central to ‘1905’, at the intersection of the visual and the verbal. The idea of reanimating the events of the first Russian revolution twenty years after the fact borders on the ekphrastic in places, where the poet transposes techniques and genres from the visual arts into a verse epic. Finally, I suggest that aesthetic perception itself is the dominant principle in the poema, as opposed to documentary faithfulness, which is traditionally emphasized in the scholarship on this work.

The Blue Of

When I first started my thesis, I intended for my finished project to be a compilation of poems that aims to reflect and reveal several repeating themes of our society's collective unconscious, such as the relationship between the physical and spiritual aspects of being and the representation of women's lives, organized religion,adolescence, and mental illness. I proposed writing a chapbook of poetry that reflects an exploration of, and sensitivity to, the human unconscious mind, fears, and desires. Consulting other works of surreal, lyric, and confessional poetry, I sought to personallydevelop as both a poet and a psychology student. I made a conscious effort to avoid trying to attach a specific 'meaning' to each poem. I understand that, in poetry, the reader is never entirely aware of exactly what the poet is trying to convey. All the reader knows is what he or she sees in a given poem and how he or she responds to that poem. However, through working on my thesis I discovered that, while meaning may not be intentional in the drafting process, developing what the poem meant to me was central to the process of revision. Furthermore, I realized that I unconsciously returned to specific themes across various poems, something that was not apparent to me until I re-read my entire collection ...

Not in the Legends

In writing “Not in the Legends”, one of the images and concepts which constantly returned was that of pilgrimage. I began to write these poems while studying abroad in London, after having passed the previous semester in France and travelling around Europe. There was something in the repetition of sightseeing— walking six miles in Luxembourg to see the grave of General Patton, taking photographs of the apartment where Sylvia Plath ended her life, bowing before the bones of saints, searching through Père Lachaise for the grave of Théodore Gericault— which struck me as numinous and morbid. At the same time, I came to love living abroad and I grew discontent with both remaining and returning. I wanted the opportunity to live everywhere all the time and not have to choose between home and away. Returning from abroad, I turned my attention to the landscape of my native country. I found in the New England pilgrims a narrative of people who had left their home in search of growth and freedom. In these journeys I began to appreciate the significance of place and tried to understand what it meant to move from one place to another, how one chose a home, and why people searched for meaning in specific locations. The processes of moving from student to worker and from childhood to adulthood have weighed on me. I began to see these transitions towards maturity as travels to a different land. Memory and nostalgia are their own types of pilgrimage in their attempts to return to lost places, as is the reading of literature. These pilgrimages, real and metaphorical, form the thematic core of the collection. I read the work of many poets who came before me, returning to the places where the Canon was forged. Those poets have a large presence in the work I produced. I wondered how I, as a young poet, could earn my own place in the tradition and sought models in much the same way a painter studies the brushstrokes of a master. In the process, I have tried to uncover what it means to be a poet. Is it something like being a saint? Is it something like being a colonist? Or is to be the one who goes in search of saints and colonists? In trying to measure my own life and work based on the precedent, I have questioned what role era and generation have on the formation of identity. I focused my reading heavily on the early years of English poetry, trying to find the essence of the time when the language first achieved the transcendence of verse. In following the development of English poetry through Coleridge, John Berryman, and Allison Titus, I have explored the progression of those basic virtues in changing contexts. Those bearings, applied to my modern context, helped to shape the poetry I produced. Many of the poems in “Not in the Legends” are based on my own personal experience. In my recollections I have tried to interrogate nostalgia rather than falling into mere reminiscence. Rather than allowing myself poems of love and longing, I have tried to find the meaning of those emotions. A dominant conflict exists between adventure and comfort which mirrors the central engagement with the nature of being “here” or “there”. It is found in scenes of domesticity and wilderness as I attempt to understand my own simultaneous desire for both. For example, in “Canned Mangoes…” the intrusion of nature, even in a context as innocuous as a poem by Sir Walter Raleigh, unravels ordinary comforts of the domestic sphere. The character of “The Boy” from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot proved such an interesting subject for me because he is one who can transcend the normal boundaries of time and place. The title suggests connections to both place and time. “Legends” features the dual meaning of both myths and the keys to maps. To propose something “Not in the Legends” is to find something which has no precedent in our histories and our geographies, something beyond our field of knowledge and wholly new. One possible interpretation I devised was that each new generation lives a novel existence, the future being the true locus of that which is beyond our understanding. The title comes from Keats’ “Hyperion, a Fragment”, and details the aftermath of the Titanomachy. The Titans, having fallen to the Olympians, are a representation of the passing of one generation for the next. Their dejection is expressed by Saturn, who laments: Not in my own sad breast, Which is its own great judge and searcher out, Can I find reason why ye should be thus: Not in the legends of the first of days… (129-132) The emotions of the conquered Titans are unique and without antecedent. They are experiencing feelings which surpass all others in history. In this, they are the equivalent of the poet who feels that his or her own sufferings are special. In contrast are Whitman’s lines from “Song of Myself” which serve as an epigraph to this collection. He contends for a sense of continuity across time, a realization that youth, age, pleasure, and suffering have always existed and will always exist. Whitman finds consolation in this unity, accepting that kinship with past generations is more important that his own individuality. These opposing views offer two methods of presenting the self in history. The instinct of poetry suggests election. The poet writes because he feels his experiences are special, or because he believes he can serve as a synecdoche for everyone. I have fought this instinct by trying to contextualize myself in history. These poems serve as an attempt at prosopography with my own narrative a piece of the whole. Because the earth abides forever, our new stories get printed over the locations of the old and every place becomes a palimpsest of lives and acts. In this collection I have tried to untangle some of those layers, especially my own, to better understand the sprawling legend of history.

The Ideology, Politics and Autonomous Art of Richard Weiner: (An Event in Discourse)"

The first aim of the project was to compile documentation on the life and work of Richard Weiner, a Czech journalist, writer and poet who spent the best part of his life as Paris correspondent for Lidove noviny. Langerova looked at the contexts and the growing independence of certain parts of his work, the distribution of thematic compositional elements into different parts of discourse and their position in the autonomous space of a work of art. Looking at the features of minority literature and the contemporary contexts of Weiner's life and work Langerova focuses on the situation of the Jewish community (Wiener came from an assimilated Jewish family). For this minorities, the function of language as a medium of communication which is able to create an autonomous world became increasingly important. Literature, which is based on this function of language, is a political matter par excellence before it begins forming as an autonomous, independent and divergent place. This means that everything private and intimate is closely connected to political and social responsibility, while supposedly objective genres contain subjective features. Another important characteristic is "nomadism", which asks the question of "Where do I belong". This was very important in Czechoslovakia after World War I , as in the issue of Zionism. Although Weiner rejected Zionism, he asks this question in his writing and it is reflected at a symbolic level in his work, which shows a fundamental thematic and compositional plan of a journey, cross-roads and wandering. These theses were reflected in Weiner's life, which was a series of continuous transfers and unplanned moves, often when he thought he had found his place. As well as tracing the course of his life, and his relations with and views of other writers, Langerova looks at his writings in various areas. Her major focus is the divergence of trivial and great events into different types of discourse in Richard Weiner's work, their transfer (small into great, trivial into mythical) and their historical context.

Educating...for what?: Creativity and Resilience

Higgins School of the Humanities/Difficult Dialogues: Video Recording from 12/1/2011 event featuring Katja Esson, Li- Young Lee and Alison Granucci titled "Creativity and Resilience" Event Description: To be creative is one of life’s most engaging and satisfying experiences. Can we insure that students trust those capacities and processes in themselves, and develop reliable paths toward them? Can we encourage the cultivation of the imagination in our students, as well as the resilience to weather discouragement, whether in their creative search or other aspects of life? Our guests for a conversation on creativity and resilience are filmmaker Katja Esson, poet Li-Young Lee, and co-producer Alison Granucci. They are collaborators on the new film Poetry of Resilience.