Strategies of Translating Political Texts with Particular Reference to English and Italian

Abstract

The difference between Italian and English language and the variation in their cultures make the process of translating a real challenge. Because of the inherent differences between Italian language and English language, a perfect translation is impossible. It is the nature of languages. So many words in Italian have nuances, connotations, even literary echoes which their closest equivalent words in English do not have.

Thus, this paper aims at probing – by encountering the problems that a translator may encounter while translating political texts from Italian into English. For this purpose, we have chosen to translate  into English the following chapter from Roman Prodi's book entitled La Mia Visione Dei Fatti Cinque anni di governo in Europa. Throughout our paper, we have tried to demonstrate some translation problems that we have encountered while translating from Italian into English language.

Our translation will enable us to explore the potential strategies to overcome the lexico-grammatical differences between Italian and English language and to illustrate the linguistic reasoning behind translation. On a second level, we will  discuss the various ways translator dealt with structural and lexical differences between the two languages English and Italian.

Keywords: Translation, Italian, English, Strategies