Translations
As U. Eco argues in his recent essay Dire quasi la stessa cosa, it is rather an illusion to believe messages can be cloned into a different target language. As one can easily understand, debate on translation is a hot area of discussion and one that has always been present in my mind for different orders of reason. Just to quote some: translation in language learning, translation in reading literature, translation in communication, translation in trans-national contexts.
I am not an expert in the field and certainly I have no specific competences in that branch. Yet, like many of the people who, like me, graduated in foreign language I had the opportunity to makeplenty translations: mainly concerned with medicine or biology articles for students who needed them to prepare some academic paper or the like. And at the same time I was often asked to translate buissness letters for commercial purposes. In a few words I was compelled to come across many of the complex problems connected to information travelling from one code to the other, so much so that I became gradually aware of the implications of translation and the related problems.
It is not the purpose of the present area to open a discussion on the multifaceted aspects of translations, rather the point I would like to make here is that translation and communication are strictly interrelated. Therefore I found it rather stimulating to think about the nature of competences required by people who, like me, frequently operate in the context of European or international cooperation. In particular, the point I want to discuss is the relation coming to life in international communicative spaces where two or more interlocutors with different levels of proficiency in the vehicular language need to make themselves understood for professional and cooperative action to take place.
The results of my reflection are illustrated in the Power Point Presentation and can also be accessed in full version in the attachments below.
English version