Il progetto di localizzazione di AlmaRM: tradurre per l’Università in inglese lingua franca

This dissertation concentrates on the translation of institutional academic texts. The translation is part of a larger project aimed at localising AlmaRM, an online platform used to monitor international mobility and managed by DIRI, the International Relations Division of the University of Bologna. The present work is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 gives an overview of localisation and provides information on its history, definitions, and role in GILT model. Web localisation is also analysed in depth, considering both aspects of cultural adaptation and web usability. Chapter 2 offers an insight into the target language of the translation: English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). English language varieties are listed and a few definitions of ELF are provided. Some attempts made by scholars to determine its status as a language variety are reported. Subsequently, aspects such as internal variability and importance of function and context in ELF communication are described, while taking into account the role of the English native speaker and of ELF in Europe. Chapter 3 identifies the causes and consequences of the internationalisation process experienced by the academic world, with a focus on its outcomes, such as the creation of academic websites and of institutional-academic genres. It also introduces the AlmaRM platform and the features of its localisation project, whose tasks were assigned to four students. The resources provided for translation, namely monolingual corpus, translation memory, and terminological database are also presented. Moreover, an overview of the CAT tool is provided: MateCat is analysed and evaluated from the translator’s point of view. Chapter 4 contains an analysis of both the source text and its translation. After assessing the translation skopos and analysing the source text, some strategies for translating into ELF are mentioned. Several issues and problems faced during the translation process are then examined through different examples.