Towards the Harmonisation of Civil Procedure: Translation in Italian Civil Court Proceedings and the Role of Multilingual Document Templates

Over the past few decades, globalisation, international trade, cross-border investments, travel, and economic and personal relationships between citizens of different countries have had a profound impact on law. An increase in international relationships is inevitably followed by a growth in international and cross-border litigation. Therefore, several initiatives have been launched with the aim of unifying, harmonising, and internationalising civil procedure. Today, the international harmonisation of civil procedure is mainly achieved through soft law instruments, such as the numerous Hague Conventions dedicated to this legal field and the ALI/UNIDROIT Principles of Transnational Civil Procedure. Moreover, in the European Union, harmonisation of civil procedure has reached even more advanced levels across member states. Any party who becomes involved in an international or cross-border dispute naturally needs to understand what is happening around them. Hence, translation is attributed a major role in international civil procedure. This paper will look at translation in civil proceedings, with particular regard to international and transnational disputes which fall under the Italian jurisdiction¬. Its purpose is twofold: 1) the first aim is to propose a potential resource which could facilitate translation in Italian civil proceedings, i.e. multilingual civil court document templates; 2) the second aim is to raise awareness on the importance of translation in international and cross-border disputes and highlight the peculiarities which characterise this particular type of translation and differentiate it from other areas of both general and legal translation. Chapter 1 offers an overview of Italian civil proceedings. Chapter 2 is dedicated to legal translation. Chapter 3 focuses on Italian civil court documents and the use of templates in Italian proceedings. Finally, Chapter 4 presents the German and English translations of six Italian sample templates.