La traduzione specializzata verso una lingua non materna: il caso dell’azienda Colorificio MP

This dissertation was carried out as part of the Language Toolkit project, which is the result of the collaboration between the Chamber of Commerce of Romagna and the Department of Interpretation and Translation (DIT) of the University of Bologna - Forlì Campus. This project is aimed at fostering the economic internationalization of local small and medium-sized enterprises, and at the same time allows students to enter the labour market and enhance their professional skills. More precisely, this paper focuses on the translation of Colorificio MP's products' data sheets from Italian into Russian and explores translation directionality. It will attempt to demonstrate that the conception of translating into a foreign language as deontologically incorrect is anachronistic and unsupported by scientific evidence; inverse translation is in fact a globally widespread activity and translation theorists should revise the mother tongue principle in the light of current needs and the new opportunities our historical period provides. This work is organized in five parts. The first chapter addresses the internationalization of Italian companies and the importance of strategic language management in a corporate environment. It will also introduce the Language Toolkit project, the company Colorificio MP and the translation job assigned to the graduate student. The second chapter is dedicated to a theoretical examination of special languages and terminology; it will also illustrate the main tools that a translator can use to optimize the translation process of a specialized text. The third chapter will address translation directionality, focusing on the status of translation into a foreign language and claiming that it is an acceptable practice. The fourth chapter analyses the source text and describes the creation of useful resources for this project. The fifth and final chapter focuses on the choices made during the translation phase and on the main revision work.