Japanese Specialised Translation

The overall aim of the course is to teach students some strategies to understand and analyse a wide range of Japanese documents of increasing complexity, including sociological, bureaucratic, legal, regulatory and expository texts. Notably, students will learn to distinguish between different types of coordinate and subordinate clauses based on the conjunctions used, in order to accurately determine the logical and semantic relationships between these and the principal clause, and to establish the most appropriate order for translating each sentence element into Italian. By reading Japanese texts pertaining to social sciences, students will become familiar with the specialised language of the discipline, learn the related terminology, and gain insights into contemporary Japanese society and its complexities, which are essential for developing strong linguistic and cultural mediation skills.

By the end of the course, students will be able to read specialised texts in the field of sociology, and to correctly interpret the logical interactions of grammatical and discursive elements in the source language, while also acquiring essential cultural competence to understand the broader context of the text to be translated. Consequently, they will be able to accurately convey the general meaning and relevant details of the source text into Italian, avoiding factual mistakes and using a clear, fluent, understandable and correct language. Students will initially apply an equivalence-based translation strategy, and then progress towards a dynamic translation approach, whereby the Italian version will not necessarily mirror the grammatical structures of the original Japanese text, but will rather use a linguistic and cultural register appropriate to the content and structure of the source document. Students are also expected to learn the specialised vocabulary of social sciences, become familiar with key social issues in contemporary Japan, and develop the cultural awareness necessary to contextualise and interpret contents effectively.