Programme

The relationship between law and language is a complex and fascinating aspect of the current world of law. Natural language – intended as a means of communication – is one of the ingredients that ‘make up’ and express legal language, together with legal concepts and specific terms.

Translating legal concepts is more complex than, for instance, transferring the concepts from biology or medicine. Unlike in other sciences, in law, there isn’t any material reference to which a translation could be referred. For instance, the medical concept of ‘heart’ can be easily translated into Herz, cuore or cœur as the language is mediated by the materiality of the object. However, in law, legal concepts only have cultural connotations, rooted in their own history and culture, and cannot be translated literally.

Additionally, in the world, law is often expressed in more than one language and normative multilingualism is experiencing a phase of great expansion. Well-known examples are the multilingual Province of South Tyrol and the European Union.

Thus, learning legal translation means being aware of the above-mentioned characteristics of the world of law and being introduced to specific methods and strategies. Comparative law is the science whose first aim is measuring similarities and differences among the legal systems of the world. Therefore, its methodology is an indispensable tool for legal translation.

The course will introduce the participants to the science of Comparative Law, starting from the notions of ‘law’ and ‘norm’. Some methods of Comparative Law will be applied to the problems of legal translation, also by means of practical examples and a ‘serious game’.

Furthermore, the course will be dedicated to learning how the EU multilingualism has created a specific and unique legal terminology, but sometimes has caused language barriers and prevented EU citizens from enjoying their rights. The role of Comparative Law in favouring the transmission and circulation of EU rights will also be explored.

This course will provide the background and basics for anyone who works or wishes to work in legal translation and to better understand the legal backgrounds for translation in the legal domain.

For over two decades, there has been a flood of publications in Translation Studies labelled ‘multimedia translation’, ‘multidimensional translation’, ‘audiovisual translation’, ‘screen translation’ etc. These have sometimes treated film translation research as a kind of super-science, whose rampant, overwhelming interdisciplinarity seems to contradict any scientific methodology. In this course, we therefore want to attempt to do what Translation Studies have curiously failed to do so far with regard to film translation and film dubbing in particular, namely to focus on film dubbing as sui generis type of translation. We will jointly try to sketch an empirically-based theory of film dubbing as a specific type of translation, from which we will also derive concrete instructions for the practice of film dubbing.

First, we will introduce the Innsbruck approach to ‘film translation research in the narrow sense’. Then, we will answer the question posed by Guido Marc Pruys (1997) as to how film dubbing research can be put on a truly scientific basis. Prototypical problems of film dubbing from a wide range of multilingual sample material (Innsbruck film database MultiTransInn) will be selected and analysed. We will develop possible solutions following a ‘problem type – solution type’ pattern. Solutions are then summarised as recommended strategies, motivated through translation theory and generalised.

The course is aimed at anyone with a general interest in translation and translation studies (both from a theoretical or practical point of view), prospective and experienced translators, students of translation studies and philology, and of course also anyone directly involved in the theory and practice of film translation. The course is also intended as a lifelong training event for people working in the dubbing industry and all those involved in the process and product of film dubbing.

The relationship between law and language is a complex and fascinating aspect of the current world of law. Natural language – intended as a means of communication – is one of the ingredients that ‘make up’ and express legal language, together with legal concepts and specific terms.

Translating legal concepts is more complex than, for instance, transferring the concepts from biology or medicine. Unlike in other sciences, in law, there isn’t any material reference to which a translation could be referred. For instance, the medical concept of ‘heart’ can be easily translated into Herz, cuore or cœur as the language is mediated by the materiality of the object. However, in law, legal concepts only have cultural connotations, rooted in their own history and culture, and cannot be translated literally.

Additionally, in the world, law is often expressed in more than one language and normative multilingualism is experiencing a phase of great expansion. Well-known examples are the multilingual Province of South Tyrol and the European Union.

Thus, learning legal translation means being aware of the above-mentioned characteristics of the world of law and being introduced to specific methods and strategies. Comparative law is the science whose first aim is measuring similarities and differences among the legal systems of the world. Therefore, its methodology is an indispensable tool for legal translation.

The course will introduce the participants to the science of Comparative Law, starting from the notions of ‘law’ and ‘norm’. Some methods of Comparative Law will be applied to the problems of legal translation, also by means of practical examples and a ‘serious game’.

Furthermore, the course will be dedicated to learning how the EU multilingualism has created a specific and unique legal terminology, but sometimes has caused language barriers and prevented EU citizens from enjoying their rights. The role of Comparative Law in favouring the transmission and circulation of EU rights will also be explored.

This course will provide the background and basics for anyone who works or wishes to work in legal translation and to better understand the legal backgrounds for translation in the legal domain.

For over two decades, there has been a flood of publications in Translation Studies labelled ‘multimedia translation’, ‘multidimensional translation’, ‘audiovisual translation’, ‘screen translation’ etc. These have sometimes treated film translation research as a kind of super-science, whose rampant, overwhelming interdisciplinarity seems to contradict any scientific methodology. In this course, we therefore want to attempt to do what Translation Studies have curiously failed to do so far with regard to film translation and film dubbing in particular, namely to focus on film dubbing as sui generis type of translation. We will jointly try to sketch an empirically-based theory of film dubbing as a specific type of translation, from which we will also derive concrete instructions for the practice of film dubbing.

First, we will introduce the Innsbruck approach to ‘film translation research in the narrow sense’. Then, we will answer the question posed by Guido Marc Pruys (1997) as to how film dubbing research can be put on a truly scientific basis. Prototypical problems of film dubbing from a wide range of multilingual sample material (Innsbruck film database MultiTransInn) will be selected and analysed. We will develop possible solutions following a ‘problem type – solution type’ pattern. Solutions are then summarised as recommended strategies, motivated through translation theory and generalised.

The course is aimed at anyone with a general interest in translation and translation studies (both from a theoretical or practical point of view), prospective and experienced translators, students of translation studies and philology, and of course also anyone directly involved in the theory and practice of film translation. The course is also intended as a lifelong training event for people working in the dubbing industry and all those involved in the process and product of film dubbing.

Anyone working with more than one language in the field of law may face more than just linguistic differences. Each legal system has its own rules, legal concepts and knowledge structures that differ to a greater or lesser extent from those of other legal systems. There are conceptual and terminological differences even between legal systems that use the same official language, such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Sharing one and the same language does not necessarily mean sharing the same legal culture and language. For example, the same legal concept may be designated differently depending on the legal system. Vortritt (CH), Vorrang (A) and Vorfahrt (D, South Tyrol) all refer to the same situation, i.e. the right to drive first at road junctions. The same terms can also stand for different legal concepts. In Germany, for example, a Doktor is someone who has successfully completed a doctorate. However, in South Tyrol, a Doktor is anyone who has successfully completed a bachelor’s degree. Such differences can naturally lead to misunderstandings and communication difficulties.

For this reason, legal translation also means overcoming conceptual and system-related barriers. Comparative legal terminology work is a tried and tested method for uncovering similarities and differences between terms from different legal systems. This method is applied:

• at the interlingual level between legal systems that use different languages

• at the intralingual level between legal systems that use the same language (this allows to check whether two identical terms are also identical in terms of content)

This course is aimed at prospective and experienced translators who work or would like to work with legal texts of different types. It provides a theoretical grounding in applying comparative law to terminology and translation as well as practical tips, including useful tools and resources. Exercises and discussions serve to better understand theoretical aspects and put them into practice. The aim is to provide participants with a good methodological basis for finding and selecting the right equivalents when translating or interpreting legal texts. At the same time, we hope to increase the participants’ awareness of relevant differences between legal systems, including legal systems using the same official language.

Advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly the availability of tools based on Large Language Models (e.g. ChatGPT), pose new fundamental challenges for translation teaching and learning. These are mainly related to two issues, namely the integration of such tools for the development of translation competence and the preparation of students for a translation industry that is in constant flux due to technological developments.

In relation to these topics, in this course we will discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by the various stakeholders in translator training at universities. This concerns, firstly, university institutions, which need to consider new professional and social realities and adapt curricula accordingly, as well as support teachers and students through guidelines and training programmes. Secondly, the teachers are confronted with the challenge of expanding their technological expertise. They also need to consider the effects of AI use on the development of translation competence, and to learn and evaluate possible ways to use AI tools for lesson preparation and classroom exercises. The third group are the students, who find new opportunities for both task completion and autonomous learning. However, this requires technological competence and a high awareness of the drawbacks and risks associated to AI use.

Building on these questions, we will analyse possible ways of AI integration at different levels and also discuss practical examples of use for teaching and autonomous learning. The course is aimed at translation teachers, students and practitioners who want to get familiar with how translation teaching and learning is likely to change in the near future.

The course aims to show the close links between the development of simultaneous interpreting technology, the resulting changes in providing interpreting services and the necessary adaptation of cognitive processes in order to analyse the consequences of RSI (Remote Simultaneous Interpreting) on the health and psychological well-being of interpreters.

In the first part of the course, we will give a historical overview. Simultaneous interpreting owes its birth to advances in communication technologies in the 1920s, especially telephone technology. Such technologies made it possible to simultaneously translate the source speech into the target speech. It became possible to translate speeches into several languages simultaneously, as happened during the Nuremberg trials.

The first attempts at remote interpreting were made in the 1970s with the aim of having interpreters work from remote locations, which could have led to cost reductions. The first attempts at satellite transmission of simultaneous interpreting were realised by UNESCO and the United Nations. Later, the introduction of ISDN lines for video conferencing allowed to improve the audio quality. The new technical developments continued to be tested. This allowed to explore the limits of the technology and the impact of technology on interpreters. The big leap came with the COVID pandemic, with the notable use of online platforms that completely revolutionised the interpreting landscape.

The second part of the course will deal with the development of CAI tools (computer-assisted interpreting tools), their applicability in conference interpreting, how they can accompany, support or sometimes hinder the interpreting process and how these tools and artificial intelligence can affect the cognitive load of interpreters.

The course is aimed at interpreting professionals, students and teachers.

Due to their potential to generate natural language, large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are currently a much-discussed topic. They are increasingly finding their way into the everyday lives of many professions, including the fields of translation and terminology work.

The possible applications of LLMs in these areas are diverse. In the field of specialised translation, they range from appropriate translations and contextualisation to quality assurance and evaluation. In the field of terminology work, they can be used for the extraction or explanation of terminology, for the creation of concept systems or for the design of terminology databases.

The aim of the course is for participants to recognise possible areas of application for LLMs in translation and terminology work and to be able to use them responsibly in their work by means of prompt engineering. Participants should also be aware of the limitations and ethical and legal implications of using LLMs.

The course is aimed at translation and terminology professionals, students and teachers.

The course will deal with the linguistic and semiotic aspects of describing literary source texts and explaining literary translation as well as with their teaching in the context of translator training.

In German-speaking countries, there are hardly any opportunities to study literary translation at university. Both practising and prospective literary translators still mainly proceed intuitively in their work. This is partly due to the fact that there is virtually no translation theory that makes it easier for translators to deal with literary source texts by explaining the special nature of these texts and the process of literary translation while providing practical guidelines. In my habilitation project, I have attempted to close this gap by developing a text analysis model for literary texts based on linguistic and semiotic aspects. The model can be used to create a translation standard for literary source texts with the aim of preserving their unique secondary structure. It can also serve the purposes of translation critique for existing literary translations. The model was tested with translation students at Innsbruck university.

During the course, we will follow a didactic approach to basic literary translation knowledge for translators, which has been proven to increase translators’ competence. On request, we can also discuss the possibilities and limitations of using machine tools in literary translation and practical aspects of the literary translator profession (in Austria and Germany).

In addition to the theoretical introductions to each level of the text model, we will deal with selected translation difficulties on the basis of texts from Austrian literature. We will analyse and develop translation standards for each text (without going into too much detail). Depending on the composition (language combinations and previous knowledge) of the group, we will also use parallel texts.

The course is aimed at prospective literary translators, teachers of literary translation, practising literary translators and anyone interested in literary translation (including people with no prior knowledge).

At a time in which Machine Translation (MT) is becoming more and more integrated into translation workflows, the challenges translators are required to face are evolving at an unprecedented pace. Starting from an overview of the main shortcomings associated with the use of MT and other widely-used translation technologies, notably Computer-Assisted Translation tools, this course will showcase IT tools and methods that make it possible to overcome such shortcomings. By adopting a practical, problem-based approach, we will focus on translation-relevant problems such as the retrieval of high-quality texts for documentation purposes, the identification of appropriate terminological equivalents, as well as stylistic checks on the ‘naturalness’ or idiomaticity of target texts.

In the first part of the course, we will cover well-established technologies and methods, in particular search engines (focusing on advanced search functionalities) and text corpora, i.e. large collections of texts collected for translation-inherent purposes (including translation, revision and terminology work). Participants will experience first-hand how to consult multilingual corpora using freely available software and how to search large reference corpora, progressing from simpler searches to more sophisticated ones.

Once we have laid the grounds, the second part of the course will be devoted to a comparison between these technologies and new systems based on generative Artificial Intelligence (e.g. ChatGPT) when applied to documentation and terminology tasks. The ultimate aim will be that of exploring their potential, but also raising awareness on their limitations.

The course is aimed at practising translators and translation students interested in how technologies can be integrated in the translation workflow.

Will machine translation be able to replace human translators in the domain of law? Will machine translated texts be so good that post-editing will be sufficient?

Legal texts generally represent an utterly complex reality of facts and norms, which is inevitably reflected in legal language. In addition, legal communication has a traditional and conventional character, which varies depending on each legal language. This does not necessarily foster the comprehensibility of legal texts. Legal texts cannot be understood – let alone translated –  without knowing their function and their historical dimension that determines the respective convention and without knowing how legal experts think and work.

How much of these knowledge requirements will the machine translation systems be able to fulfil in the future, given the constant evolution of artificial intelligence? How error-prone will they remain? What will the job profile of the legal translator become like? We will address these questions starting from Italian legal texts to be translated into German. We will discuss existing challenges considering the special features of legal translation, the specific characteristics of different texts and languages, translation problems and difficulties. We will also compare the human translation of the texts with the translations produced by various machine translation systems.

The course is aimed at anyone who drafts and/or translates texts professionally. It is also aimed at students of translation and law.

Terminology is an area of particular concern in translation and interpreting. Each domain has its specific features, but there are some interesting generalisations to be made about the nature of terms which have an impact on their definition and their treatment in translation and interpreting.

In this course, some generalisations will be made on the basis of the domain of wine. Terminology in this domain concerns a range of related areas, including wine production, sale and labelling of wine, and wine tasting. We will consider a selection of terms from these areas and their definitions. The analysis leads to a classification of terms according to the kind of requirements their definitions should meet. This classification is useful both for terminologists who need to formulate a definition and for translators and interpreters who need to assess the status of the definitions they find.

The course is aimed at translation and terminology professionals and students as well as wine lovers.

Language mediators in the legal domain must also work as legal mediators, i.e. they must be able to compare, understand and explain legal content, because the legal accuracy of their translations (especially in certified translation) determines whether the respective proceedings are lawful. Such interlingual legal mediation between legal cultures that may be quite distant from each other is particularly complicated and risky.

The German, Russian and Ukrainian legal systems will serve as examples in the course. These legal systems show certain similarities because they are part of the same legal family and have been influenced by the German legal theory the 19th century. Nevertheless, today they differ significantly in many areas of law. The course aims to examine aspects linked to the legal system and legal culture that are relevant for legal translation in the context of these three legal systems and to draw attention to guidelines and requirements in this area of specialised translation.

In the practical part of the course, we will focus on the legal consequences of incorrect legal translations. In particular, we will deal with the typical legal consequences for natural and legal persons. Our aim is to rise awareness among course participants and help preventing such undesirable legal consequences, including possible liability. Modern legal terminology databases will be presented as important tools, including the JuDUD database. JuDUD is a virtual multilingual laboratory for the collection and comparison of legal terminology and documents. The termbase allows a wide range of professionals to cooperate remotely. We will also practice functional methods of legal translation and simulate legal procedures involving translators and interpreters.

The examples will be in German, Russian, Ukrainian and English. The course is aimed at experienced and aspiring translators as well as anyone interested in the subject.

Within a natural language, as many legal languages exist as legal systems that use this natural language. Consequently, legal translation implies translation from one ‘source language legal system’ to a specific ‘target language legal system’. This has huge consequences on legal translation. Therefore, the course will first deal with legal translation and its relationship with comparative law.

We will deal with the search for an equivalent in the target language legal system for a term from the source language legal system. We will also discuss subsidiary solutions, e.g. neologisms. In legal translation, a neologism can be a word that does not exist in the target language legal system but exists in another legal system that uses the same natural language.

Another paramount topic is the protection of minority languages and the use of these languages in the judiciary as provided by Article 9 of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. We will explain the systems of protection of languages under the Charter and discuss the difficulties in implementing the obligations set forth in Art. 9. Special attention will be given to protected languages that do not have an established legal vocabulary. In that case, it is key to develop a comprehensive legal vocabulary in the minority language to be able to fulfil certain obligations under the Charter.

The approach to developing a legal terminology in a minority language differs considerably depending on whether the minority language is used as a legal language in another jurisdiction (e.g. German) or is a unique language which is not a legal language in any jurisdiction (e.g. Ladin). However, there is also a category in between: if the language is as such unique (e.g. Papiamentu in the island Bonaire) but contains many terms used in or similar to languages used in the same or other jurisdictions (for Papiamentu: Dutch and Spanish).

It is of paramount importance to develop a bilingual legal dictionary between a minority language and the majority language of the jurisdiction involved. We will discuss the criteria that should be met by such dictionaries. Special attention will be given to the challenges and opportunities of on-line bilingual legal dictionaries.

The course is for legal and translation or interpreting professionals, scholars and students and anyone interested in minority language protection.

Revision has traditionally been conceived as the final step of the translation workflow, which can take various forms depending on several factors, such as the type and degree of revision needed, the number of professionals involved, the time allocated, whether international standards must be complied with, etc. The course will present settings where collaborative forms of revision of legal and judicial texts translated from Italian into English are performed in ways that deviate from the standard translation workflow, i.e. the translation-editing-proofreading (TEP) framework.

The first setting is academic and concerns two translation projects conducted at the IUSLIT Department for Legal, Language, Interpretation and Translation Sciences of the University of Trieste. In the first project, aimed at the translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, revision was carried out almost simultaneously with translation. In the second project, Italian judgments dealing with immigration and asylum cases were translated only after the source texts underwent an editing phase so as to facilitate final revision. The second setting is institutional and regards an ongoing collaboration with the Italian Constitutional Court.

Despite the differences in the projects presented, in both settings translators and revisers work in close collaboration with lawyers who are either experts in the field or even the authors of the source texts. These practices, which ensure a higher quality of the final product, would probably be economically unsustainable in the freelance translation industry. However, the aim of the course is to use concrete examples to highlight the necessary involvement of translators and revisers as well as experts and drafters in the whole translation workflow, which should be seen as a circular process rather than a linear one, and to inspire reflection and debate on the skills translators and revisers should have to perform their job efficiently.

The course is aimed at translators and legal experts working with legal texts as well as at scholars and students interested in the revision and in general in the translation workflow.

Language is phraseological by nature, i.e. it consists of words that only acquire their meaning and communicative value in connection with other words with which they form typical word combinations. These word combinations, called phrasemes or set expressions, are characterised by their polylexicality and varying degrees of strength and idiomaticity. This applies not only to general language, but also to specialised languages. The latter also have word combinations in their specialised vocabulary (i.e. specialised collocations).

We will first give a general introduction to the topic and present a possible classification of subject-specific phrasemes. We will analyse some texts from a subdomain of law from the point of view of subject-specific phraseology. Then, we will examine the possibilities offered by modern corpus query systems for identifying phrasemes in monolingual or parallel corpora. We will try different tools and test them, for example, for term and collocation extraction.

The aim of the course is to show the relevance of specialised phraseology for the interpretation of legal language and also to convey practical skills. These are required for retrieving terminological data for compiling termbases or producing specialised translations.

The course is aimed at experienced and aspiring translators as well as anyone interested in the subject.

NB: Course participants will work with their own laptop.

Machine translation systems are still not capable of producing perfect translations. To achieve high quality translations, the machine-translated output has to be corrected by professional translators. This is called post-editing. Post-editing has become an established task on the professional translation market.

In this course on post-editing machine translation, we will first look at the basics.

• How does machine translation work?

• What is post-editing?

• How can machine translation be integrated into the translation process?

In the second and third parts, we will focus on practical post-editing.

• What are the post-editing guidelines?

• What needs to be considered for different text types and subject areas?

• What are the risks of using machine translation?

We will focus on post-editing with practical exercises and concrete text examples.

By the end of the course, participants will

• have collected basic post-editing experience

• be able to reflect on the benefits and possible disadvantages of using machine translation for different projects

Translation students and experienced practitioners are very welcome to join the course.

This course is based on two different sets of experiences: post-editing for commercial translations on one hand, and literary translation on the other hand.

For the former, we will examine a few of the major problems of post-editing encountered in the translation practice in the language combination German-Italian. While some of them are due to be corrected along with the improvements that will be achieved in artificial intelligence, others will never be solved since a machine can hardly replace a translator’s purposeful approach such as the one contemplated by the Skopos Theory.

For the latter, we will examine several examples of literary translation in the combination German-Italian, and specifically the Italian published translations of authors such as Wolf Wondratschek, Ulrike Draesner, Antje Rávik Strubel, Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch. The sheer quality of literary texts, whose goal is not to send a message and allow communication, but rather to reproduce an author’s voice, demands an approach to translation that goes beyond the translation proper and that only humans can perform.

Professionals and students interested in translation practice, post-editing practice and literary translation are welcome to join the course. The course is sponsored by the Landesverband der Übersetzer / Unione Provinciale Traduttori and is particularly aimed at the members of this local association of translators.