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Exploring questions of representativeness, balance and comparability is essential to tailoring corpus design and compilation to research goals, and to ensuring the validity of research results. This is especially true when the target population of texts under examination is very large and transcends a restricted area of specialization and/or covers multiple genres, as in the case of texts translated in institutional settings. This paper describes the multilayered sequential approach to corpus building applied in a comparative study on legal translation in three of these settings. The approach is based on a full mapping and categorization of institutional texts from a legal perspective; it applies an innovative combination of stratified sampling techniques integrating quantitative and qualitative criteria adapted to the research aims. The resulting corpora, categorization matrix and selection records, together with the methodological detail provided, can be useful for building other multi-genre corpora in translation studies and further afield.

The history of religion is always a history of translation, too. When spoken words are transcribed, scriptures are created that are considered sacred and universally applicable. Translating holy writings in order to spread one’s own religion poses certain challenges for translators, such as how to bridge the gaps between source and target languages. Sometimes, the original language is no longer spoken or precisely known. In some religious traditions, a particular language is reserved for scriptures and considered untranslatable. And an ability to deal correctly with multiple writing systems and alphabets is also required. Religious texts are full of puzzles and mysteries. Deciphering (i.e. translating) them is also an important part of today’s humanities. Materials from Leipzig University Library spanning two thousand years are a source of knowledge about humans’ efforts to explain their own or other people’s religion in words and images.

I investigate the relationship between sports-based entertainment and crime using nine years of hourly data on robberies and thefts by police district in São Paulo linked to information on 430 football matches. Results report a citywide voluntary incapacitation impact and a local spatial concentration effect. Robberies significantly drop during matches, especially high-audience ones. Around the stadiums, this effect is outweighed by that of concentration. While I find no evidence of spatial displacement, temporal displacement is at play, with offenses being moved up to pre-game time. I show that the game-crime link is likely deployed through potential criminals rather than victims.

Despite the persistent focus on terminology in legal translation studies, to date, no large-scale research has empirically explored the difficulty of terminology in translating legal genres. Approaches to translation difficulty in translation studies more broadly remain limited in scope. To fill this gap, a study was conducted to measure the difficulty associated with the translation of legal terminology and phraseology, as well as with terminology of other domains, in the LETRINT 1+ corpus, including nine representative genres of three institutional settings (the European Union, the United Nations and the World Trade Organization). For comparative purposes, four levels of translation difficulty were assigned to multiple terminological features by a group of specialized translators through a consensus-building process of annotation based on the cognitive effort estimated for translation decision-making. The difficulty scores obtained confirm the correlation between legal singularity and higher translation difficulty, as well as the connection of more commonly used legal terms and phrasemes, and core economic terms, with lower difficulty levels. The findings also provide evidence of the prominence of non-legal specialized terminology in institutional legal discourses, and the aggregate terminological difficulty levels of each genre examined, which can be particularly useful for informing translation quality assurance, project management and translator training.

In der Arbeit wird eine translationsorientierte Rechtsvergleichung des deutschen und französischen Güterrechts vorgenommen, um daraus übersetzungsrelevante Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede in Bezug auf die Textsorte Ehevertrag abzuleiten. Die grundsätzliche Fragestellung lautet, wie Eheleute ihre güterrechtlichen Verhältnisse in Deutschland und Frankreich per Ehevertrag regeln können. Nach ausführlichen Länderberichten werden ausgewählte Ehevertragsmuster exemplarisch dargestellt. Parallel dazu wird ein zweisprachiges Glossar erstellt, das relevante güterrechtliche Termini mit teils eigenen Übersetzungsvorschlägen enthält. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, dem/der Übersetzer:in eine Übersicht über die güterrechtlichen Strukturen beider Länder zu vermitteln und konkrete Übersetzungsvorschläge zu bieten, insbesondere auch für nicht deckungsgleiche Termini und Rechtsinstitute. Die Arbeit soll damit angesichts einer zunehmenden Zahl von Ehen mit Auslandsbezug oder binationalen Ehen einen rechtstranslatologsichen und translationspraktischen Beitrag für Übersetzer:innen leisten.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Statistiken 1.2 Abgrenzung zu PACS 2 Textsorte Ehevertrag 2.1 Begriffliche Definitionen 2.2 Übersetzungspraxis bei Eheverträgen 2.3 Besonderheiten des Urkundenübersetzens 2.4 Besonderheiten des juristischen Übersetzens: zwischen Sprach- und Rechtsvergleich 3 Grundsätzlicher Aufbau des deutschen und französischen Rechtssystems 3.1 Unterschiedliche Rechtskreise 3.2 Tendenz der Annäherung nationaler Rechtssysteme 3.3 Unterschiedliche Kodifikationsstile des BGB und C. civ. 3.4 Einführung in das Vertragsrecht 3.4.1 Das deutsche Vertragsrecht 3.4.2 Das französische Vertragsrecht 3.4.3 Bewertung von Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden 3.5 Funktionale Rechtsvergleichung als Mittel der Wahl 4 Länderberichte: Güterrecht in Deutschland und Frankreich 4.1 Deutschland 4.1.1 Einführung in das deutsche Güterrecht 4.1.2 Der gesetzliche Güterstand der Zugewinngemeinschaft 4.1.3 Vertragliche Güterstände a. Die Gütertrennung b. Die Gütergemeinschaft 4.2 Frankreich 4.2.1 Einführung in das französische Güterrecht 4.2.2 Der gesetzliche Güterstand der communauté réduite aux acquêts a. Vergleich der gesetzlichen Güterstande in Deutschland und Frankreich 4.2.3 Vertragliche Güterstände a. Die communauté universelle b. Die communauté de meubles et acquêts c. Die séparation des biens d. Die participation aux acquêts 4.3 Abschließende Bewertung von Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden 4.4 Güterrecht bei Ehen mit Auslandsbezug 4.4.1 EU-Verordnungen zum Güterrecht 4.4.2 Probleme bei Ehen mit Auslandsbezug 4.5 Die deutsch-französische Wahl-Zugewinngemeinschaft 4.5.1 Bestrebungen zur Vereinheitlichung des Güterrechts 5 Der Ehevertrag aus juristischer Perspektive 5.1 Der deutsche Ehevertrag 5.1.1 Funktion und Regelungsinhalte a. Eheverträge im engeren Sinne b. Eheverträge im weiteren Sinne c. Abgrenzung zu Scheidungsfolgen- und Trennungsvereinbarungen 5.1.2 Abschluss und Wirksamkeitsvoraussetzungen 5.1.3 Inhaltliche Vertragsfreiheit und ihre Grenzen 5.2 Der französische Ehevertrag 5.2.1 Funktion und Regelungsinhalte 5.2.2 Avantages matrimoniaux (güterrechtliche Vorteile) 5.2.3 Abschluss und Wirksamkeitsvoraussetzungen 5.2.4 Inhaltliche Vertragsfreiheit und ihre Grenzen 5.3 Bewertung von Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden 6 Eheverträge aus translatorischer Perspektive 6.1 Betrachtung ausgewählter Vertragsmuster 6.2 Textsortenkonventionen 6.3 Übersetzungsverfahren 7 Zusammenfassung und abschließende Bewertung Verzeichnisse und Anhänge Literatur Ehevertragsmuster Glossar The main focus of the thesis lies on a translation-oriented legal comparison of the German and French matrimonial property law. The goal is to identify legal, formal, and linguistic similarities and differences of prenuptial agreements in Germany and France, which might be important for translators. The central question of the research is how spouses can set up their property relations in Germany and in France through prenuptial agreements. After a detailed representation of the country specific legal structures, some German and French prenuptial agreements will be discussed as examples. The final section consists of a bilingual glossary which contains relevant legal terminology in this field with possible translation solutions. The main goal of the paper is to provide translators with an overview of the German and French property law system and to offer potential translation solutions, especially with respect to terms and legal institutions without direct equivalents in the other legal system.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Statistiken 1.2 Abgrenzung zu PACS 2 Textsorte Ehevertrag 2.1 Begriffliche Definitionen 2.2 Übersetzungspraxis bei Eheverträgen 2.3 Besonderheiten des Urkundenübersetzens 2.4 Besonderheiten des juristischen Übersetzens: zwischen Sprach- und Rechtsvergleich 3 Grundsätzlicher Aufbau des deutschen und französischen Rechtssystems 3.1 Unterschiedliche Rechtskreise 3.2 Tendenz der Annäherung nationaler Rechtssysteme 3.3 Unterschiedliche Kodifikationsstile des BGB und C. civ. 3.4 Einführung in das Vertragsrecht 3.4.1 Das deutsche Vertragsrecht 3.4.2 Das französische Vertragsrecht 3.4.3 Bewertung von Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden 3.5 Funktionale Rechtsvergleichung als Mittel der Wahl 4 Länderberichte: Güterrecht in Deutschland und Frankreich 4.1 Deutschland 4.1.1 Einführung in das deutsche Güterrecht 4.1.2 Der gesetzliche Güterstand der Zugewinngemeinschaft 4.1.3 Vertragliche Güterstände a. Die Gütertrennung b. Die Gütergemeinschaft 4.2 Frankreich 4.2.1 Einführung in das französische Güterrecht 4.2.2 Der gesetzliche Güterstand der communauté réduite aux acquêts a. Vergleich der gesetzlichen Güterstande in Deutschland und Frankreich 4.2.3 Vertragliche Güterstände a. Die communauté universelle b. Die communauté de meubles et acquêts c. Die séparation des biens d. Die participation aux acquêts 4.3 Abschließende Bewertung von Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden 4.4 Güterrecht bei Ehen mit Auslandsbezug 4.4.1 EU-Verordnungen zum Güterrecht 4.4.2 Probleme bei Ehen mit Auslandsbezug 4.5 Die deutsch-französische Wahl-Zugewinngemeinschaft 4.5.1 Bestrebungen zur Vereinheitlichung des Güterrechts 5 Der Ehevertrag aus juristischer Perspektive 5.1 Der deutsche Ehevertrag 5.1.1 Funktion und Regelungsinhalte a. Eheverträge im engeren Sinne b. Eheverträge im weiteren Sinne c. Abgrenzung zu Scheidungsfolgen- und Trennungsvereinbarungen 5.1.2 Abschluss und Wirksamkeitsvoraussetzungen 5.1.3 Inhaltliche Vertragsfreiheit und ihre Grenzen 5.2 Der französische Ehevertrag 5.2.1 Funktion und Regelungsinhalte 5.2.2 Avantages matrimoniaux (güterrechtliche Vorteile) 5.2.3 Abschluss und Wirksamkeitsvoraussetzungen 5.2.4 Inhaltliche Vertragsfreiheit und ihre Grenzen 5.3 Bewertung von Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden 6 Eheverträge aus translatorischer Perspektive 6.1 Betrachtung ausgewählter Vertragsmuster 6.2 Textsortenkonventionen 6.3 Übersetzungsverfahren 7 Zusammenfassung und abschließende Bewertung Verzeichnisse und Anhänge Literatur Ehevertragsmuster Glossar

The objective of this paper is to develop an simulation model able to test different language education orientations and their consequences for the EU population in terms of linguistic disenfranchisement, that is, the inability of citizens to understand EU documents and parliamentary discussions should their native language(s) no longer be official. I will focus on the impact of linguistic distance and language learning. Ideally, this model would be a tool to help EU policy makers make informed decisions about language practices and education policies, taking into account their consequences in terms of diversity and linguistic disenfranchisement. The model can be used to force agents to make certain choices in terms of language skills acquisition. The user can then go on to compare different scenarios in which language skills are acquired according to different rationales. The idea is that, by forcing agents to adopt certain language learning strategies, the model user can simulate policies promoting the acquisition of language skills and get an idea of their impact. In this way, the model allows not only to sketch various scenarios of the evolution of language skills among EU citizens, but also to estimate the level of disenfranchisement in each of these scenarios.

Aims and objectives: Past research has shown that multicultural experience and multilingualism can be positively associated with creativity. However, very few studies have focused simultaneously on all these variables. Our aim is to consider both sets of predictors simultaneously, clarifying whether the impact of these variables on creativity is cumulative or redundant. Design/methodology/approach: The design combines correlational and quasi-experimental approaches. It is also strongly multivariate and includes various measurement methods. Variables of interest were assessed with questionnaires ( N = 596) and creativity tasks ( N = 174) in laboratory settings. The scope of the study, therefore, is relatively large and encompasses several indicators. Data and analysis: We use multiple regressions with latent and manifest variables. Latent variables were constructed for all sets of key predictors (multilingualism, traveling experience, living abroad experience); predictors were regressed on four types of creativity variables, also latent in most cases (creative potential; creative interests, activities, and achievements; creative performance in a writing task; creative performance on a remote association task). Findings/conclusions: Results shows that both multicultural experience and multilingualism are positively related with various manifestations of creativity. Overall, the results indicate complementary effects of multicultural experience and multilingualism on creativity. The most robust predictors are multilingualism and variables representing deep immersion in foreign countries. Originality: Three features make this study unique: (a) it examines both multilingualism and multiculturalism; (b) the sample population is broader than in most studies, which often focus on migrant populations; and (c) it implements a multimethod operationalization of creativity. Significance/implications: The paper goes beyond received approaches to the link between human diversity and creativity; the analysis is put in relation with other research work that focuses on policy implications for diversity, particularly in the areas of bilingualism and bicultural identity. Implications regarding the connections between creativity, multilingualism, and general executive functioning are also discussed.

In the context of an ever-increasing use of social networks, researchers have studied their use in higher education and the development of communities of practice in formal and informal virtual learning environments. However, no research so far has linked non-institutional group chats and (situated) learning as part of interpreter training. This qualitative study therefore aims to explore how a Facebook group chat amongst students of the University of Geneva's master's programme in Conference Interpreting contributed to learning. The content of the group chat among five students was analysed and complemented by semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that the group chat is used for study-related content and social conversations and that a (sub-)community of practice has developed among the five students. Findings also show that they think the group chat contributed to their success in the master's programme, both through the close and friendly relationships fostered and academically, although to different extents. Looking at these results against the backdrop of the existing literature could give pointers to students and trainers on how such social networking tools can be used in a beneficial way.

In this article, I examine UK, Swiss and Spanish online news articles that report on a violent event (Nice, France, 14 July 2016) and that were published on the first day of the news cycle. I focus...

This article explores the role of the affective in interpreting in intractable conflicts. Drawing on the results of a participatory research project exploring the lived experiences of civilian interpreters and Spanish military personnel who worked in Afghanistan, the article argues that emotions shape the interpreter’s behaviour and have an impact on the interpreter’s positionality. There are differences, however, between national and local interpreters, which stem from their previous experiences and how these have shaped their understanding of the conflict. This has also led them to develop different attitudes that influence their perception and interpretation of reality. Accepting that emotions do exist and that they influence the interpreter’s decisions and behaviour should inform the design of tailored training programmes. The key aspects of a well-informed training programme are therefore not limited to language and culture, professionalism and ethics, and military competencies, but also include awareness about the role of emotions.

Effective information mining for legal terminological research in translation is largely determined by the ability to contextualize concepts in their legal framework and to resort to relevant legal sources. Specialized knowledge of these sources thus emerges as a competence marker that is expected to converge with that of comparative law practitioners. Against this background, a survey was conducted in order to examine institutional translators' use of resources for translation in general and their perceptions of sources for legal translation in particular. The data provided by 234 respondents from 12 international organizations offer a comprehensive portrait of translation professionals and information-mining practices in these settings. Profile features in terms of legal translation frequency, main translation specializations and academic backgrounds were correlated to relevance and reliability scores assigned to the sources used for legal terminological research. The results confirm several hypotheses based on generally accepted indicators of specialization in this field, including the prioritization of monolingual lexicographical resources over bilingual ones and the higher reliability of primary legal sources over institutional terminological databases and previous translations. Common patterns and variations between institutions and profiles, as well as their implications for institutional terminology management and translation quality, are briefly discussed.

From the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it became clear that the practices of naming the disease, its nature and its handling by the health authorities, the news media and the politicians had social and ideological implications. This article presents a sociosemiotic study of such practices as reflected in a corpus of headlines of eight newspapers of four countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. After an analysis of the institutional naming choices of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, the study focuses on the changes in newspapers’ naming patterns following the WHO’s announcement of the disease name on 11 February 2020. A subsequent political controversy related to naming in the United States is then examined in reports of The New York Times and The Washington Post as a further illustration of how public discourses and perceptions can rapidly evolve in the context of health crises.

This introductory chapter offers a brief account of the history behind this book, which originates in the MIME project, where ‘MIME’ stands for ‘Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe’. This project, which was funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Innovation and Research as part of the DG’s seventh Framework Programme, presents an exceptional degree of interdisciplinarity. A dozen different disciplines from the social sciences and humanities were involved, with a total of 25 participating teams from 16 different countries. The project’s analytical framework, which federates the inputs from these various disciplines, rests on the concept of trade-off – in this case, between two desirable, but non-converging goals, namely ‘mobility’ and ‘inclusion’. This general introduction shows how the trade-off can be used as a structuring device to approach the ‘multilingual challenge’ confronting Europe and its citizens, before describing the main thrust of each of the subsequent 25 chapters. The findings presented here, which go beyond the results provided in the MIME project outputs, aim to make this interdisciplinary experience available to a wide readership of scholars.

This chapter proposes a novel perspective on language policy as a form of public policy, highlighting some of the epistemological implications of this approach and discussing its linkages with more standard approaches originating in applied linguistics. After introducing the relevance of interdisciplinarity and complexity as defining features of this enterprise, it focuses on the connections between principles of public policy on the one hand, and the specificities of language policy on the other hand. To this end, this chapter develops an entirely novel typology of the main dimensions of language policy (type, domain, sphere, tier, welfare, target, causation and instrument), with which the latter may be extensively described and characterised. These dimensions bring to the fore the importance of jointly considering the micro, meso and macro levels at which language policies necessarily unfold. Given the extreme complexity of practically any language policy, and the associated difficulty of establishing the full range of effects (including both advantages and drawbacks) of alternative policy choices, analysts often need to fall back on pragmatic solutions in the selection and design process. Accordingly, this chapter emphasizes the role of plausibility as a valid criterion for evaluating such effects.

This contribution explores the nature of the learning and learning relationships that have emerged between cultural mediators who have been working for the Italian NGO Emergency ONG Onlus at its Castel Volturno outpatient clinic since 2015. The contribution is part of an ongoing qualitative research study based on semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations. By drawing on Engeström's (1987) theory of expansive learning and Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of situated learning, the article questions traditional approaches to learning and notions of what constitutes an appropriate learning environment in this context. The findings show that the cultural mediators forge a community of practice that helps them construct and implement a new learning concept for their collective activity through learning by doing. This community of practice is pivotal for the work of the organisation as a whole, as it makes extensive use of languages and cultural mediation to provide guidance and mutual assistance and to contribute to the overall attainment of the organisation's humanitarian goals.

We report the results of an eye-tracking study which used the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) to investigate the time-course of prediction during a simultaneous interpreting task. Twenty-four L1 French professional conference interpreters and twenty-four L1 French professional translators untrained in simultaneous interpretation listened to sentences in English and interpreted them simultaneously into French while looking at a visual scene. Sentences contained a highly predictable word (e.g., The dentist asked the man to open his mouth a little wider). The visual scene comprised four objects, one of which depicted either the target object (mouth; bouche), an English phonological competitor (mouse; souris), a French phonological competitor (cork; bouchon), or an unrelated word (bone; os). We considered 1) whether interpreters and translators predict upcoming nouns during a simultaneous interpreting task, 2) whether interpreters and translators predict the form of these nouns in English and in French and 3) whether interpreters and translators manifest different predictive behaviour. Our results suggest that both interpreters and translators predict upcoming nouns, but neither group predicts the word-form of these nouns. In addition, we did not find significant differences between patterns of prediction in interpreters and translators. Thus, evidence from the visual-world paradigm shows that prediction takes place in simultaneous interpreting, regardless of training and experience. However, we were unable to establish whether word-form was predicted.

This article explores the creation of communities of practice in the context of military training and capacity-building missions deployed by Western armed forces in countries in conflict. It reports on a participatory study with Spanish military officers deployed in Afghanistan and civilian interpreters who worked for them. The discussion is framed in new military doctrines that advocate for strengthening local forces of countries in conflict and premised on Lave and Wenger's (1991) social theory of learning. The article argues that, when civilian interpreters start to work for the military, they lack knowledge of military procedure and of interpreting skills. For their part, the military personnel are generally not aware of the non-linguistic elements and culture-specific aspects of communication. Group cohesion is created, allowing for an iterative exchange of information and a constant learning process. Since civilian interpreters have not been trained before being recruited by the armed forces, their role as interpreters is contingent on their role as legitimate peripheral participants in the military sphere. The interpreters' personal background and their language proficiency in Spanish conditioned their degree of participation in the community of practice.

This chapter investigates the relations between multilingualism, multicultural experience and creativity at both a theoretical and an empirical level. Starting with a general discussion about the cost and benefits of linguistic diversity, we argue that one of the benefits of multilingualism is enhanced creativity and, hence, a greater potential for innovation. After introducing formal definitions of multilingualism and creativity, both of which are complex and can prove difficult to conceptualize and operationalize, we discuss previous research on bilingualism and creativity, as well as on multicultural experience and creativity. We synthesize this literature and identify its strengths and limitations. A key issue is that the impact of bilingualism/multilingualism and multicultural experience on creativity had never been studied jointly so far. The empirical section of the paper then estimates multivariate models with a large sample (n = 596). Results shows that both multilingualism and multicultural experience are positively associated with creativity, with standardized effect sizes ranging from .20 to .50 depending on specification. These results are discussed in methodological and theoretical perspective. We discuss implications for language policy, as well as the challenges related to causal inference and the possible generalization of these results at the group level.

We explore whether including cultural reforms in an intra-state peace accord facilitates its success. We distinguish between accommodationist and integrationist cultural provisions and employ a mixed research method combining negative binomial regression on a data set of all intra-state political agreements concluded between 1989 and 2017, and an in-depth analysis of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland. We recognize the important reassuring effect of accommodationist cultural reforms in separatist conflicts. However, we also find that they have an important and hitherto overlooked reputational effect across all conflict types. By enhancing the reputation of negotiating leaders, accommodationist cultural provisions contribute to ending violence by preventing leadership challenges, rebel fragmentation and remobilization across all civil conflicts. By the same logic, and despite the overwhelming emphasis of peace agreements on integrationist cultural initiatives, integrationist cultural reforms problematize leaders' ability to commit to pacts and to ensure compliance among their rank and file.

Agent-based modelling belongs to the wider category of computational modelling and is used to replicate real-world social or physical systems and simulate their behaviour in a computer environment, with a view to studying the rules that govern them. Although agent-based modelling has quickly gained recognition in the natural sciences, social scientists only started to explore its potential in the last few decades. This trend has gained momentum over the last ten years, and applications of agent-based modelling to the social sciences have been steadily increasing. Researchers dealing with complex phenomena (in both the social and natural sciences) are increasingly switching from purely analytical (i.e. mathematical) approaches (which often attempt to find a 'closed-form solution' to a problem) to computation-based approaches (which rely on algorithms and simulations). Whereas applications of analytical methods to study language-related issues have a long-standing tradition, systematic adoption of a complexity-based view of language matters and application of computational methods have yet to establish themselves. However, recent research in language studies shows attempts to address the complexity of language-related issues in a more systematic way. Particular attention is devoted to the fact that such issues involve numerous agents and variables, and causal links between these variables are often non-linear. Although it may be challenging to model such systems through equations, agent-based modelling offers a natural solution, in that it provides an easy way of replicating various degrees of diversity in a computer environment. These models can then be run many times with various settings to study the system's short-term and long-term behaviour and the way it responds to different initial conditions. Agent-based modelling lends itself very well both to studies that investigate the nature and functioning of languages and to sociolinguistic studies that focus on language-mediated interactions between individuals.

Evaluation is a critical question: what should be evaluated and how? With which goal? The predominating orientation of the Bologna reform is to prepare students for the job market in a knowledge economy, which materialises in two lines of action. The first one is related to the goal: students must be ready to integrate the job market right away. The second consists in equipping students to provide them with concrete tools for lifelong professional development. This is particularly important due to digital disruption and changing occupations. To certify students, institutions apply given assessment norms to guarantee the issued diploma’s quality. For instance, before the pandemic, an exam could be taken online only if the physical location meets the required standards. The present study documents the variation in the exam design of a Bachelor programme that is made available in two modalities. Authors – the pedagogical advisor and the director of the programme – take the opportunity of insights gained through different exam sessions between January 2020 and January 2022 to set directions for open and resource-rich oriented exams in the future. Student authentication and authorship checking appear to be key variables in open assessment.

The United Nations (UN) is an entity created by treaty with the ultimate goal of working in good faith on issues of common interest. The aims of the UN are the following: maintain international peace and security; foster international cooperation in social, cultural and economic terms; develop close relationships between nations based on the guiding principles of self- determination and equal rights; and recognise the fundamental rights of the entire world population. Conference interpreting is socially situated and carried out in a particular community of practice. This community takes the form of the organisation in which the interpreting takes place, and is characterised by the topics interpreted, as well as the profession's norms, culture and ideology. This chapter presents an overview of conference interpreting at the UN, from its beginnings to the challenges of the present day. It endeavours to provide an overview of the accreditation examinations, the various categories of interpreter employed by the organisation, the challenges involved and the working conditions.

Les théoriciens de la traduction juridique s'accordent pour présenter celle-ci comme une activité interdisciplinaire dont la méthodologie fait largement appel au droit comparé. Comment concrétiser cet « acquis théorique » sur le terrain de la formation des traducteurs ? Le présent article traite des moyens d'intégrer le droit comparé dans l'acquisition des savoirs et des savoir-faire qui constituent les compétences du traducteur. Il met l'accent sur la résolution des problèmes de terminologie juridique qui résultent de la divergence des notions entre systèmes. Puisqu'il s'agit d'apprendre à comparer les droits pour traduire, il est utile d'aborder ces problèmes dans une optique fonctionnaliste, principalement à travers la confrontation de divers cas de figure et situations susceptibles de se présenter au traducteur professionnel. Dans cette perspective, l'auteur propose de faire une place, parmi les méthodes d'enseignement, à un travail ciblé sur les problèmes de terminologie nécessitant un passage par le droit comparé. Un ensemble d'activités didactiques sont présentées à cet effet.

Many of Fishman’s contributions to understanding language in society stress the importance of dynamics, drawing attention to the complex interplay of micro-, meso- and macro-level factors from which an integrated pattern emerges. Our understanding of language dynamics, therefore, should encompass processes unfolding at various levels and provide accounts that do justice to these interactions, while delivering an analysis broad enough to constitute a sensible basis for successful language policy. Such concerns, illustrated in particular by Fishman’s work on reversing language shift, call for revisiting this issue by focusing on the role of translation. Translation is linked to language dynamics, and it is both a conduit of language policies and a condition for their success, but these interconnections need to be explicitly acknowledged. Whereas translation studies often approach translation itself as a self-contained process, it certainly emerges from multilingual contexts, but is also, at least in part, dependent on language policies. Translation contributes to the maintenance of linguistic diversity and societal multilingualism which are, reciprocally, dependent upon the practice of translation. This examination confirms the ongoing soundness of the fundamentals of Fishman’s approach to “language-in-society” and helps to assess some recent criticism toward core notions of classical sociolinguistics that Fishman helped develop and disseminate, such as multilingualism, which is being called into question by current notions such as “English as a lingua franca” and “languaging”. The very existence of translation as a social, economic and political practice suggests that societal multilingualism cannot satisfactorily be described without resorting to classical sociolinguistic concepts like “named” languages, mother tongue and domain, which are crucial to successful policies and, hence, to the maintenance of the linguistic human rights to which Fishman’s work has made such essential contributions.

In this paper I argue in favour of the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach based on computational methods for the development of language policies. As a consequence of large-scale phenomena such as globalization, economic and political integration and the progress in information and communication technologies, social systems have become increasingly interconnected. Language-related systems are no exception. Besides, language matters are never just language matters. Their causes and consequences are to be found in many seemingly unrelated fields. Therefore, we can no longer overlook the numerous variables involved in the unfolding of linguistic and sociolinguistic phenomena if we wish to develop effective language policy measures. A genuinely interdisciplinary approach is key to address language matters (as well as many other public policy matters). In this regard, the tools of complexity theory, such as computational methods based on computer simulations, have proved useful in other fields of public policy.

The participation of interpreters as linguistic and cultural mediators is considered essential to the success of military operations in a foreign country. This study examines the situation of two categories of civilian interpreters who worked for the Spanish armed forces in Afghanistan: interpreters recruited in Spain and interpreters recruited in Afghanistan. The distinct positionalities of these groups of interpreters emerge as a recurring theme in the interviews carried out as part of this research. The findings indicate that the interpreter's positionality impacted the interpreter's agency, the trust placed in him or her by the armed forces, and exposure to danger. In highlighting interpreters' active participation in the communicative situation, this paper increases understanding of the positionality of interpreters in war zones.

Barrier-free communication should be an institutional priority when drafting administrative texts. These not only deal with legal content, but they often address the lay citizen and may provide general information on services and reforms or simply instruct on a specific procedure to be followed. Our study investigates Swiss insurance leaflets in three languages (French, German and Italian) and aims at evaluating language clarity on the basis of ‘plain language’ guidelines, thus also considering the translation variable. However, our preliminary results show that ‘plain communication’ is not always the case. We applied a quantitative and qualitative triangulation methodology: firstly, we measured readability with the help of readability indices; subsequently, we used computational tools to highlight common linguistic gaps whose quality was also explored manually by taking textual aspects into account.

In recent years, the European Union has faced a growing spread of Euroscepticism among its member states, as demonstrated by the Brexit and the latest European Parliament elections. This trend can be perfectly noticed in Italy, where right-wing Eurosceptic parties are currently leading the electoral polls despite the Europhile government. Eurobarometer data (2020) also confirm the general low attachment of Italian citizens to the EU, with 51% of Italian respondents affirming that they do not feel European. Promoting multilingualism is one of the main strategies implemented by the EU to foster the creation of a common European identity, as proficiency in foreign languages should encourage a greater sense of belonging with foreign people. Although, Italy is one of the member states with the lowest level of multilingualism. Thus, this research aims to analyse the possible connections between the low rate of multilingualism and the high level of Euroscepticism in Italy.

Ce mémoire porte sur le rôle de la culture et de la langue françaises dans les publicités en ligne de trois grandes maisons de parfum françaises. Après une présentation de la recherche sur la traduction publicitaire, nous expliquons la pertinence de l'analyse sémio-pragmatique pour aller au-delà du signe linguistique. Par la suite, nous détaillons la méthodologie employée pour l'analyse des publicités sélectionnées. Nous observons trois stratégies de communication à l'international par rapport à la place que ces maisons accordent aux symboles culturels français. Enfin, dans une perspective qualitative, nous analysons la réception de trois vidéos publicitaires par deux focus groups : un francophone et un anglophone. L'analyse met en évidence des préférences et des sensibilités parfois divergentes quant à l'élégance française et à la présence de symboles français dans les spots publicitaires.

Ce mémoire porte sur la traduction des notices médicales en arabe, et traite la Tunisie en tant que cas d'étude. Il cherche à identifier les réglementations qui régissent les processus de la rédaction et la traduction de la notice ainsi qu'à définir ses critères linguistiques. Il vise aussi à caractériser l'intérêt que porte le public à ce document qui représente une source d'informations sur le médicament, facilement accessible à la population. Afin de mener cette étude, des techniques de recherche diverses ont été appliquées. Un entretien a été mené avec un responsable au sein du ministère de la santé afin d'investiguer l'évaluation de la notice par les autorités lors du processus de la demande d'une Autorisation de mise sur le marché (AMM). Un questionnaire a été effectué par la suite sur un chantillon de patients afin d'évaluer leurs attitudes envers la notice, et apprécier la fréquence de leurs recours à son utilisation. Enfin, l'étude s'est concentrée sur l'analyse de différentes notices de médicaments commercialisés en Tunisie, en vue de décrire la lisibilité des traductions en arabe.

This blog post aims at vulgarizing the following academic paper and at making it accessible to an international public: CANAVESE, Paolo. Anglicismi nell'italiano normativo elvetico: estensione e natura del fenomeno. In: Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, 2020, vol. 74, p. 18-37. doi: 10.2436/rld.i74.2020.3545 https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:146182

Switzerland is a multilingual country in which three languages are granted the same legal status, as unequivocally stated in Article 70 of the Federal Constitution: “[t]he official languages of the Confederation are German, French and Italian.” This chapter analyzes the level of equality between these languages, taking into account their representation within the federal institutions and focusing in particular on Italian. Italian is not only an official but also a minority language. A historical overview will shed light on how the status of Italian has evolved over the last two centuries. The narrative will start from the foundation of the modern Confederation in 1803 and will cover the three language regimes (of 1848, 1917 and 1974). It will illustrate the most important events and milestones that led from the absence of Italian within the federal institutions to its de jure equality to German and French. However, the struggle to reach a de facto equality is still not over, as shown for example by the fact that Italian is (almost systematically) a translation language and that some institutional texts are not available in the ‘third language'. Will a fully trilingual institutional system ever become a reality? In order to answer this question, a reflection on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of such a system will be presented, thus depicting a potential future scenario in which the three official languages of Switzerland may in reality enjoy the same status.

Ce mémoire porte sur l'analyse de la communication marketing des marques de luxe sur TikTok. Nous avons tenté de justifier la présence des marques de luxe sur TikTok et nous avons cherché à déterminer en quoi le marketing d'influence peut servir de levier à la communication du luxe sur cette plateforme sociale. Après avoir présenté le luxe et son évolution, nous nous sommes attardés sur la question de la communication 2.0 à l'ère du web social, avant de définir le film publicitaire, qui forme notre objet d'étude. Nous avons ensuite procédé à une analyse sémiopragmatique de notre corpus formé de six vidéos TikTok afin d'en faire ressortir les signes et leurs significations dans le cadre des campagnes marketing de trois grandes marques de luxe sur TikTok. Dans notre analyse, nous avons tenté d'identifier des signes, des tendances et des styles de vidéo qui permettent de justifier la présence des marques de luxe sur une plateforme sociale s'adressant à un public jeune, qui réunit les potentiels clients du luxe de demain.

The present study examines Arabic legal phraseology formation from the standpoint of positive law and jurisprudence. It claims that phraseological constructions in Arabic legislative and statutory texts are largely influenced by the translation process of Roman law texts. However, scholarly literature still relies to some extent on formulae used in the Islamic jurisprudence. To illustrate this, three examples of legal principles anchored in Islamic jurisprundence, known as legal maxims, are subjected to a comparative analysis and discussed along with their corresponding expressions in positive law in modern-day Arabic. Ultimately, the purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to demonstrate that the phraseology present in many Arabic positive laws is fully adapted to corresponding formulations in the Roman law, steming from a historical translation process that accompanied the codification movement in the beginning of the 20th century; secondly, to emphasize the significance of textual genre awareness in legal translation. Concretely, the introductory section provides an overview of recent studies that have addressed legal phraseologisms. It is followed by a section on the historical role of translation in the construction of certain phraseologisms. The general legal principles of (a) burden of proof, (b) presumption of innocence, and (c) the pacta sunt servanda principle are then examined in order to shed light on the influence of both the Civilist tradition and Islamic jurisprudence on the use of legal Arabic today, as well as to demonstrate how the translation of phraseologisms is dependent on the parameters of genre. The analysis leads to the conclusion that proper use of phraseologisms, whether in drafting or translation, is closely linked to knowledge of phraseology formation and the historical influence of translation.