Patent translation from English into Italian: Analysis and proposed translation of a European patent on microvinification

Technical advancements and new inventions during the last decades have made the translation of patent applications a specialised sub-field. The scientific and legal relevance of patent documents requires a high degree of specialisation. The mix of technical and legal language demand translators to familiarize with different language conventions and adopt different strategies. The main aim of this dissertation is to shed light on the importance of literal translation in patent translation and the difficulties that this approach entails. This dissertation analyses the different aspects and problems in patent translation from English into Italian in the field of microvinification. Chapter 1 will provide a general overview on patents as legal documents for protecting ideas and inventions. Then, Chapter 2 will focus on analysing and describing the textual characteristics of patent documents as a subfield of technical translation. The technical-scientific terminology and bureaucratic and legal language will be examined, along with the various methods and strategies for patent translation. Chapter 2 also includes several examples from an Italian corpus of parallel scientific texts and patent applications on microvinification. Subsequently, in Chapter 3 I will propose a translation of the European patent EP0635050 B2 entitled “A method of inducing malolactic fermentation in wine or fruit juice by direct inoculation with a non-activated starter culture”. The analysis of the different translation problems that have been faced in translating the document will offer concrete examples of the problems that patent translators deal with every day.