The LSP of skin care product descriptions: a corpus-based analysis and translation study from English to Italian

The present study aims to explore the Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) of skin care product descriptions. The first part of the study focuses on the rhetorical structure and lexico-grammatical analysis of both English and Italian texts and it is carried out through the corpus linguistics approach. Two corpora were built: the American brands corpus, including English texts from five American cosmetics brands, and the Italian brands corpus, including Italian texts from five Italian cosmetics brands. To conduct the rhetorical structure analysis, the move-analysis method is adopted. Therefore, the two corpora were tagged for rhetorical moves. A quantitative and a qualitative analysis of the data provides insights on how frequently each move appears and what promotional strategies are used to achieve the purpose of the texts. Being the purpose of product descriptions that of persuading consumers to buy the products, the lexico-grammatical analysis highlights the linguistic strategies employed to achieve persuasion. These are: positive evaluation of the products (extensive use of adjectives and creative language), simple sentence structure (noun phrases, verbs in the simple and imperative forms), direct address to the reader (use of pronouns, possessive adjectives, and questions), and scientific terminology with explanations. In the second part of the study, eight texts from the American brands corpus are provided along with their Italian translations. Through a revision process, good and bad translation choices are commented. Then, some suggestions about how to better adapt the translations to an Italian audience are made.