European English and the translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure

The English translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure (Gialuz, Lupária, and Scarpa 2014) represents a step forward in fostering judicial and police cooperation in Europe. This is made possible by making the content of the Code accessible to a wide English-speaking audience. Given the informative purpose of the translation (Cao 2007), whose intended readers are mainly European citizens, the target language chosen by the translation team is European English, i.e. the English used in European Union texts, the international English used in Council of Europe texts, the English found in the translations of the Codes of Criminal Procedure of other European countries and the English used by law scholars (Scarpa, Peruzzo, and Pontrandolfo 2014).

The European continent is a multidimensional and multilayered legal reality in which different languages co-exist and legal transplants and terminological transfers are commonplace. Based on such premises, however, the embeddedness of the Code of Criminal Procedure in the Italian legal system poses several translation difficulties, especially in the search for supranational/international English translation equivalents for terms that refer to nationally developed legal concepts. For these terms, established translation equivalents are not necessarily available. The aims of this paper are threefold: to describe the features of the interdisciplinary translation team consisting of ten members (linguists and lawyers), to lay out the peculiarities of the translation process in which professionals with a different background were involved, and to illustrate the methodology applied as regards terminological choices. To do so, a concrete example from the translated text will be provided to lay out the challenges faced and the solution adopted by the translation team.