This paper examines one consequence of the increasingly multilingual and multicultural labor market, resulting from migratory flows caused in part by globalization. It focuses on selected legal and translation issues in labor relations arising from misinterpretations and cultural disparities in communication between different languages and cultures. It draws on decisions of the United States National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), where there were misleading and ambiguous translations. It employs a theoretical approach based on concepts from cross-cultural management, including cultural theory, and thereby expands the discipline of Translation Studies. The findings suggest that an understanding of the cultural content, particularly in the practice of intercultural management, is imperative. The paper concludes that a systematic methodology linking culture and language in labor relations should be adopted.
The aim of this paper is to examine whether genre overlapping and register variation have implications in terms of translation outcomes. To this end, the English and the Italian version of the letter sent by Sergio Marchionne to the President of Confindustria – Italy’s most important employers’ organisation – will be analysed. The decision to investigate Marchionne’s statement is based on the fact that this is a letter disseminated as a press release, which also contains highly-technical terminology pertaining to the discourse of Employment Relations (ER). It is stressed that a number of issues arise when deciding which genre and register to use when translating specialised texts. It is argued that genre overlapping and register variation affect the texts in English and Italian in important respects, leading to different perceptions on the part of the target audience.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has produced serious consequences in social and economic terms. The speed at which this pandemic spread in the initial weeks led governments to take drastic measures in order to contain its devastating effects. To this end, lockdowns were imposed in many countries which lasted for months, affecting people’s lives in important respects. The way in which the general public was apprised of these restrictions deserves attention, as communication plays a major role at the time of implementing measures impacting on people’s freedoms. Based on these considerations, this paper provides a comparison of the rhetorical devices adopted by national governments to inform the public of the beginning of the lockdown. Specifically, the statements with which the Prime Ministers of Italy and the UK announced the implementation of lockdown measures will be examined, with a view to investigating their linguistic features in both Italian and English.
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