“Dear Emma…”. Genre Overlapping and Register Variation in the English and Italian Version of Sergio Marchionne’s Letter to Confindustria

Abstract

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.