Disseminating National Legal Knowledge via European English: The Translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure

The aim of the English translation of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure is to make the content of the Code available to a wide English-speaking audience, with European citizens as its main target audience. Hence the challenging choice of European English as the target language (TL) for the translation. This paper focuses on the terminological units designating legal concepts that are embedded in the Italian legal system for which either 1) no established translation equivalent was found in the reference corpus, or 2) one or more translation equivalents were found but eventually discarded for different reasons. Concrete examples of terminological choices are provided to show the methodology applied by the interdisciplinary translation team to exploit European English linguistic resources for disseminating legal knowledge that is rooted in a national legal system.