Political-journalistic language translated from Italian to Maltese

Abstract

This dissertation aims to study political-journalistic language and its intrinsic terminology, by translating politically related newspaper articles from Italian into Maltese The focus of the dissertation is on technical terms related to the political sphere and how they are to be translated into Maltese. Three areas of politics were considered: EU Affairs, International Politics and Business News. This study considers the rate of recurrence of certain terms and their use in all three areas considered. The study was conducted on fifteen articles, five for each area. This work investigates the degree of the presence of the 'sectorial' language in the articles chosen to be rendered in Maltese, in order to verify whether drawn conclusions are applicable to all the three areas chosen and perhaps even to other areas. The selection of the fifteen articles was inspired by a series of criteria: the relevance to the local scenario of the content and terminology within the texts, the presence of specific terminology, the approach to different issues within the chosen fields and also the insight the articles selected could provide in respect to translation theory. This study is of a qualitative nature as it investigates the 'how' and 'why' a text is being translated in a certain way rather than another. By means of qualitative analysis I will accomplish three goals: firstly, the translation of a series of articles in order to provide an overview of the terminology available in Maltese to render the political/economic concepts discussed in the articles.