From pro loco to pro globo: translating into English for an international readership

The status of English as an international language means that in language-learning and translational contexts it has become a moving target. Within translational contexts the issue is especially relevant to translations into English where the envisaged readership is international. Operating within this scenario, this paper will discuss issues which arise from translations of Italian tourist texts into English submitted by a group of advanced-level Italian university students. Translation of this nature entails a transition from the local to the global for the benefit of mostly non-native speakers of English, and it is precisely within this framework, one might hypothesize, that English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) should come into its own. At first glance this seems straightforward enough, but within a translation training scenario it is not without complications. One of these is that from an early age Italian students are nurtured on Standard British English. Another is that the work of both trainers and trainees working into a foreign language is greatly facilitated by the adoption of codified target-language parameters within which to work, parameters which are easily accessed for Standard British English but not for English as a Lingua Franca. At the same time, knee-jerk insistence on a major variety of English has its pitfalls; the translator must be sensitive to the fact that the envisaged target readers, extremely heterogeneous on account of their vastly different levels of linguistic and cultural competence, may read off diverse meanings from a single text, or at least react to it in diverse ways. The second half of the paper provides a range of examples of student translations into English for an envisaged international readership.