Leggi italiane e direttive europee a confronto

This article investigates the differences between the Italian translations of European Union (EU) directives and the Italian used in national laws. It focuses on the lexical features of comparable and parallel corpora and their mutual influence. Differences emerge in terms of both lexical richness (greater in national laws) and register (also higher in national texts). Moreover, the specific text-structure of EU directives is signalled by a greater number of connectors. Lexical differences also involve repeated segments: national laws show greater variation, whereas the segments used in EU directives are more specific. In terms of style, features used at national level impact on the Italian translations of EU texts. For example, in parallel corpora, the style of Italian texts is more formal than the style of their English counterparts. This shows that Italian translators of EU directives are heavily influenced by the stylistic choices made when drafting national laws. So it is Italian law-makers who need to relinquish stylistically marked features when drafting legal texts. Then, translators can follow suit. The opposite would be – of course – unimaginable.