Triple A is proud to announce the opening of applications for the 14th edition of the Online Legal English Course for Translators on Zoom.

Course Overview

When translating legal texts, you need not only excellent language skills but also extensive knowledge of law. In order to provide a high-quality, accurate service, a translator’s education must be complemented by specific skills, such as specialised technical translation techniques, knowledge of law and comparative law and proficiency in the stylistic and lexical conventions that characterise legal texts.

With the increase in business ties outside of Italy, a globalisation of legal and economic interests of companies has taken place. This means that businesspeople and consumers are confronted with the issue of managing potentially problematic documents, not only because they are written in a foreign language, but also because they reflect legal systems and institutions that bear little resemblance to their own. As a result, there has been a constant growth in the demand for legal translation and interpreting services, where the high expectations of customers must be met with equally high quality.

The Master’s is designed for graduates of translation and interpreting or languages who wish to specialise in the legal sector and for translators and interpreters who have just begun their professional career and wish to perfect their skills in this field. The course is also aimed at more experienced language professionals who want to consolidate their legal translation skills or even acquire a further specialisation.

The Master’s is also open to lawyers or trainee lawyers, law graduates and other university graduates who regardless of their education have acquired good language skills and want to specialise in the legal sectors.

Teachers and course structure

The Master is held by the lawyer/linguist Dario Mazzardo and Luca Canuto, interpreter/translator.
Dario Mazzardo was admitted to the Milan Register of Lawyers and has been practising the profession since 2009. He mainly focuses in business law and intellectual property and is also a specialised teacher for lawyers, trainee lawyers and translators. Since 2019, he has been an adjunct professor for the SSML CIELS language university in Milan, where he teaches International Organisations, Planning of Peace Interventions, as well as Linguistic Mediation for the legal and administrative sector and the social and healthcare sector.
Luca Canuto has been a practising conference interpreter and translator since 1998 after graduating from the Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori of Trieste. He is a member of AITI and Assointerpreti, and was a lecturer in Linguistic Mediation, Liaison Interpreting and Simultaneous Interpreting from Dutch at the Civic School for Interpreters and Translators of Milan from 2002 to 2015. Since 2019, he has held the role of adjunct professor at the Limec SSML of Milan, where he teaches Introduction to English Interpreting, English Liaison Interpreting and Consecutive Interpreting into French.

The Master’s is structured around a highly innovative and unique methodological approach, based on the synergy between these two figures, each counterpoising and interacting with one another during the lectures, which are typically held by both teachers simultaneously. This solution allows students to acquire the necessary specialised skills in order to offer their customers translations that are not only correct in terms of content and terminology, but are also enhanced by reasoned and purposeful translation choices that perfectly match the language conventions of the target audience.

The course is split into a general section and a specialised section. The first section teaches students about the fundamentals of common law, which is the legal framework applied in most English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America. This system is then investigated comparatively against the civil law system, which is used in Continental Europe, in order to resolve the delicate and nuanced problems of legal translations from English into Italian in a reasoned and conscious manner. The second section takes a deep dive into the main legal disciplines.

Both during the general and specialised section, in addition to analysing the required elements of theory, participants will also have the chance to study the most common documents that are requested in the context of a translator’s real-word career. The majority of the documents analysed during the exercises are genuine artefacts, gathered from the practical experience of the teachers. This enables students to familiarise themselves with market demands and learn about the most effective solutions for offering high-quality products that are a cut above the rest.

This edition will also be conducted by means of

• being far away from Milan is not an issue
• our previous students agree: the live lessons are enjoyable thanks to our well-prepared teachers who are approachable, competent and can make 8 hours of lectures interesting and engaging

The application fee includes the following learning material:

1. explanatory slides of the covered topics. which will be used during lessons
2. glossaries containing a selection of the most important terms and expressions for each topic in the Master’s

The application fee does not include the English to Italian legal translation handbooks written by the teachers, in e-book format, which must be purchased separately:

1. DARIO MAZZARDO (in partnership with LUCA CANUTO), Manuale di traduzione giuridica dall’inglese all’italiano – Parte generale, 2018
2. DARIO MAZZARDO (in partnership with LUCA CANUTO), Manuale di traduzione giuridica dall’inglese all’italiano – Parte speciale, 2018

After completing your application process, you will receive information on how to buy these items.

These legal translation handbooks are a distillation of the teaching experience acquired by L&D Traduzioni Giuridiche in the context of training they provided over the years to translators and interpreters. The handbooks are highly specialised and are specifically designed for people who wish to specialise in legal translation from English into Italian. They are one-of-a-kind books which – as they are structured – cannot currently be found in the market. The books are a combination of theory and practice and contain both elements of comparative law (comparison between the main common law system and the Italian legal system) and references and in-depth language analyses. The authors have enriched this learning experience with language focuses (examining typical terms from different legal systems from a linguistic and grammatical perspective), words in context (in which English terms referring to common law principles are shown in a real-word example) and translation tips (which suggest possible translation strategies for the most problematic cases). The handbooks are divided into a general and specialised section. The general section consists in an appraisal of the fundamental characteristics of the main common law jurisdictions – mainly from the standpoint of public law – in comparison with the Italian legal system: sources of laws, courts, figures and parties in civil and criminal proceedings and the relevant deeds and documents. Accordingly, the general section also analyses linguistic, terminological and translation issues arising out of the covered areas, with a special focus on the language and style of legal documents and some practical references to sworn translation and authentication. The specialised section focuses on the most important fields of law, both from a comparative standpoint and with regard to the content, and from the perspective of language, terminology and translation strategies. Most of the covered topics pertain to private law – however, the essential elements of criminal law are also unpacked. Specifically, after exploring criminal law in the first chapter from a general perspective, the following chapters of the specialised section each inquire into a specific area of civil and commercial law, ending where possible with a focus on the main crimes relating to the individual areas examined.

1 March – 12 July 2022
Number of hours: 160 (20 lessons of 8 hours)

Tuesday (only one day per week)
Timetable: 9.00-13.00 and 14.00-18.00

If you would like to make further enquiries, please fill out the form or contact the Masters’ Office.

For more information about our training facilities and the programme, you can access a free trial of the lectures at https://cti-communication.aplearning.eu/.

Registered students will be able to download as PDF files the slide deck of all the lectures by opening the “Bookshelf” section on the pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen. To open it, click on the blue arrow.

The platform itself contains a detailed instruction manual.