Le aree naturali protette e il turismo natura in italiano espagnolo: un compito semplice per il traduttore?

In the process of translating Italian-Spanish environmental texts, translators frequently come across terms which at first glance might seem to be perfect translation equivalents, such as parque regional in Spanish and parco regionale in Italian, which can sometimes result in mistranslation and misinterpretation. These terms are embedded in cultures and, thus, different both from a social and a political perspective. Consequently, translators must be aware of these underlying differences so as to avoid possible pitfalls in interpreting the content and translating the texts correctly. This article presents a study carried out on a Spanish-Italian parallel corpus of tourist texts dealing with the promotion of protected natural areas in Spain, which is accompanied by an analysis of the legal sources at national, international and European levels. The purpose of the study is to provide a description of the differences and similarities at the conceptual and terminological levels in the specific field of environmental protection, based on the analysis of the characteristics and classifications of protected natural areas. The use of these resources will identify the differences and similarities between the specific terms of the two cultures examined (the Italian and Spanish), while the discussion of translations in Italian in the parallel corpus allows to highlight the major translation problems and potential translation errors. Finally, the use of the comparable monolingual corpora and the consultation of legal sources are seen as key tools that help translators to avoid errors and to select the most appropriate translation strategies, such as domestication or foreignization (Venuti 1995) and amplification or simplification in order to make the translated texts more accessible and allow both the recipients of the source language and those of the target language to share if not exactly the same conceptual reality, a very similar reality.