Article body

1. Introduction

There is much discussion going on among Italian economists whether we should follow an “Italian way” to manage nonprofits or emulate the American model: however, most experts and academics agree that the nonprofit sector in Italy is very different from its American counterpart, if only because of the paucity of tax incentives as opposed to the tax-exempt status that nonprofits traditionally have in the US. In general, many concepts that are typical of the discourse on – and by – nonprofits in American English do not exist in Italian and vice versa, and this makes it sometimes necessary to find the right balance between translation and adaptation when it comes to translating texts concerning the world of charities.

On the face of it, the only thing a translation specialist can do when there is considerable difference between the source and the target cultures, in a given specialist field, is to analyse the two scenarios in detail and discover when a translation exists (or when it is plausible to propose a translation at all) and when it is necessary to have recourse to adaptation. In fact, translators cannot become experts in all the fields in which they work: translation specialists know very well that they might translate a medical textbook today and be asked to localise a piece of software tomorrow, and whereas some disciplines, such as medicine and computer science, have internationally standardised terminologies, other subjects, such as nonprofit economics, do not.

In this paper, we analyse the problems that arise when translating texts on – and by – the nonprofit sector from English (especially American English) into Italian. Firstly, we illustrate the methodology and background from which this study developed, and subsequently, we illustrate a specific corpus-based project aimed at helping translators solve individual translation problems in this specialised area.

2. Analysing the language of the third sector for translation purposes: methodology and background

Translators usually receive directions from the client or publisher as to how to translate the most widespread technical words and phrases in Non Profit Studies: however, no glossary can give us an equivalent of culture-specific concepts, and even then, equivalents shown in glossaries might well be wrong. The translator soon realises that there are no ready-made equivalents in most cases: if this is true of translation in general, it is even more relevant to nonprofit studies, where there is no established terminology in Italian as yet. Therefore, a methodology for translating nonprofit texts must take cultural differences into account and suggest alternative sources (e.g., specialised corpora) for documentation: in this specialised field, as we will show, documentation is of paramount importance even for words which seem to have a ready-made, or literal, equivalent in the target language.

For example: is the American word “philanthropy” the same as the Italian “filantropia”? Is the referent the same? What about the collocations in which the two terms are used? And what are the different connotations behind these two words? Can they be used in the same contexts, and if so, will they trigger analogous associations for the English and Italian-speaking reader? In order to answer these questions, the first idea that comes to the mind of the translator is to look at parallel texts in Italian and English and compare the different ways in which the words “philanthropy” and “filantropia” are used in the two languages. This is probably the best idea, although it may be time-consuming if target language resources are limited or inadequate.

Finding the right resources is probably the first translation problem in most cases, but it might prove particularly difficult to solve when translating texts on the charitable sector from English into Italian. This is why working on corpora (as suggested in section 3) can be particularly useful, both to solve individual translation problems and to gain some insight into the problems of translation/ adaptation of this specialised language.

However, before referring to an existing corpus or building a new one, it is important to be aware of the main issues in philanthropy, starting from the cultural and historic differences between the source and target language. Given the relevance of culture-specific issues to the notion of philanthropy in the two languages, this preliminary operation is bound to prove very important in the actual practice of translation, especially when it comes to the identification of translation problems.

In the following paragraphs, we show a brief survey of the cultural differences that give rise to translation problems, such as the absence of an Italian equivalent for many keywords in the language of nonprofits in English: the analysis is based on real problem solving strategies in the Italian translation of a detailed fundraising manual, from which the idea of building a corpus first arose.

2.1. “Filantropi di ventura”: a cultural and historic background

The idea that Italy should follow its own philanthropic tradition rather than the American model is described by economists as “la via italiana al fund raising” (Melandri and Zamagni 2001: 111). Historically, this tradition is referred back to the Renaissance as concerns major gifts and patronage of the arts, and to Catholic institutions as concerns mutual help. In America, by contrast, philanthropy developed when “the colonists, with no formal government, engaged in voluntarism” (Tempel 2003: 6-7) and it was characterised by emphasis on “secular charity” and community values. Therefore, the division between voluntarism, state and church became clear quite early in the history of American philanthropy, and today, after Reagan’s welfare reform, the third sector can be considered as the main source of welfare services in the US.

In Italy, by contrast, privatisation of the welfare system, though under way, has not yet been completed, and sectors such as education and health are still largely state-run. As concerns the economic size of the sector in the two countries, there are over 1 million registered organisations in the US, whereas there are only 221,412 in Italy according to the ISTAT (National Statistical Institute), most of which are small-sized. The nonprofit volume of business is about 2.7% of GDP in Italy, whereas its performance in the US is at least 8.5% of GDP: the data may be even more explanatory if we look at the total contributions respectively in dollars and euros, which reveal that donations amount to $177.8 billion in the US and € 35.7 billion in Italy.

The classification of charitable organisations is also different in the two countries. This is the list of organisation types presented in chapter 2 of the Indiana-Purdue University Center on Philanthropy manual Principles and Techniques of Fundraising:

  • Charities

    • Foundations

      • Private foundations

        • Community foundations

        • Corporate foundations

        • Operating foundations

  • Social welfare organisations

    • Professional and trade associations

Let us compare the American list with the list of Italian charitable organisations in the ISTAT report:

  • Associazioni riconosciute

    • Associazioni non riconosciute

    • Fondazioni

    • Comitati

    • Cooperative sociali

    • Associazioni di promozione sociale

      • enti ecclesiastici

        • confessioni religiose

It is almost impossible to establish a one-to-one correspondence, and therefore to produce a “faithful” translation, unless the translator resorts to adaptation, e.g., by using the ISTAT data – with an essential commentary taken from the ISTAT report – in the target text to replace the American data in the source text.

One problem that arises when making this kind of comparison is that American research centres gather and analyse data about many aspects of American philanthropy, whereas there appears to be slightly less information available on the Italian non profit sector. Where Italian data are available (and, most importantly, reliable, e.g., data gathered by ISTAT), the task of finding equivalents for American keywords and concepts appears to be quite easy. However, most of the data available in American reports on the third sector are shown in a very straightforward way, mainly with figures and a short commentary, or even with no commentary at all, whereas the Italian ISTAT report is particularly rich in commentary. This seems to point to a substantial discrepancy between genres, which once again points to a cross-cultural gap or, at least, to a difference in the way in which the nonprofit discourse community communicates in Italy and the US.

Today, the big issues in American philanthropy are the emerging idea of “venture philanthropy” (i.e., application of venture capital principles to philanthropic giving) and “engaged grantmaking” (i.e., a giving pattern whereby grantmakers actively participate in the activities of the cause or organisation they support, see Emerson, 2004: 32-34), whereas the notion of fundraising as a “scientific” practice is still far from being universally accepted in Italy.

An attempt to introduce the idea of venture philanthropy into the Italian nonprofit culture has recently been made by Gemelli (2004), in a book which is interestingly entitled Filantropi di ventura, a literal translation of “venture philanthropists.” Gemelli’s choice hints at the lack of a translation equivalent for this concept, which is still mostly unheard of in Italy. Incidentally, this literal translation is also reminiscent of the phrase “capitani di ventura,” the Italian condottieri of the Middle Ages who are sometimes perceived as Robin Hood figures in popular culture, despite the fact that, historically, condottieri were actually mercenaries.

In the following paragraphs, we show some specific examples of the terminological difficulties we faced when translating an extensive manual of fundraising from English into Italian.

2.2. Filantropia or philanthropy?

Against the cultural and historic background which we briefly sketched out in 2.1., it is perhaps unsurprising that the word “filantropia” has different connotations from the English “philanthropy.” The translation of this word into Italian is probably one of the most explanatory examples of the cultural differences between the world of charities in Italy and in the US. After looking at texts on and by Italian not-for-profit organisations, it soon becomes clear that the Italian word “filantropia” is hardly ever used by Italian charities, except in translations from English into Italian, where the word “filantropia” is probably a calque from the English “philanthropy.” “Philanthropy” may be described as an umbrella-term, indicating the whole charitable sector, the patterns of donation, the ethics (or “stewardship,” which is in itself another translation difficulty, to which we will return) of gift management, as well as the attitudes surrounding the action of giving. American “philanthropists” are people who practice philanthropy at various levels, from the action of giving and volunteering, to activities within foundations and charitable organisations in general: both words – “philanthropy” and “philanthropist” – seem to be quite frequent in American discourse about – and by – nonprofit organisations to describe all the activities which surround donation.

In Italy, by contrast, there is still a widespread notion that giving is an act of compassion towards the needy (Melandri and Masacci 2000), and if a donor gives, s/he is assumed to do so out of piety and good heart, and not really because it is her/ his social, moral or personal duty to do so, even less because s/he may receive some (tax or other) benefits if s/he gives. To return to Mauss’ (2002) cornerstone definition of “gift,” the notion that giving creates a relational link between the donor and the recipient, and that the act of giving is characterised by (negative or positive, Godbout, 1998) reciprocity has not yet been fully received by the Italian culture: contrary to most anthropological and economic literature on the topic, giving is mostly seen by Italians as a one-way act, whereas “public services” are still largely synonymous with “state services.” In fact, from the point of view of popular culture, giving is still somehow perceived as an act of piety by the rich towards the poor, and the notion of “filantropia,” unlike the notion of “philanthropy,” is influenced by this culture-specific attitude to giving. This might explain why Italian philanthropists are hardly ever described as “filantropi” by Italian native speakers, who prefer to use the word “donatore” (donor), just as they prefer to use the English loan word “non profit” instead of “filantropia.” Italian nonprofits, in their turn, prefer to use the word “sostenitore” (“supporter”), as our corpus-based analysis, to which we return, clearly demonstrates.

This is why it is advisable not to propose a literal translation for the phrase “charitable/ philanthropic sector.” A phrase like “settore caritatevole/ filantropico,” in Italian, would risk being misunderstood. “Settore non profit,” or simply “non profit,” is probably the best translation, because it allows us to keep the same referent without altering the connotative aspect of the phrase. Similarly, when describing a particular charitable organisation in Italian, it is best not to attempt a word-for-word translation for “charity” or “charitable organisation”: “organizzazione non profit” or “organizzazione di terzo settore” is much more acceptable in Italian economic discourse.

2.3. “Untranslatable” words

The word “steward/ stewardship” has virtually no equivalent in Italian: in texts on for-profit organisations, it can often be rendered with “fiduciario,” if it makes reference to property or funds, but this translation would be totally out-of-place in nonprofit discourse. In most cases, the best idea is to “domesticate” the concept by emphasising what a “steward” is, especially the ethical side of his/ her role, which is particularly important with respect to the concept of “stewardship” in the nonprofit world. “Amministrazione etica delle donazioni” seems to be an acceptable rendition in most cases, although the translator must pay special attention to the context whenever this word appears in the source text.

Other keywords whose translation from English into Italian requires particular care are those that indicate the types of trusts that are available in the United States as vehicles of planned giving. The management of charities is an emerging sector in Italy, and some tools of fundraising which are widespread in America do not yet exist in Italy, or are just beginning to appear. Therefore, in order to translate the names and descriptions of trusts (e.g., lead trusts, annuity trusts, unitrusts, etc.), the translator should rely mostly on “alternative” reference tools (i.e., parallel texts and, when available, corpora) in order to have a clearer picture of how each trust works, and see if an equivalent exists in the target culture.

From this point of view, the Internet is particularly useful. Several websites of nonprofit organisations, consortia and even banks contain the basic information about trusts, and this makes it relatively easy to find out about the main characteristics of each type of trust in Italy and the US. However, the Internet is not enough: the reliability of Internet sources is not always guaranteed, and it is therefore safer to have a specialised bibliography to rely on. In most cases, direct equivalents do not exist, but it is possible to identify Italian trusts which are similar to the products which are available in the United States, e.g., “fondi pensione” for “unitrusts,” “fondi assicurativi” for “FLIP trusts,” and “fondi con rendita vitalizia annua” for “annuity trust.”

2.4. Fondazioni or foundations

A similar strategy lends itself to the translation of the names and characteristics of foundations. Foundations appear to be much better established in the US than they are in Italy, despite the existence of very well-known and efficient foundations in Italy as well. However, some types of foundations have been built along the lines of the American model, and they are consequently referred to by their English names in Italian, e.g., “grantmaking foundations,” a type of foundation that gives grants to nonprofit organisations that are deemed worthy of support based on particular requirements established by the foundation itself. In Italian, the phrase “grantmaking foundation” is usually kept in English, as is the word itself “grant.” It is also possible to translate this phrase as “fondazione di erogazione,” although English words are particularly frequent in the Italian language of economics and this should be reflected in translation. Garzone talks about

l’enorme diffusione degli anglicismi nella vita quotidiana, che ha interessato un po’ tutti i settori disciplinari (anche se alcuni in modo particolarmente massiccio, per es. l’economia, la finanza, le scienze aziendali e forse ancor più l’informatica).

Garzone 1998: 105

It might be interesting in this respect to compare the list of American foundations available in the fundraising manual entitled Principles and Techniques of Fundraising with the list of Italian foundations in the website of the Fondazione Agnelli (<www.fondazioni.it>).

forme: 029795aro001n.png

3. The ICIC fundraising corpus and the SITLeC fundraising corpus

The examples in section 2 illustrate how complicated and time-consuming it might be to gain the necessary knowledge by reading books, surfing the Internet, attending courses or other traditional documentation tools for translators: this is particularly true of specialised fields which have recently started being focused on in the target culture, e.g., nonprofit studies in Italy. A solution to this fundamental problem of translation practice can be offered by specialised corpora, which have the twofold advantage of allowing translators to solve individual problems when they arise and offering a valuable tool to study the behaviour of particular lexical items.

3.1. The ICIC fundraising corpus

The Indiana Center on Intercultural Communication (ICIC) at Indiana-Purdue University has carried out extensive research on philanthropic genres in English: one of the most important tools for this kind of studies is the ICIC Fundraising Corpus, a large corpus containing over 900 texts on philanthropic fundraising. The corpus is used for investigating several aspects of language, including rhetoric and grammar, and it contains a variety of philanthropic genres, i.e., direct mail, invitations/ newsletters, case statements, grant proposals and annual reports. The organisations represented in the corpus fall within five distinct categories, i.e., education, health, human services, arts/culture, and conservation/environment. The project started in October 1997, when an international conference (“Written Discourse in Philanthropic Fund Raising: Issues of Language and Rhetoric,” October, 17-18, 1997: see Connor, 1997) was organised by the ICIC and the Indiana Purdue Center on Philanthropy.

The genre that has been subjected to the most detailed analysis is probably direct mail, as shown in the publication list available on the ICIC website. In particular, the direct mail partition of the ICIC Fundraising Corpus has been analysed in depth by Connor and Upton (2003) and Upton (2002), who used 242 direct mail letters from 71 organisations and categorised them according to their size, field and income, which in most cases is very high by comparison with Italian philanthropic organisations. Following this model, we have built our own corpus, i.e., the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus, starting from direct mail.

3.2. The SITLeC fundraising corpus

The SITLeC Fundraising Corpus was created for the purposes of this cross-cultural study aimed at helping translators solve culture-bound problems with texts on the nonprofit sector. At the time of writing, the Italian corpus consists only of fundraising letters, although future research directions include plans to enlarge the corpus to include other genres. The reason why the project started from fundraising letters (usually referred to as “direct mail,” from the terminology of marketing) is that this genre is well developed both in English and in Italian and allows a more transparent comparison with the ICIC Fundraising Corpus data.

The texts were written by Italian nationwide nonprofits, which were divided into four categories, i.e., health, human rights, environment, and religion. The corpus was annotated in XML to allow a subsequent analysis (currently under way) of the rhetorical move structure, based on Upton’s (2002) quantitative study of the direct mail partition of the ICIC Fundraising Corpus, as well as on Bhatia’s (1998) qualitative study of philanthropic promotional discourse. The lexical study, which we discuss in this paper, was performed by extracting a frequency list of the ICIC Fundraising Corpus, and comparing the content words with their Italian “equivalents” (i.e., literal translations and/or words which are usually taken to be a direct translation of the English word, like “gift” and “donazione”). In most cases, as we will see, there is no one-to-one equivalence, and it is necessary to look for alternative solutions in the target culture in order to arrive at an appropriate translation.

The Italian corpus is smaller than its American counterpart for two main reasons: firstly, the dimensions of the sector are considerably smaller in Italy (see 2.1.), and, secondly, we found some scepticism towards the discourse of fundraising among Italian organisations, some of which decided not to submit their letters for analysis. In addition, direct mail appears to be less widespread than expected as a fundraising vehicle in Italy, and at least a dozen of the organisations that did reply stated that they had never used direct mail. Interestingly, a spokesperson from a well-known environmentalist organisation declared that they do not engage in any fundraising activities, and explained that they consider fundraising to be “intrusive of supporters’ privacy.”

The scepticism of some organisations towards “scientific fundraising” was also emphasised in a recent study about the role of fundraisers in Italian charities: asked why they had not replied to the research questionnaire, two employees of one of the best known charities in Italy, Emergency, declared that they do not want to be called “fund raisers,” even if they do raise funds among other things. They also objected to a number of fundraising strategies, including use of emotional arguments in direct mail letters to convince donors to write a cheque (Melandri et al. 2003: 121-135).

This attitude may be connected with the perception that the practice of highly structured fundraising belongs to the American tradition rather than the Italian one. This connection is explicitly made by another fundraiser, who states that “Italy is very behind as compared to Anglosaxon countries where fundraising is also very well paid” (Melandri et al. 2003: 116). The American origins of “scientific fundraising” are also stressed in academic literature on philanthropy, although the practice of arts patronage during the Italian Renaissance is also mentioned (e.g., Melandri and Zamagni 2001).

3.3. How to use a fundraising corpus for translation purposes: “donatore,” “sostenitore” or “investitore”?

Although the difference in size and categorisation methods between the two corpora does not recommend the construction of comparable corpora, it is anyway possible to make a comparison between lexical items traditionally considered to be “equivalent,” e.g., the word “donatore” (donor) as opposed to its near-synonym “sostenitore” (supporter), which both translate (at least literally) the English word “donor.” Although the word “donatore” is a technical term regularly used in economic literature on nonprofits (e.g., Melandri and Masacci 2000), the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus shows that Italian nonprofits prefer the word “sostenitore” which does not specifically refer to a monetary relationship between charities and donors. In other words, although the two words (“donatore” and “sostenitore”) are sometimes assumed to be used interchangeably (in that supporters do give money to nonprofits and sometimes an annual gift is required to obtain a membership card and hence the status of “sostenitore”), the word “sostenitore” appears to emphasise the donor’s willingness to uphold the organisation’s values rather than just its financial stability.

Another important feature that has been investigated by means of the Italian corpus is the use of the formal second person pronoun “lei” as opposed to the informal second person pronoun “tu” and derivatives. The English second person pronoun “you” translates both Italian pronouns, which usually mark the degree of formality or social distance between writer and reader, “lei” being the honorific pronoun and “tu” the colloquial way to address your interlocutor. In the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus, “Lei” (sometimes with a capital “L,” to stress social distance even more) appears to be overwhelmingly more frequent (about 82%) than “tu”: however, it is worth noting that environmental organisations do use the informal pronoun “tu,” possibly because they target a younger public. Translation choices should take this difference into account: according to the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus data, it is probably more appropriate to address the Italian donor as “lei,” and exceptions to this rule should be based on pragmatic acceptability in the target culture.

One last example illustrating the difference between the way in which donors are addressed by American and Italian organisations in fundraising letters is the reference to “investment.” In this case, it might prove useful to look at a concordance, obtained with Monoconc Pro 2.2. (which can process files written in XML, the mark-up language which was used to tag the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus).

  1. … questo avviene in concomitanza con l’epidemia di Hiv-AIDS che rende necessari forti [[investimenti]] per migliorare le strutture sanitarie pubbliche e private non profit, per prevenire, per …

  2. … e questa è una grande risorsa, ma la lotta al cancro comporta anche un notevole [[investimento]] di mezzi

As can be noted, there are only 2 instances of “investimento,” and only 4 if we include the verb “investire”:

  1. … ben allenati e preparati e noi dobbiamo [[investire]] molto per essere certi che siano pronti a qualsiasi emergenza…

  2. … si è impegnato ad [[investire]] ben 2.200.000 Euro per continuare a finanziare i Programmi…

By contrast, the ICIC Fundraising Corpus highlights a much higher frequency in the use of the word “investment”:

  1. …deductible gift to the YWCA is an [[investment]] in women and their families throughout the Central Indian …

  2. … Capital Council would like to invite you to join us in an [[investment]] in our future business and community leaders. Because of …

  3. … osity of a caring community and companies like (03). Your [[investment]] in Girl Scouting is sure to help build tomorrow’s leaders …

  4. … hat a donation to the Girl Scouts is a sound [[investment]] opportunity. The contribution will be used to cover progr …

  5. … a shareholder in the Girl Scout vision. Your [[investment]] in the Annual Appeal is sure to yield high returns….

  6. … to become tomorrow’s community and business leaders. Your [[investment]] in Girl Scouting is one that will pay dividends for years …

  7. … an and recommit to the Girl Scout vision. Your [[investment]] in the Annual Campaign is sure to yield high returns. …

  8. … al Council would Re to invite you to join us in an [[investment]] opportunity —— an investment in our future business …

  9. … e you to join us in an investment opportunity —— an [[investment]] in our future business and community leaders. Because of …

  10. … generosity of a caring community and companies like. Your [[investment]] in Girl Scouting is sure to help build tomorrow’s leaders …

  11. … important services continue. You’ll also be making a good [[investment]]. $1.00 invested in …

  12. … United Way of Central Indiana adds value to your [[investment]]. It sponsors a single, efficient annual campaign for the 8 …

  13. … you support United Way, you can be sure your [[investment]] is used prudently: 90 cents of every dollar raised go …

  14. … very grateful for your last contribution of $95, an [[investment]] which paid off by touching lives in hundreds of ways thro …

  15. … end it in the return envelope. Then, watch as your [[investment]] is used to help make central Indiana a better community i …

  16. … Make a tax-deductible [[investment]] in the community today!…

  17. … I’m writing to tell you about an [[investment]] opportunity. One that will allow you to change pain into …

  18. … e, work and prosper. It’s not just any [[investment]]. It’s an investment in our community through United …

  19. … It’s not just any investment. It’s an [[investment]] in our community through United Way of Centre …

  20. … through United Way of Central Indiana. An [[investment]] with many returns of relief, love and opportunity …

The reason for this difference seems to lie once again in the extralinguistic context: tax incentives in Italy are so low that they would not be particularly appealing to most donors anyway. Therefore, other kinds of incentives tend to be focused on in texts belonging to the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus, such as inserts, freebies or the moral satisfaction of giving.

It may be particularly interesting to notice that the four instances of “investimento” and derivatives in the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus all come from very recent letters. In other words, if we had made this query before 2003, we would have found no match for the word “investimento” in the Italian corpus. This consideration points to the necessity to keep the corpora updated, in order to monitor the changes that affect the language of charities in Italy and the US.

3.4. Main differences between the ICIC and the SITLeC fundraising corpora and future directions

The differences between the American third sector and its Italian counterpart are reflected not only in the language, but also in the design of the two corpora. As we have seen, Italian nonprofits represented in the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus have been divided into four fields of interest (health; environment; religion; human rights), whereas in the ICIC Fundraising Corpus, areas of interest include: education, health, human services, arts/culture, and conservation/environment. As can be noted, there are fewer fields of interest in the Italian corpus, partly because several areas which are the domain of the third sector in the US are still largely run by the public sector in Italy, especially education, health and arts/ culture, whereas religion (the so-called “organizzazioni confessionali,” which represent about 28.7% of total) is still an important driving force of philanthropy in Italy.

Another important difference is the size of the corpus. The SITLeC Fundraising Corpus includes 82 fundraising letters (about 50,000 words) whereas the partition of the ICIC Fundraising Corpus containing fundraising letters alone contains 235 texts (about 100,000 words). The reason for this difference is once again largely extralinguistic: an interview with a sample of Italian fundraising professionals from different organisations nationwide highlighted the fact that Italian nonprofits typically attach less importance to public outreach – and, consequently, to highly structured fundraising and cultivation activities – than their American counterparts. Some organisations do not even use direct mail as a fundraising vehicle, whereas others use it only sporadically to appeal to their corporate donors or to follow up on prospective donors who have attended fundraising events.

Finally, the ICIC Fundraising Corpus has been tagged by means of an internal mark-up system whereby features of language are indicated with a three-digit code between hooked brackets (e.g. <begin C14> We as students thank you for donating FIELD (we got 98) for the auction. <end C14>). In the SITLeC Fundraising Corpus, we chose a conceptually similar system of annotation to allow retrieval of selected features of language (e.g., move structure): however, the choice of XML, a widespread mark-up language, allows greater readability and, most of all, the possibility to process the corpus with X/Sara, an application developed by Oxford Computing Services which also allows combined tag-lemma queries. This will make it possible to establish how many times a certain word or phrase (e.g., “donatore”) appears in a given rhetorical move (e.g., “Ask for a gift”) as opposed to its alleged “synonyms” (e.g., “sostenitore”).

Conclusion

This paper illustrates some of the problems that arise when translating texts about (and by) the third sector from English – especially American English – into Italian. We have shown that many if not most of these problems depend on the extralinguistic differences between the Italian charitable sector and its American counterpart, including the fact that fundraising and other activities concerning nonprofits have only recently started to attract the interest of Italian professionals and academics. Subsequently, we have proposed a corpus-based method to investigate linguistic differences which awareness might prove crucial to translation. Finally, we have shown some examples taken from two corpora of the language of nonprofits, the American ICIC Fundraising Corpus and the Italian SITLeC Fundraising Corpus. We have demonstrated that in order for this kind of corpora to be really useful to translators, it is of paramount importance to keep them updated, so as to “monitor” all the changes that occur in this specialised language in the target and the source language alike.