I had to do a short translation today about a forthcoming financial congress. One of the terms stumped me a little so I had a hunt around the web and came across this interesting .pdf document from the Abaxbank:
Abaxbank Annual Report 2001- Parallel Translation – English/Italian
I know its from 2001, but the interesting thing about it, is that it’s a parallel translation with the English and Italian sections, generally, sitting next to each other. This means that it is a very handy resource for translating. You simply search for the Italian or English term you need, and hey presto, there it should be, sitting right next to the equivalent version in the language you need.
UPDATE 10 July 2008
Another very useful place to check on the translation is the IATE, the European Union’s multilingual database: IATE
In IATE, which I use it a lot, the terms are given a ‘reliability score’ – 3 out of 4 stars means that the translation is reliable in its context. Indeed, IATE results are divided into a wide selection of context areas, such as Finance, Economics, Land Transport, etc., etc. It is very, very useful, extensive, and encourages consistency too. Just be sure to select the correct source and target language or languages.
Thanks to Cristian for spotting errors in the Italian within the document linked to above. Please see his comment below for details. I also examined the English in the document and I have found a few errors too – they are mainly spelling errors which should be picked up by a spell checker.
Please also note that I am passing a copy of this document to a university professor who specialises the analysis of financial reports and similar documents. I shall ask him to check the document for errors too. Should we discover serious errors, either they will be listed, or the document will be removed. I have to admit to being a little surprised at finding any errors at all – I would not expect a bank to publish a document of this nature that is not 99.99% error free.
I shall be distributing this to my Banking and Financial Markets master students, of that you can be sure – once the number and nature of the errors have been established. The above document may still prove useful for anyone who needs to brush up on their financial terminology for an English language meeting in which financial facts and figures are to be discussed.
I hope it proves useful to someone.
Should the above link die, let me know, and I’ll do what I can to help you out.
raffaella says
The link doesnt work any more…can anybody provide an alternative one…? I really need it! 🙂
Alex Roe says
Hi Raffaella – go here http://www.abaxbank.com/reports_archive/en/25663/Financial_Statements_Archive.aspx
And select the 2001 – 2000 year – then you can download the Annual Report 2001.
Best,
Alex
Wulan says
Halo, regards from Indonesia…
I’m a student from Indonesia,and I take government accounting as my research. My major journal is Steccolini journal, which observe about Italian local government accounting system.
But I have some problem since I don’t have any Italian local govt report. Could you please help me? to send me any Italian local govt report? if possible, the one with english translation, since I can’t speak Italian (shame on me..:( )
If you don’t mind, please send it to my e-mail as stated above.
Thank you so much for your kind help…
Regards,
Wulan
Alex Roe says
Hi Wulan,
What an interesting line of study you are pursuing! Some one from Indonesia studying Italy – very interesting.
As for your request, I’ll have a go at finding what you are looking for, however, I’m not too sure that I will find anything in English. You might find that Google’s translating system can help you understand the sense of any documents in Italian.
Once I find something, I’ll email it to you.
Best,
Alex
PS I doubt whether many Italians speak your language. Shame on me! I don’t 🙂
AlexR says
Thanks for looking Cristian – I also had a closer look after you mentioned the errors, and I will amend my post accordingly.
Kind regards,
Alex
cristian says
Page 3 and 65, “un’eccellente risultato” and “un’aumento”.
The apostrophes are an error, it should have been “un eccellente risultato” and “un aumento”, because “risultato” and “aumento” are “male” words. The apostrophe is needed only with “female” words that begins with a vowel: it means that you cut off the final “a” from the article “una”; “un’auto”, for example. No need to do that with “male” words, since the male article “un” is a full word, not a “uno” withjout the “o”. It’s a common error
Also, “fin ora”, page 5, should be “finora”.
Sorry, I did’nt want to play the teacher, I just thought that it’s funny that they made such a good work with the translation but they made such a trivial error in their own mothertongue.
AlexR says
Ciao Cristian,
Interesting too, to hear about the bad grammar errors – a shame – can you say what they are?
Thanks,
Alex
cristian says
Very interesting. But there are a couple of bad grammar errors in the italian parts, lol.