Using Parallel Corpora for Translation Activities in L2 Medical English Undergraduate Teaching, with Specific Reference to Italian Sports Sciences Courses

English is the international language of science and, as such, it is alsothe international language of medicine. L2 English undergraduates do notgenerally have particular difficulties in translating from English into theirmother tongue; by contrast, they do not perform very well when asked totranslate into English. The aim of this report is to show the results of a studyobtained by using parallel corpora in scientific English classes in the Italiansports sciences study course of the University of Palermo. The students wereprovided with a corpus of English texts taken from a well-known medical textwith pedagogical purposes, and their corresponding Italian translations, whichwere carried out by medical doctors. The students were asked to compare thetwo languages and were guided to identify major differences in lexicalchoices, syntactical structures, textual features, and units of meaning. Theywere then invited to translate relevant parts of texts from English into Italianmainly on the basis of what they remembered of the Italian version, andafterwards they were asked to perform back-translation activities into Englishfollowing the same procedure. They gradually became familiar with thediscourse patterns of medical English and medical Italian, and showed a bettercontrol in the correct use of scientific vocabulary. Most importantly, theydeveloped awareness of the fact that specialized translation is an activity thatdemands rigorous compliance with the rules and conventions of a givenlinguacultural domain.