Campania's Wine on the Net: A Translational-Terminological Analysis of Winespeak

The present research revolves around the analysis of winespeak—the name given to the set of terms1 used in wine descriptions—in the context of online promotional communication of Campania‟s DOP, DOC, DOCG, IGP, and IGT wines. Firstly, the study aims to evaluate the main features of wine discourse in Italian and English online communication by both verifying the degree of harmonisation with national and international wine terminological standards, and simultaneously observing creative language uses based on existing frameworks. Indeed, a distinguishing characteristic of wine tasting terminology is the coexistence of both technical and creative terms that respond to the marketing and cultural dimensions of the wine phenomenon (S. M. Pavel, 2013). Secondly, the focus is also on the inter-linguistic transfer from Italian into English; by means of an interlingual comparison, similarities and differences in the communicative approach among the online wineries considered within and outside the Italian-speaking community are spotted. This, moreover, enables the examination of translation choices‟ stability and of the overall translation quality with a specific focus on the accuracy and efficiency dimension.