In the German medical language, but not so much in the Italian one, there are basically
two different types of terms: neoclassical terms, compounds made up of Latin or Ancient
Greek elements, also named internationalisms, and native terms, mainly morphological
calques that preserve the structure of the neoclassical compound but use German
elements and are therefore semantically transparent to the general public. This
difference between the German and Italian medical language creates some difficulties to
the translator, both from German to Italian and from Italian to German, primarily at
the lower level of specialized discourse, i.e. in expert-lay communication.
This paper will suggest some translation strategies and will illustrate the case of a text
genre specific to medical language, the package leaflet.
