This paper investigates the ways in which argumentation is dealt with in English and Italian by comparing and contrasting a comparable/parallel corpus of texts on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Pragmatic discourse strategies are explored in a comparable corpus of GMO texts written by US students and in translations Italian students made as part of a virtual exchange or tele-collaboration project. The project involved students in a US university writing argumentative texts on GMOs and students at an Italian university translating them. Corpus data suggest that – faced with unfamiliar, culturally different arguments about GMOs in US texts – trainee translators had to address issues concerning pragmatics and had to use a cultural filter (House 2006) to produce translations that read like target language originals and met target
language expectations.
