La traduzione dei ´gerundi italiani ’ in tedesco: un'analisi semantica esemplare

The aim of this paper is a contribution to Italian-German contrastive grammar studies. A typical Italian structure, which has no direct equivalent in German, i.e. the gerund, is foregrounded. The analysis is carried out from a semantic point of view and is based on selected passages from Vite by Giorgio Vasari and its translation into German. This text was chosen for two reasons: the frequent occurrence of the examined structure and its high variability of meanings in Vasari’s text. The paper is divided into 4 parts: the theoretical and methodical framework is described in Sections 1 and 2, while Sections 3 and 4 describe the outcomes of the analysis conducted on the Italian text and its translation into German; the additional Section 5 contains some final considerations, which could also prove to be useful for translation studies and German L2 teaching.