“Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary… ”, Unfortunately, this cannot always be said when it comes to translating. There is a tendency to forget that a translated document is read by people who not only speak a different language but also, and above all, belong to a different culture. Very often, the result of a merely word-for-word translation is a series of misleading ambiguities and nonsensical howlers.

One such example can be found in a French tourist brochure that describes an episode of history regarding Lyon's impoverished "naked rods", without explaining to the English-speaking reader that the term refers to the city's silk workers, known as "canuts", and that this word derives from "cannes nues" since during the French Revolution the unfortunate weavers were stripped of all their worthy goods, right down to the ornaments on their weaving rods..

Another example of words being translated without regard for the context is the rather comical announcement in a Paris hotel lobby: "Please leave your values at the front desk".

These examples speak for themselves. So to cut a long story short, testo&contesto takes great care to translate the actual message, adapting it, if need be, to the public for which it is destined, without distorting the text, and at the same time respecting the customer's requirements to a T.