Translating American and British trademarks into Italian. Are bilingual dictionaries an aid to the user?

The present article analyzes how American and British trademarks, which have acquired generic meaning (e.g. Jeep), may be translated into Italian with the aid of bilingual dictionaries. Translation may be problematic when trademarks are differently lexicalized in the two languages (e.g. Q-Tip vs. Cotton Fioc) or a trademark is used in English but not in Italian (e.g. Windbreaker vs. ‘giacca a vento’). The article starts from a definition of trademark and its linguistic status. Then some English trademarks and their Italian equivalents are presented and discussed on the basis of a dictionary-based selection of examples. The results show that in some cases English-Italian bilingual dictionaries deal with trademarks differently and are not sufficiently bicultural or up-to-date.