The Importance of Italian Mafia 'Culturemes' and their Translation in the Harmonisation of EU Anti-Mafia Legislation

Since the entry into force of the Schengen Treaty, transnational crime has risen to unprecedented levels, taking advantage of free movement across Europe. Against this scenario, great attention is being paid to Italian Anti-Mafia legislation (with specific reference to Article 416-bis) as a possible guideline to follow across Europe (de Magistris, 2012, p. 275) for the establishment of legislation against criminal organisations. However, translating Italian Mafia-related legislation is problematic, due to the peculiar organisation of Italian Mafias, and to the presence in Italian legislation against criminal organisations of “culturemes” that can be defined as “formalized, socially, and juridically embedded phenomena that exist in a particular form or function in only one of the two cultures being compared” (Katan, 2009, p. 79). The need to translate Mafia-related terminology is the starting point of this study, which analyses the possible translation solutions of the main “culturemes” used in Article 416-bis, namely associazione mafiosa and omertà, in a corpus of EU legislation on organised crime. The overall intents are to address some of the culture- and language-related issues involved in the fight against transnational criminal organisations, and highlight the importance of being able to prosecute Mafia organisations also in those countries where loopholes still exist in national legislation against organised crime. Though recognising precedent relevant studies on Italian Mafia-related “culturemes”, the authors conclude that the aim of harmonisation can be reached only by neutralising all references to the Italian criminal system and to the culturemes present in Article 416-bis.