A Multilingual Parallel Corpus for the Lexical Information System LBC. Recent Progress and Future Perspectives

The LBC-Platform (https://www.lessicobeniculturali.net) is a comprehensive lexical information system that aims to integrate various types of corpora and resources: dictionaries, concordances, monolingual Language for Special Purposes (LSP) corpora in different languages and LSP parallel corpora. Designed for users interested in cultural heritage, the platform provides free access to resources and tools such as NoSketch Engine, facilitating an in-depth understanding of the language of Fine Arts — encompassing painting, architecture, and sculpture — and highlighting its multidisciplinary nature and diverse discourse types. Numerous studies have demonstrated the platform’s utility for various purposes, including lexicography, translation, and didactics. This paper focuses on the preparation of the multilingual Vasari parallel corpus, part of the LBC Project’s four planned subcorpora (Vasari corpus, Literature corpus, Museum Web-Site Corpus, Travel Guide Corpus). Special attention is given to the Italian-English, Italian-French, and Italian-German components of the corpus, based on G. Vasari’s Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani (1568) and its translations. In addition to methodological choices including alignment strategies and potential technical solutions, a small case study on the words disegno (‘drawing’) and disegnare (‘to draw’) will serve to illustrate the current status of the project and its relevance for LBC dictionaries, as well as future perspectives.