Here is what one trainee translator produced (an Italian native-speaking final-year undergraduate):
Il tepore e l’umidità autunnali creano condizioni ideali affinché gli acini siano affetti da botrite
Based on the dictionary information you have just read, how would you evaluate this translation? (focus on the verb and the noun in bold).
Think about it, then click the button below.
Clearly this student has a good command of Italian, as well as understanding the register (the text is quite formal) and knowing the topic (tepore, umidità, acini, botrite).
The past participle selected (affetto da) is one of those mentioned in the bilingual dictionaries. Both the monolingual Italian and monolingual English dictionaries refer to illnesses in their definitions, suggesting similar uses in context.
However, this solution is not fully convincing. It has more to do with the syntax of the sentence than with its semantics (the occurrence of affetto and botrite together in wine tasting texts is normal, just like that of affected and botrytis, as we shall see presently).
We now turn to corpus evidence to shed light on this issue.
