Abstract

The article considers some Italian translations of foreign economic texts, which were published between 1751 and 1797. The time span begins with the appearance of translations of monetary texts by John Locke, which were immediately elevated to a linguistic model, and ends with The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance by Thomas Paine. Between these dates there appeared dozens of treatises mostly written in French, including works by Melon and Dutot, the physiocrats and Necker. The analysis of these works considers, in particular, the ways in which foreign lexical innovations have been discussed, adapted, or rejected