Italian Retail & E-Commerce Translation

About the Italian Language

Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City and western Istria (in Slovenia and Croatia). Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Italian is a major European language, being one of the official languages of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe.

It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 69 million native speakers. Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland and Albania) and on other continents, the total number of Italian speakers is around 90 million

Throughout Italy, regional variations of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian, are spoken. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular — other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities — are often imprecisely called "Italian dialects", even though they are quite different, with some belonging to different linguistic branches. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered "historical language minorities", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by the law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica) is closely related to Tuscan, from which Standard Italian derives and evolved.

The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata. The most prevalent were substrata (the language of the original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most likely simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either.

Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations the contraction annà replaces andare in the area of Rome for the infinitive "to go"; and nare is what Venetians say for the infinitive "to go").

Italian Translation Expertise

Italian features grammatical gender for all nouns, complex verb conjugation across multiple tenses and moods, and formal/informal address distinctions (Lei vs tu) that must be correctly applied in official documents. Legal and bureaucratic Italian uses archaic constructions and Latinate vocabulary that differs markedly from spoken Italian. Regional variation can also affect older documents, particularly those from southern Italy or Sardinia where dialect influence on written records was historically common.

Italian uses the standard Latin alphabet with 21 core letters, though j, k, w, x, and y appear in loanwords. Accented vowels (a, e, e, i, o, u) are important for meaning and stress placement, and must be accurately reproduced in translations.

Common Italian Documents

Italian documents frequently requiring translation include the certificato di nascita (birth certificate), estratto per riassunto dell'atto di matrimonio (marriage certificate extract), certificato penale (criminal record certificate), and diploma di laurea (university degree).

NAATI certification for Italian is well established, reflecting Italy's historical importance to Australian migration. Italian is among the most commonly certified NAATI language pairs, and qualified translators are available in all major Australian cities.

About the Italian Language

Italian only became a unified national language after Italian unification in 1861 — before that, most Italians spoke mutually unintelligible regional languages, and it is estimated that only about 2.5% of the population actually spoke standard Italian at the time of unification. The Italian alphabet technically has only 21 letters, with j, k, w, x, and y considered foreign imports used only in loanwords. Italian is the official language of classical music, and terms like piano, forte, allegro, and soprano are Italian words used unchanged in virtually every language worldwide.