Italian Translations
Language as a cultural asset.
Localisation as a business asset.
Italian translations that flow
The advantage of native specialist translators.
Around 85 million people worldwide speak Italian, including 65 million native speakers. Compared to languages such as French or Spanish, Italian is more regionally concentrated. Although there are Italian-speaking minorities in Croatia and Slovenia as well as in cities such as New York City, the vast majority of native Italian speakers live in Italy, Switzerland and San Marino.
Although Italian is not particularly widespread globally, spoken Italian varies greatly from region to region within Italy. So much so that some variants can be categorised as independent languages with their own literary tradition.
As much as we love regional dialects, international companies operating in Italy are fortunate that there is an equivalent to standard German in the Italian written language. Standard Italian is generally understood by Italian native speakers and can therefore be used in corporate communication.
For companies this means that Italian communication should sound good because they are proud of the language. That’s why our translation agency only uses native-speaker translators. They are not only linguistically adept, but also familiar with the culture-specific customs and references.
Types of text that we regularly
translate into Italian
- Cover letters
- Food labels
- Instruction manuals
- Packaging texts
Translations German - Italian
Always keeping an eye on cultural differences.
When translating a German text into Italian, not only regional differences should be taken into account, but also general cultural differences.
One example: Humour. German humour can come across as very direct, dry or even sarcastic to Italians. Italian humour is often more emotional and subtle. This is why a joke that works in German can have a completely different effect in Italian or even be offensive. This is precisely where all current machine translation systems still fail, as they barely localise humorous texts, if at all. A human translator, on the other hand, can proceed sensitively and make adjustments where necessary to ensure that the humour is also conveyed in Italian in an appropriate manner.
A professional specialist translator has various options for dealing with humorous passages. He can modify them and take cultural differences into account. Sometimes it is enough to change the choice of words slightly.
In extreme cases, however, the joke must be completely replaced by something that can fulfil a similar function in the text. The intention of the source text is thus retained, even if the content of the translation differs slightly.
Sometimes, the joke is a central part of your text and cannot be easily changed or replaced. In that case, the translator can insert a footnote or an explanatory comment. This preserves the original message. At the same time, the reader is given the cultural background necessary to understand the original intention and the gist of the joke.
If the choice between these two options is not obvious, our project manager will consult with you. What is more important: an accurate reproduction of the original, cultural adaptation or a balanced mix of both? The result of the joint decision-making process is often more authentic and appealing. This extra effort is often worthwhile, especially for business presentations.
Regional variations in Italian
When we recommend a localisation.
Even if standard Italian is understood in writing, there are situations in which localisation is recommended. For example, if a company only offers its services or products in a specific region, it is possible that online searches for these services or products will not be conducted using terms borrowed from standard Italian, but rather with terms that correspond to the regional variant. As part of search engine optimisation (SEO), it is then worth ensuring that these regional terms at least appear here and there as synonyms in website texts.
The situation is somewhat simpler if your target market is, for example, Italian-speaking Switzerland, but not primarily Italy. In this case, it is usually worth deviating from standard Italian and adapting idioms and vocabulary to the regional variant.
Your translation agency for Italian translations
Passion in the language. Passion in service.
The Italian language is appreciated for its melodiousness and liveliness. We also live the passion that it can express in our service. We are language enthusiasts. We think along with you. We take as much work off your hands as possible so that you can concentrate on your core business. The result is a professional Italian translation of your project – for as little as 82 cents per line.
Although we are a translation agency for Italian translations, of course we offer translations from different source languages into many different target languages as well. And that’s not all: in addition to translations, we offer related services such as notarisation, the creation of accessible documents, layout work, transcriptions and subtitling.
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Asking costs nothing. Not asking does.
Languages that we frequently translate
A selection.
- Albanian
- Arabic
- Bosnian
- Bulgarian
- Chinese
- Danish
- German
- English
- Estonian
- Farsi
- Finnish
- Französisch
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Icelandic
- Japanese
- Catalan
- Korean
- Croatian
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Macedonian
- Dutch
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Swedish
- Serbian
- Slovakian
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Thai
- Czech
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Hungarian
- Vietnamese
If you need a translation of languages not listed here or of less common languages, please contact us anyway. Thanks to our large translator network of over 2,000 native speakers, other source and target languages are also possible.