An Accent on Accuracy

The highest quality translations, brisk turnaround schedules, competitive rates, and sharing of our knowledge, are all requisites for ALT‘s success. The complete and accurate translation of your company’s communications is vital to your success. That’s why ALT is obsessed with providing the best translators for YOUR project. High-quality translations are the product of a highly talented and experienced translation team with expertise in your industry. ALT puts all the pieces together to make it happen.

Why choose us for English to Italian or  Italian to English Translation?

Advanced Language Translation’s Professional Italian translation services utilize only native speakers to ensure quality and precision translations for your target audience. With Italian in particular, a deep understanding of Italian culture is needed for translation to be successful. When doing business in Italy, professional human translation is a must. Do not expect to close a business deal or impress your clients with spotty software translation. Only through human translation, edited and customized to your target audience, can your meaning be honestly conveyed and your audience not be offended.

We are proud of our excellent reputation for reliable and high quality Italian to English and English to Italian translation services. We have assembled teams of translators from around the world, with an array of skills and specialties and can custom fit the knowledge and strengths of our teams to your specific projects. To demonstrate our commitment to quality and our dedication to our clients, we offer free consultations and provide an industry leading 180-day warranty on translation!

We provide quick and easy custom quotes for your Italian translation and localization needs.

Need to get the “gist” of Italian?

Although professional translation is highly recommended for any business, legal or sincere correspondence in Italian, sometimes it may be ok to use machine translation (via software or the internet) to get the gist of an e-mail or web page. By no means is machine translation an acceptable substitute for professional translation—the technology is not there yet. But it is great for quickly getting the general idea of an article, e-mail, or web site.

Interesting Facts about the Italian Language

Italian is a Romance language spoken by roughly 60 million people, with most living in Italy. Communities of Italian-speakers can also be found in Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia as well. Large immigrant groups in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and Luxembourg also speak Italian. The Italian language and variations thereof can even be heard, to a lesser extent, in parts of Africa such as Somalia, Libya and Eritrea that were formerly under Italian rule.

In Italy, there are 20 regions and at least 20 dialects per region:

At home, many Italians still prefer to speak in the regional dialect.  There was a time, not so long ago, when a child’s first regular contact with the standard Italian language did not occur until primary school. These days, television and other modern methods of communication have all but eliminated that degree of isolation, but it was the immigration from the south of Italy to the north over the years that first caused standard Italian to become the national language of intercommunication. This was because even native Italians sometimes found it difficult to understand dialects from regions other than their own.

History of the Italian Language

Italian is one of the many languages derived from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. The invasion of Germanic tribes from the north, after the fall of Rome in 476 AD, also had an impact on the development of the Italian language. Centuries later, it was heavily influenced by writers such as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch, who revolutionized literature by choosing to write in the vernacular, or language of the common people, rather than in Latin. Their writings became known as the “Stil novo,” the new style.

Standard Italian, however, is a relatively new language. The language that we know as Modern Italian did not really begin to develop until the 13th and 14th centuries. Although there is evidence showing that something approaching standard Italian was being used in certain writings during the 10th and 11th centuries, the regions of Italy in the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance were too feudal and isolated to nurture the widespread development of a common language.

Through the years, the many regional dialects competed for supremacy, but in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Tuscan dialect emerged as dominant due to the great social, economic, and cultural power of Florence. To this day, standard Italian is based on the language of Tuscany. At first, it was considered mainly a literary language. Standard Italian eventually replaced Latin in politics, administration and inter-regional communication, but it was not widely spoken by the general population until after the unification of Italy in 1861.

Written Language

Italian is written using the same alphabet as English, minus the letters J, K, W, X and Y, which are generally used only in foreign names and words. Italian spelling and pronunciation are completely phonetic. That is to say, every letter corresponds to a specific pronounced sound and the same letter or combination of letters always makes the same sound. The letter “a” is always pronounced “ah”, the letter “o” is always “oh.” “Ch” is always pronounced as “k”, and so on. This makes learning to pronounce and spell Italian relatively easy, unlike English with its long and short vowels, irregular spelling, silent “e” and unpredictably pronounced “c.”

Writing and speaking in Italian, however, can get a little more complicated. There are two forms of address: the formal “Lei” (used when speaking to strangers and to show respect) and the informal “tu” (used with family and close friends).

Furthermore, as is typical of Romance languages, Italian words are either masculine or feminine. For example:
il giorno (masculine) the day
la barca (feminine) the boat

Adjectives must also be masculine, feminine or plural, depending on the noun or nouns they modify. To make things even more entertaining, there are many irregular verbs that do not follow normal rules and must, therefore, be memorized. In addition, cognates or “false friends” can be misleading. These are words that look similar to English words, but that have entirely different meanings. For example:

“Una camera” is not a gadget for taking pictures. It’s a room!
If something is described as “morbido” it isn’t awful or sinister, it’s soft!
If someone offers you “confetti” don’t expect little bits of paper. They’re talking about sugarcoated almonds!
And, if you order a “peperoni” pizza in Italy, you’ll get a pie smothered in peppers!

Italian Language Statistics

• About 60 million people speak Italian as their first language.
• Mostly spoken in Italy, but also in communities in Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia,
  Croatia, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Australia, Luxembourg and some places
  in Africa.
• It is not uncommon for Italian-speakers to also speak a dialect particular to the
  region where they live.

Translation and Localization Issues with Italian

Advanced Language Translation Inc has extensive experience with commercial and technical translations from English to Italian and from Italian into English. We have also amassed years of experience in typesetting Italian content. Here are some of the common issues with English to Italian translation that we have learned:

• Expansion is generally less of a problem than with other Romance languages.
• Even though typesetting of Italian doesn’t pose any major technical obstacles,
  hyphenation may be an issue. Be sure your desktop publishing/word processing
  software has the ability to support Italian hyphenation dictionaries or consider using
  left-aligned text without hyphenation.
• “False friends” can be misleading. Make sure you mix Italian and English carefully.

Italian Language Vital Information

Speaking Population: about 60 Million
Where Spoken: Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, some African countries and by immigrant populations all over the world.
Writing Systems: Same alphabet as English, minus the letters J, K, W, X and Y, which are generally used only in foreign names and words.
Code Pages: ISO 8859–1         Latin 1
1252                     ANSI – Latin 1
1144                     IBM EBCDIC - Italy + Euro
20280                   IBM EBCDIC - Italy
Unicode Supported: Yes
Common Phrases: (phonetic pronunciations in parentheses)
Italian: italiano (ee-tah-lee-AN-oh)
Hello: ciao (CHAH-oh)
Good Morning: buon giorno (bwon JOR-noh)
Good Evening: buona sera (BWO-na SAY-ra)
Good-bye: arrivederci (a-ree-veh-DARE-chi)
Please: per favore (per fa-VOAR-ay)
Thank you: grazie (GRAD-zee-eh)
Yes: si (see)
No: No (no)
Sorry: scusa (SKOO-zah) (familiar); scusi (SKOO-zee) (polite)
Cara or cara mia (feminine); caro or caro mio (masculine): approximately
means my darling or my dear; common term of endearment.