How to Learn Italian Translation

Bandiera Italiana

Italian is best learned as a spoken language first, before beginning to translate words and phrases into other languages. In a process known as top-down learning, the student learns the speaking patterns of Italian by full immersion in the culture and community. Of course, when the student comes to write Italian, she will find that while she can be understood in speech, translation is another matter.

Things You'll Need

• Italian-English dictionary
• Knowledge of grammar

Instructions

Know Your Language

1. Know the syntax or word order of Italian. English is generally a subject-verb-object, or SVO, language. This is the usual order of these parts of the sentence in normal spoken and written English. Italian, on the other hand, is mostly an OSV or SOV language, so any translator will need to know the function of a word to be able to translate it properly.

2. Know your English grammar, as this helps in translating. While English has clearly defined words and grammatical functions, Italian will often include a part of speech within the verb, and so a verb may not be spelled how the translator expects. For example, "I drive" can be written as "io guido," or it can be written simply as "guido," because the 'o' at the end is the 1st person pronoun "I." The translator should take this into account and translate from the entire context of the surrounding words.

3. Know your articles. Most people unfortunately don't know what articles are in English, let alone Italian. "The" is the definite article, and in Italian it is "il" for masculine and "la" for feminine. In English the indefinite articles are "a" and "an." In Italian they are "uno," "un" and "una." Knowing these will help a great deal in making sense of Italian prose.

4. The English verb "to be" is "essere," and the verb "to have" is "avere." These verbs are the most important to learn first, as they determine how you can deconstruct meaning in Italian. "Essere" forms are "è" ("is") and "sono" ("I am," "they are"), and the "avere" verb forms are "ho" ("I have"), "hai" ("you have") and "hanno" ("they have"). Notice how like in English agreement of verbs, subjects and pronouns are key to translation.

5. Pronouns can be the key to unlocking many words in Italian. For instance, the pronouns "I," "you," "they," "us" and "we" are all part of their verbs in Italian. When translating the above verb "drive," "you drive" becomes "quidi" with the "I" at the end being the 2nd person "you." "Guidiamo" becomes "we drive," and "iamo" is the 2nd person plural. "Guidono" becomes "they drive" and "ono" is the 3rd person pronoun. Every verb therefore has these endings to represent the pronouns in Italian.

6. Recognize the prepositions in Italian, as they are often attached to the beginning of a word. When saying the English "in the" in Italian, the masculine is rendered instead of "in il" simply "nel," and for feminine instead of "in la" is rendered "nella." Remember that words that end in "a" are usually feminine, and their plural ends in "e." The masculine ends in "o" and their plural "i."

7. Translate Italian best by first translating the individual words in a sentence, and then remembering the syntax or the probable word order of OSV or SOV, you can reconstruct the sentence in English. The Italian "Compro una pizza, e mangiamola nella casa" is translated as "I buy a pizza, and we eat it at home." "Compro" ("I buy"), "mangiamola" ("we eat it") and "nella casa" ("at home").

Tips & Warnings

• Learn the grammar of your native language first.

• Words in Italian will be in a different order to English.

References

• Dante Aleghieri Society

Resources

• Giuseppe Verdi Society