A day after Italy banned ChatGPT over privacy concerns, it came to the attention of the media that, in December, Italian lawmakers of the nationalist Brothers of Italy (Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's party) presented a draft for a legislation to ban the use of terms in English.
Though mentioning all foreign languages, the bill entitled "Provisions for the protection and promotion of the Italian language and establishment of the Committee for the protection, promotion and enhancement of the Italian language", focuses in particular on English, which the draft states "demeans and mortifies" the Italian language.
Including 8 articles, the bill calls both public and private bodies to use the "language of Dante" to promote their goods and services in the national territory.
The draft specifies that even in offices that deal with non-Italian speaking foreigners, Italian must be the primary language used (how will they understand each other remains to be seen...). Besides, public communication and official documentation should be done in Italian and translation tools or interpreters should be used for any event or conference held on the territory of the country. Foreign acronyms or names for roles in companies operating in Italy would also be prohibited and Italian language would have to be used in employment contracts (foreign words would be allowed only if they are impossible to translate).
Foreign language courses in schools and universities would be accepted only if justified by the presence of foreign students (would this imply that Italy wouldn't need as many foreign language teachers as they have now in primary and secondary schools? Would this cause a loss of jobs or a reduction of hours?).
The Culture Ministry would also establish a committee that would make sure of the "correct use of the Italian language and its pronunciation" in schools, media, commerce and advertising.
If passed (it would have to be approved by both houses of parliament – but no date was provided), the bill would impose fines between €5,000 and €100,000 to those found violating the rule.
The bill sets back the clock to fascist times: Italianization is nothing new and this sounds like the latest version of the ban on foreign words issued in July 1929 by the Fascist government to purge influences that may have posed a threat to the purity of the state.
It also sounds as if the bill was drafted by somebody too ignorant and too lazy to learn English or any other foreign language. Too embarrassed to admit it, rather than even trying to learn a foreign language the lawmaker tries to lower the standards of the entire nation. Proof of the lawmaker's ignorance stands in the fact that the draft states that the widespread use of English in Europe is "even more paradoxical" given that Britain quit the European Union. But Britain is not the only place in the world where English is spoken: we all know that the list of English-speaking countries and non-sovereign entities is extremely long and, apart from that, English is also spoken in many countries where it's not an official language, that's what makes it global.
The lawmaker who drafted such a bill probably never learnt a foreign language, never had the pleasure of practicing it and meet people coming from different places, never lived in another country, and never tried to build any cultural bridges - all symptoms of extreme narrow-mindedness.
There are many fields in which we mainly use English terms – think IT, finance, medicine, but also fashion. While it seems unlikely that companies will start using Italian for popular acronyms such as "CEO" or definitions like "risk manager", it is even more unlikely that the country will give up its "Made in Italy" label. When the Brothers of Italy party took office last October, it added the English term "Made in Italy" to the name of the industry minister. Would they have to change it with a literal translation of this definition - "Fatto in Italia", "Realizzato in Italia" or "Prodotto in Italia"? It would be ridiculous as nobody would understand such definitions outside of Italy.
The draft for this bill is completely out of touch with reality and doesn't even take into account the fact that Italian society has changed: classrooms are multi-cultural microcosms and often there isn't any money to hire proper interpreters in schools, so kids of migrant parents who have been living in Italy for a few years end up being the cultural and language mediators between the newly arrived kids and their teachers.
The idea behind such a draft is to prove the cultural greatness of a nation above others, but there's nothing greater in our lives than learning from each other with an open mind.
Languages are exciting as they are alive and every day they change and mutate; every year we add new words to our vocabulary, terms that allow us to grow, personally and globally, all together. Thinking you can translate everything is naïve (consider how nowadays most film titles are left in English to create global franchises) and thinking you can preserve your language from evolving is like locking your brain to any positive influence that may come from another country, another language and another culture. But then again, everything evolves, only fascists remain fossilized in their fascist beliefs.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Italian fashion if such a bill ever passes. Will fashion be next? After all, Mussolini tried to boost a national style, banning the import of foreign fashion items. In 1936 Cesare Meano published then the Commentary and Italian Dictionary of Fashion that had the purpose of purging the language of fashion of foreign terminology, in particular of French words. A year later, the fascist regime established in Italy the Ente Tessile Nazionale (National Textile Body) that had to promote the so-called autarchy, that is self-sufficiency, in textile production.
So will Italy one day have "influenzatori" rather than "influencers" or will it step back to a time when fashion was just another instrument in the hands of the Duce who saw it as a political vehicle for the modernisation of the country? The mere thought brings back nightmarish visions of early fashion designers such as Fernanda Lamma, a fervent advocate of the regime, who designed garments like the "mantello Mussoliniano", a cloak in the style of Mussolini, and a white dress embroidered with golden fasces, or the artist Frare of Treviso, who designed a white dress that recreated the lictorian fasces, symbol of the fascist regime. The idea is unsettling and simply contemplating it is enough to send shivers down one's spine.
Comments