Italian
Italian (italiano or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City.
excerpted from Wikipedia
The total speakers of Italian as a maternal language are between 70 and 80 million. The speakers who use Italian as a second or cultural language are estimated at around 150 million.
Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and one of the official languages of Switzerland, spoken mainly in the cantons of Ticino and part of Graubünden (Grigioni in Italian), which together are a region referred to as Italian Switzerland.
It is the primary language of the Vatican City and is widely used and taught in Monaco and Malta. It is also spoken to a significant extent in France, with over 1,000,000 speakers (especially in Corsica and the County of Nice, areas that historically spoke Italian dialects before annexation to France), and it is understood by large parts of the populations of Albania and coastal Montenegro, reached by many Italian TV channels.
Italian and Italian dialects are widely used by Italian immigrants and many of their descendants living throughout Western Europe (especially France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg), the United States, Canada, Australia, and Latin America (especially Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela).
For the most part, Italian translations and voice-overs will focus on the various forms of the Italian language found in Europe. Even though these are found in close geographic proximity from a global perspective, there are still significant differences among them that are reminiscent to those between, let’s say, British and U.S. English.
As a result, it is important to pay due diligence when localizing translations, voice-overs and other materials and media to the respective target audience so that they feel like they are dealing with “one of their own”.
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