VENETRAD

The professionals of the Venetrad network work exclusively in their native language, maintaining a professional ethic among colleagues and ensuring a more natural final product. We have contacts for all the main languages ​​required by the market, which we divide into three price ranks.

To view a detailed list of all available languages, click on the arrows here below.

Only in recent years have governments and institutions begun to recognize and defend minority languages, that is, those languages ​​spoken by a minority of people within a State, regardless of whether they are legally recognized by the State itself or not.

For example, Catalan, Basque, Galician and Asturian are linguistic minorities within the Spanish State and, within their autonomous territory, their language is recognized as an official language, therefore they have the right to bilingual education and bilingual communication in public institutions. The last substantial recognition in Europe was in the United Kingdom, where Scottish Gaelic and Welsh were officially recognized.

In our case, the formal recognition of the Venetian language occurred in 2007 by only one of the Italian regions where the Venetian linguistic minority is present (the Veneto Region), but the recognition of languages ​​is a central State competence - which still does not recognize it - so there have been no substantial consequences in the sectors of education and economy as foreseen by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In the meantime, Venetian was recognized as an intangible heritage by Brazil in 2014 and by Croatia and Slovenia in 2015.

Today, the vast majority of Venetians are still unaware of these formal recognitions and, from kindergarten to university, the Italian education system continues to teach that Venetian is a "dialect of the Italian language", culpably delaying the valorization of the Venetian identity.

Venetian is a language with the same rights as other languages, ​​and as such we want to respect it, defend it and pass it on to new generations.

For this reason, where possible, we use the Venetian language in our professional relationships and correspondence, and we invite our Venetian collaborators and clients to feel free to do the same.

Fortunately, in recent years we are not alone in rediscovering the importance of recovering our identity and many other Venetians have begun to take the first step to valorize it: using Venetian to express themselves, with pride and without shame, not only in daily life but also at work and in their artistic expressions.

"Localizing" means translating your communication from the source language in which it is produced to the local language of the recipients of the message. It is usually necessary when you want to address a new geographic market, but perhaps it is not the only reason why this process is useful.

With increasing globalization accompanied by the growing understanding of the English language, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe, albeit with different degrees of penetration, more and more often advertising and even institutional communication make use of this language, which is German or Italian.

Especially in some sectors, it would seem that the use of English is already a must for communication that wants to appear fresh and current. Even reasoning on costs, being able to communicate using only English in all the markets in which you are present would seem to be an interesting solution for many multinational companies. We could summarize this thought like this:

"Why invest resources to localize in multiple languages? We all speak English now!"

This concept is counterproductive both from a cultural-identity point of view and from an economic and communicative one. Let's assume that this trend continues for a couple of twenty years. As all the historical and scientific experience on the subject teaches us, the certain consequence that would derive from this from the cultural-identity point of view would be linguistic assimilation, that is, the slow and progressive abandonment of the use of languages ​​perceived as "weak" (Italian, Sardinian, Friulian, Venetian and similar) in favor of the "strong" language (which would be English). It is the same process that we already observe for the Italian language in relation to other languages ​​spoken on the territory of the Italian State, officially recognized as such by UNESCO with specific ISO codes, but which are not recognized by the State and therefore do not see the same rights applied to them as Italian. Also in this case, and for the umpteenth time, Italy is in contrast with the current Italian and European legislation. Linguistic assimilation by English is already clearly visible and measurable: think of the Italian used by the new generations who grew up in cities more receptive to the changes of globalization like Milan, where the good old "fra" (brother) has given way to a more international "bro" (brother). Or think of the linguistic change in the workplace that we are all experiencing: terms like "skippare", "forwardare", "rischedulare", "call", "meeting" have no reason to be coined or imported into Italian (or Venetian) if not for a process of linguistic assimilation in progress, since the terms to describe these concepts already exist.

Using English to communicate between Italians, especially in an official context, means condemning Italian to death. Just as using Italian to communicate between Venetians condemns the Venetian language to death.

But monolingualism also has several contraindications at a communicative, identity and economic level, especially for businesses. Each language is a different way of reading the world, with a different sensitivity, different priorities and different values: when all companies speak only English in a completely uniform market, it will be much more difficult to communicate the uniqueness of their voice and product identity. At Venetrad, we propose a different solution, without inventing anything revolutionary:

Do you want your message to reach the recipient's heart?

Speak his language!

The native language is the one we use in our most intimate moments: when we think to ourselves, when we instinctively react to something particularly emotional. Usually it is the one our mother used when we were children, that's the reason why it is also called mother tongue.

Localizing your communication in the recipient's native language means first of all communicating that you recognize and appreciate his identity, his culture and history.

Communicating using the language of memories, emotions, childhood and youth, friends and family exponentially increases the listener's attention span, improves the transmission of the message and consequently also the effectiveness of communication.

According to the latest available surveys, for the majority of Italian citizens (and Venetians in particular) the native language is not Italian. Therefore, although with percentages that vary from area to area, more than half of Italian citizens would naturally be more sensitive to communication in other languages ​​(Venetian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Roman,...) rather than in Italian.

In short, using Venetian is and will always be the best way to communicate with a native Venetian speaker, even in the 21st century.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, the Venetian language in general or in a free quote for translations, courses or other linguistic services in all languages, contact us and start promoting the Venetian language with us!

Here is a very important fact for all those who work in the communications sector in the Veneto region: the majority of the resident population has Venetian as their mother tongue. Here is what the ISTAT report on the use of "Italian, dialects and other languages" from 2017 states:

"In the North, the Province of Trento (54.9%) and Veneto Region (62%) stand out for their use of dialect in the family, although not exclusively. In the workplace, the territorial specificities are similar to those found in the family context, with less use of the exclusive or prevalent use of Italian in the North-East and in the South (shares lower than 70%, compared to 86.5% in the North-West and 84.9% in the Center). In these areas, the use of dialect in the workplace is more widespread."

So, calculating about 55% of the population of the Veneto Region (4,850,000 inhabitants), the province of Trento (550,000) and the provinces with a Venetian majority of Pordenone (310,000), Gorizia (130,000) and Trieste (230,000), which being in the same linguistic area will presumably have similar percentages of use, it turns out that in the Italian state there are at least 3 million people whose native language is Venetian.

For the other historically Venetian areas in Istria, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and in Chipilo in Mexico, there is no aggregate data on the use of Venetian, but we have some examples. A "survey on the use of Istro-Venetian in Buie and Umag", conducted by student of University of Rijeka Milena Korenika in 2022, suggests that the residents whose native language is Venetian are 20-30% of the total in these two Istrian municipalities. In Chipilo (Mexico) the residents whose native language is Venetian seem to be about half (2000 people). In Brazil it is more difficult to get an idea, given the lack of data: let's take the figure of 500,000 speakers found on Wikipedia.

Adding to the count all the Venetian speakers living in the rest of the world and all those who speak Venetian as a second language, the Venetian language has an audience of ​​5 million people. Remaining in Europe, the community of native Venetian speakers already has an extension equal to that of official languages ​​of states such as Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Slovak and much larger than that of Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Slovenian. With the linguistic rights currently in force definitely applied in all Venetian areas, the communicative potential of this language could easily reach up to 10-15 million people.

Today, Venetians are a highly educated population: almost all of them attended at least primary school in Italian, Slovenian, Croatian or Brazilian schools, where they learned to write correctly in Italian, Slovenian, Croatian or Portuguese. These languages ​​have their own official spelling, defined by a specific reference linguistic institution. For example, it is the Accademia della Crusca that establishes whether or not a term is part of the Italian language and how to write it correctly.

However, none of these Venetians were taught how to write in their native language at school: the obvious consequence is that if Venetians want to write in Venetian they use the only spelling they have learned, and so to greet each other some write "ciao", others "chao".

All official languages ​​necessarily go through a process of standardization, that is, the choice of some forms over others in order to define an official spelling. As per historical tradition, this process has usually been implemented in function of economic and political power, deciding to use the variant spoken by the capital as the basis for the official spelling of the state language: French is based on the dialect of the Paris region, Spanish on that of the Madrid region, etc.

Italian is an exception to this rule, having established itself as a literary and artistic language alongside the languages ​​used by those in power, such as Latin, French, Spanish and the local languages ​​used by the common illiterate people. It can be said that Italian is an Esperanto that has made it.

The Republic of Venice, also thanks to the existence of Italian, never felt the need to impose an official spelling: officials expressed themselves in Greek, Latin, Italian, Venetian or Paduan depending on the person and the historical period, with cases of inconsistency in spelling even within the same work by the same author.

The Venetian lawyer Isepo Pichi, who in 1747 would print his translation of Bertoldo in Venetian, communicated his personal preferences to the proto (specialized technician) of the printing house as follows:

Se avisa el proto de la stamperia, The proto of the printing house is notified, 

    Che dovendo stampar in venezian, That having to print in Venetian,

No se deve osservar l’ortografia, One must not observe the spelling,

Come ricerca el bel parlar toscan. as it is done for the nice Tuscan speech.

Do P, do T, do R mal staria Two P, two T, two R would look bad

In Bepo, fruto, guera, al dir nostran; In Bepo, fruit, war, in our talk;

[...]

Onde, perché no fè miera d’erori, Then, so you don’t you make millions of mistakes,

Un aviso ve dago per scurtarla: One warning will I give you to shorten:

Se scrive in venezian come se parla. It is written in Venetian as it is spoken.

There are still many people who think like Isepo, too bad that "writing as one speaks" means nothing: writing serves to record orality, and every single person in the world pronounces words slightly differently. Consequently, our dear proto sure made "millions of mistakes" even if he slavishly followed Isepo's good instructions.

The absence of an official spelling has not prevented the production of a vast literature in Venetian, ranging from scientific treatises on botany or astronomy to theatrical works and poetry, but this corpus of reference texts is so varied in terms of variants and spelling that it makes a modern process of standardization much more challenging than other languages ​​such as French, Italian, Spanish.

For these reasons (and others of a more political and social nature) the Venetian language has not seen processes of linguistic standardization in the modern sense of the term until a few years ago and, despite several proposals put forward by different subjects, there is still no single linguistic institution of reference for the entire Venetian community.

We hope that a spelling recognized by the entire Venetian linguistic community, from Istria to Brazil and Mexico, will be identified as soon as possible, and in the meantime we propose the International Writing system of Modern Venetian (Grafia Internazionale del Veneto Moderno - GIVM) developed by the Accademia dea Bona Creansa - Accademia della Lingua Veneta and approved in 2017 by the Regional Commission of experts established by the Regional Council of Veneto Region (Italy).

It is available online on the linguaveneta.net portal, owned by the Regional Council of Veneto, as well as on the website of the Accademia Bona Creansa.

If you wish to use another writing system among those proposed in the Venetian linguistic community, no problem: the important thing is that the final text is professional and coherent. Other available systems are listed below.

As with all other languages, when we decide to translate a text into Venetian we must ask ourselves whether we want to use the standard Venetian version, developed specifically to address Venetians of all origins, or a specific and particular Venetian dialect variant.

WRITING SYSTEM FOR STANDARD VENETIAN

The writing system that we recommend in the vast majority of cases is that of standard Venetian, as also indicated by the Accademia della Lingua Veneta, using a koinè based on the variants of Padua, Treviso and Venice as many Venetian writers did in the past. For example, the characters [ J, Ł ] are used to help all Venetian readers to naturalize the text in their local pronunciation.

WRITING SYSTEM FOR VENETIAN DIALECTS

We recommend using a specific Venetian dialect only in the case of texts addressed to a limited area or that want to emphasize local belonging. For example, for a text set in Brazil or addressed to "talian" recipients (Venetians in Brazil) we always recommend using the local Venetian variant (talian in this case). Likewise, if a source text is set in Venice, Chioggia, Trieste, Verona, Trento, etc., it could be interesting to use the respective local variant.

We remind you that the professionals of the Venetrad network work exclusively towards their local variant, thus ensuring a more natural rendering of the final product while maintaining ethic among colleagues.

The writing system we use for the local variants follows the microstandards (ms) of the Accademia della Lingua Veneta, with the exception of the Venetian-Brazilian variant (talian), for which the reference script is the one approved by the Secretaria da Cultura of the State of Rio Grande do Sul in 2024. Given the local specificity, usually the rendering must be as faithful as possible to the sounds actually pronounced, even at the expense of fluency, in order to obtain the best photograph of the language in that given space-time. As a result, the characters [J, Ł] are not used and accents are used in many more places than in standard Venetian. Here are some examples of translations:

• Horse (eng) - Cavallo (ita) - Cavało (vec-MacroStandard) - Cavalo (vec-ms Veronese) - Cavàeo (vec-ms Paduan), Caval (vec-ms Bellunese).

• Better (eng) - Meglio (ita) - Mejo (vec-MacroStandard) - Meo (vec-ms Veronese) - Mèio (vec-ms Paduan) - Mei (vec-ms Bellunese) - Mègio (vec-ms Venician).

To see a complete list of all the dialectal variants that make up the Venetian language, click on the arrow here below.

Although Venetrad is a new reality, many of the colleagues who make up our network have a long history in the language services sector.

Visit the page PARTNERS to see some of the many agencies, companies, institutions and publishing houses that have collaborated with the members of our network.

Venetian documentaries collection on Youtube