Talk:Italy

Official translation

Intervening in the talk page after the beginning of an edit war. The official name of Italy, in Italian, is Repubblica Italiana as in the title of the Italian Constitution. This name can immediately be translated as "Italian Republic" in English, and indeed this is a commonly used translation. However the official protocol of the United Nations uses "Republic of Italy" as the official English name, as shown in this list, after an explicit request by the Italian government done in 2003. I think there is nothing wrong in showing both English translations as official names of Italy in English, especially given that the second one is the one used by the UN. It is not as common as Italian Republic, but it does appear and is the official name, as stated in the text. Yakme (talk) 22:53, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

It seems like "Republic of Italy" is the name that the state is encouraging in the English language, but "Italian Republic" is so commonly used that it appears to be their de facto name in English -notably used by Italy's own government. The United Nations Terminology Database has a record (the related document is not available on the official website, but it is there in the link that you shared) of the state requesting its name be changed, however this is not reflected on the UN's list of member states or any other page that I could find on the UN's websites, except in the website archive links that you referenced.

I could only find three instance where the state's government used "Republic of Italy": one in Article 16 of the Presidency of the Republic's translation of their constitution, and two in the preamble of a translation by the Senate International Affairs Service. I couldn't find reference to any translation of their constitution as an official translation, only as "a translation" by the Italian Constitutional Court, or "(Translation by the Presidency of the Republic)" by the Presidency, and the Senate provides a link title with the document title but no description. All of these English translation are titled "Constitution of the Italian Republic".

I am very much in favour of using the name that a group asks others to call them, and initially I was totally on board with you! but when I saw that the state's government doesn't even use it in their own English translations, it felt like their effort to change the name is half-hearted :/

I think it would make the most sense to write "Italian Republic" with a note saying that "Republic of Italy" was requested to be used in English by the government but not followed by their own representatives. Unless there are high-quality sources where the government uses "Republic of Italy", it doesn't make sense to me for that title to be used as the norm. The article could also say "...commonly known as the Italian Republic, officially titled Republic of Italy...", but a note seems more appropriate to me. Floralcreek (talk) 23:07, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't really see how anything can be more official than an official request filed by the Italian government to the United Nations. Of course you won't find many instances of the Italian government actually using it, because most documents produced by the Italian government are indeed written in Italian. But I think that the three cases mentioned above should suffice to say that the Italian government deems that denomination official (at least, one of the official ones). So definitely I think we should mention the official English name in the lead sentence, as is customary to mention the full official names for most countries on their WP articles. Yakme (talk) 23:59, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Length of the article

This article is really, really, really long. What should we do to make it shorter? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:57, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Good question, CactiStaccingCrane! The long haul would be copy-editing for a succinct neutral encyclopaedic tone throughout, I think. Some possible quick fixes might the removal of some or all of the unsourced material, and elimination of WP:PUFFERY and hyperbole. I note that 'largest' appears 54 times, 'smallest' not once; 'best' 12 times, 'worst' not once; 'highest' 13 times, 'lowest' once; 'most' 113 times, 'least' twice. 'Leading' (17 occurrences), 'major' (36), 'important' (8) and the like could probably all be removed without loss. There's also duplicated content – the Po is described twice, for example. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:14, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers Alright, this is trim time. Wish me luck :) CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

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Location

"a country located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea" sounds like an island. could we word it better? PamD 05:38, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Top of the article version

Due to notices that the article needed to be shortened because it was too long, a cooperation between several users left this current version, which in my opinion is very good. So please, before anyone adds information to the article, especially in the history part, make sure you really know the history of the country, and not just part of it, otherwise your "update" will be considered "original research" what is prohibited here on wikipedia.

Thanks Gastrela 33 (talk) 14:42, 7 January 2023 (UTC)