EASIT: Easy acess for social inclusion training
This is Unit 2, Easy-to- understand language, in short E2U.
Element 2, Legislation, standards and guidelines.
Video lecture:
Easy-to-understand language in Italy: An overview.
I am Elisa Perego, from Università degli Studi di Trieste.
In this video lecture, I will guide you through the key phases
of E2U language in Italy.
Easy and Plain Language are not equally known,
established and implemented in all EU countries.
In Italy,
in spite of the steps taken, there is still a long way to go,
and simplification is not applied consistently to all sectors.
Research in the field is irregular, although it is growing.
This inconsistency is reflected in
the way Easy Language and Plain Language
both user-centred varieties,
are referred to in Italian.
In Italian various labels co-exist:
"Lingua" or "linguaggio facileda leggere e da capire",
in English: "Easy-to-understand and easy-to-read language".
stand for Easy Language,
although there are shorter expressions, like for example:
"lingua facile", "lingua facile da leggere",
"lingua facile da capire",
"lingua semplice", "linguaggio semplice".
On the other hand,
Italian also uses the loan term "Plain Language"
and the expression "semplificazione linguistica",
in English: "language simplification",
to refer to Plain Language.
"Clarity" is another term that is often used,
as in: "linguaggio chiaro e semplice",
or in English: "Clear and simple language".
The most vigorous debate on the need for clear
and effective writing only reached Italy in the 1990s.
But previous milestones should be mentioned.
In 1965 the well-known Italian journalist
and writer Italo Calvino
drew attention to the disadvantages of the vagueness
opacity and lack of standardisation of non-literary Italian,
referred to as "anti-language".
In the 1990s, two publications against
the "verbose Italian style" were issued:
the 1993 Codice di stile,
or Style code,
by the Italian Minister and Professor of Law Sabino Cassese;
and the 1997 Manuale di stile,
or Style manual,
edited by Alfredo Fioritto.
Both contributions proposed simpler ways to write
administrative documents, according to the type of adressee,
layout principles and general text organization rules.
From the 21st century,
Italy has also begun to participate actively in national
and European projects on the subject.
The Chiaro!, or Clear! project, on the simplification of legal language
was launched by the Italian Public Service Department.
In a wider international context,
joining the EU network Inclusion Europe
was an invaluable opportunity for Italy
to compare itself with other countries.
The current situation regarding the distribution of formats,
activities and fields of application
of EL and PL in Italy,
is illustrated in a publication by Perego (2020),
based on survey data gathered for the EASIT project
through an online questionnaire
distributed to 19 Italian E2U experts.
The results show that
EL is the modality that is produced more often
compared to PL.
Printed content is the format almost all experts work with,
while audiovisual content is still discounted.
Writing Easy Language content is the most performed activity,
as opposed to, for instance, adaptating or validating content.
Finally, most E2U content is created in the field of education,
overlooking crucial areas, such as:
public administration and justice,
culture and literature,
media and journalism.
In terms of outcomes,
the text types translated into EL include:
legal and administrative texts;
didactic texts for vulnerable school-goers
or for learners of Italian as a second language;
health-related brochures;
websites;
and occasionally, short stories.
Anffas, the National Association of Families of Persons
with Intellectual and/or Relational Disabilities,
accounts for most translations of Italian material into EL,
including a children’s book and, recently,
focused information on Coronavirus.
However, substantial work in the sector is being carried out
in one of the five autonomous Italian regions,
Trentino-Alto Adige,
a trilingual region,
Italian, German and Ladin
with strong connections with the German-speaking countries.
This region managed to capitalize on its network
and the work carried out in Germany on Easy Language,
applying it to the more intricate
and multifaceted Italian context.
Interestingly, private companies have started offering
translation services for legal documents into EL.
This shows the growing awareness
of the need to simplify legal language for all.
To conclude,
according to recent data emerging from the EASIT project,
in Perego 2020,
in Italy, there is still no systematic university
or vocational training system for E2U text producers
and translators.
Only approximately half of the people working
in the Italian E2U sector were trained,
and that training mainly takes place outside the academic world,
in the form of in-house courses and even self-training sessions.
All the pictures used in this presentation
come from the Public Domain Vectors website,
which gathers hundreds of royalty-free vector images
under the Creative Commons Universal Public Domain Dedication licence.
This video lecture was prepared by Elisa Perego
and produced by Andreea Deleanu,
from Università degli Studi di Trieste.
You can reach me at eperego@units.it.