The Italian government has introduced a draft bill in the Parliament that proposes to impose penalties up to Rs 90 Lakh (€100,000) on public and private entities, that use foreign languages, especially English, instead of Italian in official communications.
The draft bill calls for the protection and promotion of the Italian language and asserts that English “demeans and mortifies” Italians. It also calls for all public and private organisations to use the language of Dante, the 14th Century poet known as the father of the Italian language, to market their products and services, Reuters reported.
Additionally, this bill mandates that all employment titles and acronyms used by Italian-based businesses must be written in the country's native language, with the exception of any foreign words that are deemed impossible to translate.
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According to Reuters, the draft legislation calling for the preservation and promotion of the Italian language stated that “It is not just a matter of fashion, as fashions pass, but Anglomania (has) repercussions for society as a whole.”
The bill was proposed by members of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's nationalist Brothers of Italy party.
In order to become law this bill has to be approved by both houses of Parliament - the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. However, there was no hint as to when this might take place, Reuters reported.
Given that Britain had left the European Union, the bill claimed that the widespread use of English in Europe was “even more negative and paradoxical,” Reuters reported.
The government recently took action to protect what it views as another significant aspect of Italian culture by banning the use of food produced in laboratories in order to preserve the nation's agri-food heritage.
The draft law comes a few days after Italy temporarily blocked OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT due to data privacy concerns.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
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