Translate a privacy policy into Italian

GDPR terminology in Italian: the traps

The GDPR is published in every EU language, and the Italian version sets the terms Italian readers expect. A translation that drifts from them looks amateurish even when the grammar is sound. The pairs to check first:

• Controller is titolare del trattamento. The classic trap: responsabile del trattamento means processor. Translating “responsible party” or “data controller” literally can swap the legal roles.
• Data subject is interessato.
• Data Protection Officer is Responsabile della protezione dei dati (RPD), though DPO is also widely used.
• Lawful basis: base giuridica; purposes: finalità del trattamento; retention period: periodo di conservazione.
• Right to erasure: diritto alla cancellazione, often paired with diritto all’oblio.

The document itself is usually called an informativa sul trattamento dei dati personali or informativa privacy, although many Italian websites simply keep the English heading “Privacy Policy”. That choice is yours; check it in the free sample.

Register, set phrases and Italian typography

English “you” has no built-in politeness level; Italian does. Privacy notices normally use the formal Lei: “La informiamo che i Suoi dati saranno trattati…”. Some consumer-facing texts prefer impersonal wording (l’utente, i dati forniti). What matters is consistency: a policy that slides from Lei to tu reads as stitched together.

Details that give away a careless translation:

• Accents: è (“is”) takes a grave accent; perché, poiché, affinché take an acute. The capital is È, not E' with an apostrophe.
• Dates: 25/05/2018 or 25 maggio 2018, month in lower case; “Last updated” becomes Ultimo aggiornamento. US-style month-first dates must not survive.
• Article references: art. 13 del Regolamento (UE) 2016/679, the usual Italian form.
• Numbers: decimal comma, full stop for thousands.

Italian typically runs somewhat longer than English, so a tightly set six-page PDF may gain a few lines; leave some room in footers and page breaks.

What a translation should not change: regulators and governing law

Your policy probably names a regulator and a legal framework: the ICO and the UK GDPR, the CNIL, or another national authority. A translation keeps those references and renders them faithfully; it does not swap them for Italian equivalents. The Garante per la protezione dei dati personali and the Italian Codice in materia di protezione dei dati personali appear in the Italian version only if your source text mentions them.

The question often arises because data subjects can lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority where they live, which for an Italian resident is the Garante. Adding that reference, or adapting a clause on international transfers or cookies, is a legal decision for you and your adviser, ideally made before translation, in the source file. Manuce translates the text you give it; it does not adapt it to Italian law.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

Your privacy policy is handled by Thémis, Manuce’s legal specialist engine. Upload the file and the quote appears immediately, based on the exact word count; for a policy of around 2,500 words (six pages), the translation is delivered within minutes and kept in your client area.

• Formats: Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF, CSV. A policy published on a website can be sent as HTML or Markdown and comes back in the same format, markup and layout included.
• Free sample: one paragraph of your file translated at the level you choose, before payment. Pick the paragraph on roles (controller, processor) or on data subject rights.
• Several languages: if the same policy is also going into Spanish or German, the multi-language discount applies to the whole order from two languages.

Limits: a scanned PDF (an image with no selectable text) cannot be read; Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations; it does not take glossaries or translation memories, and it does not check your policy for GDPR compliance.

Preparing the file and checking the Italian version

Before uploading:

• Send the current version, with its date; translating an outdated policy means doing it twice.
• Settle any Italy-specific additions in the source (Garante reference, EU representative details, cookie wording).
• If your PDF is a scan, go back to the original Word file or the web page.

On delivery, check that:

• titolare and responsabile point to the right entities throughout;
• company names, email addresses (privacy@…) and URLs are unchanged;
• the register (Lei or impersonal) is consistent and è and perché carry the right accents;
• retention periods (“24 mesi”, “10 anni”) match the source figures.

In practice

1. Export the current version of your policy as Word, HTML or a text-based PDF (not a scan).
2. Upload it to Manuce and select Italian: the quote appears immediately.
3. Read the free sample, checking titolare, interessato and the Lei register.
4. Pay, then download the translated file in its original format.
5. Check names, addresses, retention periods and regulator references before publishing.