Translate a user manual into Italian

What changes when a manual is written in Italian

The first thing to watch is how instructions are phrased. Where an English manual says "Press the ON/OFF button", an Italian one normally uses the infinitive: "Premere il tasto ON/OFF", "Non immergere l'apparecchio in acqua". The formal Lei form tends to appear in sentences addressed to the reader, such as "La ringraziamo per aver scelto il nostro prodotto". The informal tu, common in some consumer apps, is rare in a manual. What matters most is consistency: a manual that switches between "Premere", "Prema" and "Premete" reads as careless.

Second, safety signal words. The usual Italian equivalents of DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION are PERICOLO, AVVERTENZA and ATTENZIONE. Each corresponds to a level of risk, so the hierarchy in your source must be mirrored exactly everywhere, including boxed notes and figure callouts.

Third, context: a product sold in Italy is in practice expected to ship with Italian user instructions (the EU Machinery Directive, for instance, requires instructions in the language of the country where the machine is placed on the market). Italian text runs noticeably longer than English, so if your source is English, short labels in diagrams and narrow table columns are where overflow shows up first.

Italian typography and conventions to check

• Accents: è (is) takes a grave accent, while perché, poiché and né take an acute one. In capitals the correct form is È, not E', a frequent slip in all-caps chapter headings.
• Elision: l'apparecchio, dell'unità, un'avvertenza, with no space after the apostrophe.
• Numbers and units: decimal comma, full stop for thousands, space before the unit: 0,5 mm, 1.500 W, 230 V. An English 1,500 W left unchanged would be read as one and a half watts.
• Dates: day, month, year, e.g. 15/03/2025, never the US month-first order.
• Headings: sentence case only, "Istruzioni per l'uso", not "Istruzioni Per L'Uso".
• Plurals: Italian uses the CLDR categories one, many and other. In a manual this mostly affects quantities: 1 programma, 3 programmi, and the construction 1 milione di cicli. If the manual quotes on-screen messages with a variable such as {n} programmi, check the wording still works when n is 1.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not do

Your manual is handled by Dédale, the engine specialised in technical text. Accepted formats are Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF and CSV. The file comes back in its original format with the layout preserved: a 30-page Word manual stays a Word file, with its headings, troubleshooting tables and figure numbers. For a typical document, the translation is delivered within minutes and kept in your client area. For a manual going to Italian customers, the Professional level is the one designed for documents ready to hand over.

What Manuce does not do:

• It cannot read a scanned PDF: if the pages are images with no selectable text, nothing is translated.
• It does not accept glossaries or translation memories. If feature names must stay as they are ("Eco Mode", "Turbo Clean"), check them in the free sample and again in the delivered translation.
• It does not produce sworn or certified translations, and it does not check your manual for regulatory compliance: the content of mandatory notices remains your responsibility.

Preparing the manual and checking the Italian version

1. Start from the final version. If the manual was laid out in a desktop publishing tool, export a PDF with selectable text, or a Word file.
2. Spot text locked inside images: labels on an exploded view or a screenshot that are not selectable text will not be processed, so plan to handle them separately.
3. Match the manual to the device screen. If the display stays in English, the Italian manual should quote "Settings" as shown, not "Impostazioni"; if the interface has been localised, the reverse applies. Check this in the sample.
4. Review the high-risk areas: signal words, figures and units, cross-references ("vedere pagina 12", "figura 4") and the "Risoluzione dei problemi" table.
5. Have the result read by an Italian speaker who knows the product, particularly the safety instructions.

In practice

1. Export your manual as a Word file or a PDF with selectable text.
2. Upload it, choose Italian and read the quote based on the exact word count.
3. Read the sample paragraph: instruction style, feature names, signal words.
4. Pay, then download the Italian manual in its original format from your client area.
5. Check accents, units, cross-references and safety notices before release.