DIETALY
Destination Italy in Tourism Translation Over the Years

Cover image credits (left to right): advertising poster "Italy", collection Salce, catalogue n. 05 00656972, inventory 04952, collocation 2_B_f; brochure "Italy", Archivio Centro Studi Rsi Salò, fund MV, box 2; advertising poster "Italy", collection Salce, catalogue n. 05 00656971, inventory 04953, collocation 2_B_f; advertising poster "Italy", collection Salce, catalogue n. 05 00656969, inventory 04955, collocation 2_B_f.

Project

DIETALY (Destination Italy in English Translation and Language over the Years) is an Italian national research project (PRIN), led by Ca' Foscari University of Venice, with the collaboration of the University of Ferrara and the University of Salento, dedicated to the study of institutional tourism communication in Italy produced in English.
The project examines how language and translation have been used strategically to shape and promote the image of Italy to international visitors from 1919 to the present day.

Key sections

This website serves as a platform to present the project’s research and findings through two key sections:

Database

The database is the key results of the research carried out by Ca’ Foscari University research unit. It consists of a comprehensive collection of metadata from over 600 texts produced by Italian institutions to promote Italy to international visitors in the 1919-1959 period. This includes brochures, leaflets, magazines, and other materials, offering valuable insights for researchers, scholars, students and all those interested in history, tourism communication, language and translation studies.

Resources

This section is dedicated to a selection of visual materials created by our research team to disseminate the results of the project to a wider audience and to make the research on the role of language in tourism promotion in Italy more accessible and engaging.

The project has been carried out thanks to the collaboration of three research units based at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, the University of Ferrara and the University of Salento.

Ca' Foscari research unit has analysed tourism communication from the 1920s to the 1950s in order to study the role of language and visual communication in shaping Italian cultural identity. In particular, it has studied materials produced by ENIT (Ente Nazionale Italiano del Turismo) and housed in the ENIT library in Via Marghera, Rome, as well as in other Italian and foreign libraries and archives referenced in the database.