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Week of the Italian Language in the World – Annamaria Testa, “La bella lingua si è fatta un lifting”

The Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to present Annamaria Testa’s conference “La bella lingua si è fatta un lifting” (The beautiful language got a facelift) during the XVIII Week of the Italian Language in the World. The theme for the week of the Italian language of 2018 is “L’italiano e la rete, le reti per l’italiano“. The conference is organized under high patronage of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and in cooperation with the École de Langues de l’Université Laval, Quebec.

Tuesday, October 16th 2018, 7pm
Université Laval
École de Langues
J-A. De Sève Pavilion, Room 1121, 7pm
1025 Av. des Sciences Humaines
Québec
Free Entrance

Fashion, food and wine, design, melodrama, art and beauty speak in Italian all over the world. Italian is at the fourth place of the most studied languages, even if it is the 21st language in terms of the number of speakers. However, Italians prefer to translate Italian terms into English. This is because they perceive them as more modern and fascinating. The result? A low-quality linguistic lifting with esthetic and functional doubts and that often leads to confusion and hilarity.

Annamaria Testa is a specialist in communication and creativity. She is not only a business adviser, but also a blogger and an essayist. For over 20 years she has been a university teacher (La Sapienza University in Rome, University of Turin, University of Milan, IULM University and Bocconi University in Milan). Furthermore between 1990 and 1996, she was art director and chaired the international group Bozell. In 2005 Mrs. Testa founded Progetti Nuovi. In 2008 she opened the non-profit website Nuovo e Utile . She has since published almost 700 articles on creativity, communication and other subjects. Since 2012 she has written weekly for the journal Internazionale. In 2015 she projected and launched the non-profit initiative #dilloinitaliano (say it in Italian). The aim is to avoid the growth of “Italenglish”. Always in the same year she joined the Gruppo Incipit in the Crusca Academy and since 2017 she has taken part in the group of advisors of the Book Fair in Turin. She wrote a book of stories named Leggere e amare (Feltrinelli, 1993) and a number of essays on creativity and communication: La parola immaginata (Pratiche, 1988, 2000), Farsi capire (Rizzoli, 2000, 2009), La pubblicità (Il Mulino, 2003, 2007), Le vie del senso (Carocci, 2004), La creatività a più voci (Laterza, 2005), La trama lucente (Rizzoli, 2010) e Minuti scritti (Rizzoli, 2013).