HA NOI — The 10th annual Italian Language week will kick-off in Ha Noi tomorrow.
This year's theme is Our Italian & the Italian of Others, and the programme of events aims to promote the use of Italian around the world.
In Viet Nam, Italian has been taught not only at foreign languages colleges but also at the Thang Long, Construction and Business and Trade colleges.
The highlight of the week will be an international seminar on the study of the Italian language featuring guests such as the ambassadors of Argentina, Pakistan, Switzerland and Venezuela, and the director of the Goethe Institute among others.
The seminar will be held at 6pm at L'Espace, 24 Trang Tien Street. Participants will discuss the advantages of learning Italian in a discussion in Italian that will include English and Vietnamese translation.
The seminar will be chaired by writer Mario Fortunato, former director of the Italian Institute of Culture in London and contributor to The Guardian and Le Monde.
An Italian wine tasting buffet sponsored by Viet-It Wines import company and the Restaurant Da Paolo will be held at the seminar.
Fortunato introduced the Italian book If This Is a Man in Ha Noi yesterday at a ceremony to launch the book's Vietnamese translation.
The autobiographical book was written by Italian writer and chemist Primo Levi, who based the book on his own experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
The book is considered as a classic in Italy and is taught at schools across the country. "Usually books taught at schools are boring and full of theory," said Fortunato. "But this book is humane, and it helps readers become more human."
The book has a simple and clear vocabulary which is suitable for people who have not been studying Italian for very long.
For the last 40 years of his life, Levi grappled with the philosophical implications of having survived interment at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The book was first published in 1947 but won acclaim ten years later as a masterpiece of Italian literature.
Levi also published poetry, science fiction, essays and short stories. In 1987, at the age of 67, he killed himself.
In other events to promote Italian culture, author Fortunato will meet Vietnamese students of the Italian Language Department at the University of Social Sciences in HCM City at 5pm on October 18. — VNS