Talk:Politics of Umbria

Not yet federal
I have made some modifications to better reflect the fact that full federalism is not active yet in Italy, as the previous content of the article could be misleading. First, in the incipit section I have made clear that Umbria is currently an administrative division of Italy, which was mentioned nowhere in the article. I don't know whether the term councillors is the best translation for assessori (I hope so), but ministers is definitively not. As well, we cannot speak of a Constitution of the region, being better termed as statute of the region. --Cantalamessa (talk) 22:48, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In English assessori is best translated as "ministers" and "Statute" is not very clear. Italy is not a federal republic, as also Spain is not, but it is anyway useful and interesting to give information about the politics of its regions. --Checco (talk) 11:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I do agree on giving a view of political situation in Italian regions. The problem with the current versions of these articles is that an uninformed reader could think that regional autonomy is extended up to a point that Italy is a federated state, which is not true. If you critically read at the incipits of the articles, you may realize that the world "Italy" or "republic" is absent. I do not think that this was purposely done, but I think that we should remediate to this, such as to give readers the most complete and neutral view on politics of the Italian first-level administrative divisions. Moreover, I would debate a little more on the use of terms such as "minister" to translate "assessore". And "statute" exists in English, and has a less autonomistic meaning (see the section "Autonomy Statute") with respect to "constitution" (...A constitution is a system for governance, often codified as a written document, that establishes the rules and principles of an autonomous political entity....). I am not going to do further edits, I hope we can reach consensus in order to modify the other 19 articles as well. --Cantalamessa (talk) 12:32, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Regions can be even more autonomous in states which are not federal (think about the UK, Spain and, regarding the five autonomous regions, Italy). Assessore is a memeber of the regional executive in Italy, translating it as "councillor" would be confusing: "minister" is the word which is used for executive members all over the world, even if in different contexts different terms are used ("Secretary" in the UK and the US, assessore in Italian regions). What about "constitution"? Same argument: many sub-national entities (States, regions) have a "constitution", sometimes it is named in a different way, but the common term in English is "constitution". --Checco (talk) 06:52, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I do not want to discuss about the level of federalism achieved in nowadays Italy, I just want to use the correct terms, not to leave reders with a wrong idea. The members of the executive board of the Regions are called in Italian assessore, which is exactly the same term used for the members of the executive of Italian municipalities. Thus, if you read "councillor", you see that it is the term used in such cases. Otherwise, we should use "minister" to design even "secretaries". For the Constitution issue, this term is common in English but indicates an high degree of autonomy, such as that of an indipendent state, which is not our case. The Albertine Statute is an example of usage of the term Statute in English, which indicates something similar to a Constitution. Morevoer, the term Statuto is referred to "Statuto ordinario" or "Statuto speciale", which I see (in Italian regions) is not translated as constitution but as statute. --Cantalamessa (talk) 10:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I still prefer "constitution" as it is more clear for the reader and I prefer "minister" instead of "councillor" because this term is mostly used for members of legislative assemblies. --Checco (talk) 11:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, so we need the opinion of other people, too. --Cantalamessa (talk) 13:31, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I thought a lot about your translation arguments. I think that "minister" is definitely a better translation for assessore than "councillor", but, although I think that also "Constitution" is a good translation for Statuto, I won't oppose changes to "Statute", provided that they concern all the twenty articles about Italian regions and the twenty "politics of" templates. Anyway, as I said, I still think that the term "constitution" is more easy to understand for the 95% of readers who will understand quickly what we are talking about, while "statute" is definitely more obscure for the many. --Checco (talk) 11:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)