Translating Made-in-Italy Across Time and Space

Abstract Through a linguistic anthropological analysis of a corpus of storytelling practices that have emerged from interviews that I conducted with Northern Italian executives (2011–2023), I examine how collective, Made-in-Italy branding identities are (co)constructed and translated through the scalar chronotopic stances that these managers take vis-à-vis both the historicity and the contemporary, artistic uniqueness of their companies. More specifically, I describe how the executives in small Northern Italian family-owned firms use their corporations’ histories to associate moral discourses of cultural values, responsibility, and authenticity with the Made-in-Italy brand. Executives’ narrative shifts translate Made in Italy from a national brand that allegedly represents all goods produced in Italy to more localized, town-based branding identities. To do so, I am inspired by an inter-semiotic approach to translation, one that allows me to study these identification processes from a more fluid and dynamic perspective.