Practical tips for passing the Latin test at Maturità 2025

The Latin language and culture test, the second written examination for high schools with a classical orientation, is one of the tests with the longest and most established tradition in Italian schools. This is because the school has always, it can be said, placed the core of its teaching in the understanding of texts from the classical, ancient and then modern and contemporary literary tradition.

The custom of educating the new generations by taking cues from significant texts from the past is even ancient; already the Greeks and Romans used to train young people by entrusting them to educators who based their teaching above all on the study and interpretation of the texts of the literary tradition considered most significant.

This educational model has remained in place for centuries and has been the basis of Western European education to the present day. The real difference from antiquity and the past lies in the fact that Greek and Latin were, with the passage of time, no longer used as languages of communication and became languages that were only used for written texts and their comprehension. From a certain point onwards, however, they were no longer languages of immediate understanding because they were no longer languages of use and it became necessary to translate them from the original into the languages of new readers.

The act of translating is so demanding that it is particularly rich in consequences for those who perform it: it involves knowledge of both languages, the source and target, and requires considerable intellectual flexibility and special cognitive skills in those who perform it. Those who translate, even the simplest texts, put these capacities into motion and by engaging in it, refine them more and more. On the other hand, Greek and Latin texts and literature are also considered exemplary for their content and aesthetic values, which for so many centuries represented a model to be imitated and looked up to by even those who by then practised other languages and wrote texts that would in turn become part of new literary traditions. For these reasons, passages from Greek and Latin continue to be translated in schools, for their exemplary value on the one hand, and for the particular effectiveness of translation as an educational and training tool on the other.

The most important issue is that the translation is based on the exact understanding of the text to be translated and its precise interpretation forms the basis of the new text, which is as if it were a sort of duplicate, as faithful an image of the original placed in another linguistic-cultural context. Those who undertake these tests must prove that they are capable both of understanding the original text and of rendering it accurately in their own language. The first aspect is essential, but the second must not be forgotten either and one must therefore avoid literal translation by creating an incorrect or incomprehensible text in one's own language.