Thanks, Micheal for your explanation, it's very helpful and adds value to the title of my notebook. My English is not good at all, but enough to start reading an English book in his original version and I can see the difference between the one translate in my native language. There's always something ' Lost in translation' Take care :)

Thanks, Daniele, I get that from the Italian, I think. “Paese” is being used in a sense more like something we would render in English as “home”,or “safe space” or community, or “a place to belong to”. Village really doesn't have that sense, for most English people. It's a long time since many of us here had agricultural or rural connections – which is how “village” tends to be read in English. We have an old war poem, which touches on a related emotion, and starts, I think, with : “If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. ...” In this, the forced distance away from home, from the “paese” takes you overseas, and brings country (England) into play as that safe home space, as a contrast. For you, if you want to render this poem well in English, you really will do better, and produce something that sounds much more as you intend to an English ear, if you are able to change how you approach the word for that core concept (paese) … Good luck. M

Hi Michael, In Italian "paese" can also refer to a small town or better to a village of 1,000 inhabitants or less. There's plenty of them in the area the writer describes. ( The Langhe). I think village give the right meaning. Country refer to much to a whole state ( Italy) Obviously we can feel nostalgia for our country or homeland, but in my case, the nostalgia is for the small things you left in the place you were born and grow up.

Perhaps your poem would make more sense in English if the "country" or "homeland" sense of "paese" informed the translation ... ?

Hi Teresa, "ci" can be the equivalent of noi ( Non ci piace il gelato= a Noi non piace il gelato), or a demostrative pronoum ( a questo, a quello es. Ci penseremo domani.= penseremo a questo domani) and also indicate a place in a answear ( es. Vai spesso in piscina? Si, ci vado ogni giorno.) In my phrase "ci" answer the untold question what? ( what we need to have nostalgia?) Un paese ci vuole. Second question, the whole sentence "un paese ci vuole" is the subject of "fosse" (your quite right) Italian grammar is very hard even for natives.