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I am trying to translate a quite technical description of how addresses work in Italy to English and there is one specific topic I am having trouble with.

To give a little bit of context, the text I'm translating is a collection of comments in the documentation of a codebase meant to help future translators navigate the intricacies of Italian bureaucratic terminology when translating the UI of an application.

Big buildings (especially residential ones) with multiple street-level entrances often share the same building number between all entrances but each entrance has its own letter. i.e.:

  • Example street, 32/a
  • Example street, 32/b

This section of the building number has a specific name in Italian (because of course it does) that avoids the distinction between residential and non-residential buildings: it's called the "barrato".

Not to be confused with another suffix of the building number called "interno" that is an extra number (i.e.: Example street, 55 interno 2) added for thigs such as:

  • office or apartment complexes that have a single street-level entrance but multiple buildings inside the complex
  • big buildings that have been subdivided in multiple non-connected sections that share a single main entrance
  • shops in a mall

Also not to be confused with an old and now deprecated way to distinguish ground level shops from the residential housing above that had the house number in a different color (red for commercial, black for residential). A very confusing system that would have the color indicated in written addresses as the first letter of the color (or sometimes the full words "rosso"/"nero") without the "/" i.e.:

  • Example street, 15r (the ground level shop)
  • Example street, 15n (the staircase to the houses above)

I have looked around to find an English translation for the concept of "barrato" and the only ones I've found were "flat" or "stair" letter for residential buildings but I couldn't find anything for non-residential buildings or a blanket term for everything. "stair letter" could work but it's not quite correct because the building number can also be shared between buildings that do not have a second floor and is more often than not used to distinguish ground level shops in a mixed-use building from the stair entrance of the residential floors (as the modern alternative to the deprecated coloring system)

Is there a blanket term for the letter suffix of a building number that I have missed in my research, or should I just keep the original italian word "barrato" since there is no direct equivalent in English?

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  • "entry" is another possibility. barrato would be meaningless to an English-speaking audience.
    – TimR
    Commented May 31 at 10:44
  • Huh, fun fact: the red/black thing is also in use Haarlem, the netherlands. In Amsterdam they have (number)HS for the main house and (number)(floor) for seperated appartments above that. Sometimes "bis" is used in various cities for the secondary adress in a house.
    – Borgh
    Commented May 31 at 10:56
  • The same pattern can occur in the United States; I'm not aware of any particular term for describing it. As an example, when I walk along the main street between my home and the train station, two adjacent storefronts are 1932 Maindrag and 1932A Maindrag (Maindrag is substituted for the real name of the street).
    – Jeff Zeitlin
    Commented May 31 at 11:06
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    You should see Scottish tenement/flat/apartment addresses
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented May 31 at 12:21
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    Italian style order for a street number building: Via Veneto 32, entrance A. Then, in a footnote put barrato. OR put it in the text, but that might be confusing in this case. Or leave is out if not relevant. I am a professional translator. Or Via Veneto 32 A. However, what do you mean by technical?
    – Lambie
    Commented May 31 at 12:42

2 Answers 2

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but each entrance has its own letter. i.e.:

Example street, 32/a
Example street, 32/b

Surely, you have given your own answer: "entrance".

the "/" is essentially a symbol for the word "entrance", something that

Example street, 15r (the ground level shop)

lacks

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  • But that's what it denotes, not what the letter itself is called. I'd go with entrance-designating-addition but I don't know if there is a better term
    – Borgh
    Commented May 31 at 13:30
  • "Go to Example street 32/a, The "a" is the entrance you want." There is no unique noun/noun phrase for the function of "a" in English other than the unwieldy ""barrato" and the only ones I've found were "flat" or "stair" letter for residential buildings." We hope that logic will place that letter at an entrance.
    – user81561
    Commented Jun 1 at 10:39
  • you are right, "entrance" is probably the best option. If nobody else answers with some obscure "legalese" term (which is what "barrato" is btw, nobody actually uses it except public administrations) I'll probably mark this as the answer
    – Sogaki
    Commented Jun 1 at 15:56
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Is there a blanket term for the letter suffix of a building number that I have missed in my research, or should I just keep the original italian word "barrato" since there is no direct equivalent in English?

The short answer is "No, there isn't," and "yes, keeping barrato (and explaining it) seems like the best idea."

These letters are common enough in U.S. addresses (and British; Sherlock Holmes famously lived at "221B Baker Street"), but I don't think there's any unified way of referring to them. I don't know the history of the Italian term barrato, but I'm guessing it was introduced while developing the mechanics of the Italian postal system, and should be explained as such.

It's also common for an address to include a second line, e.g.:

221 Baker Street
Suite B

In this case these are simply referred to as the "second line of the address."

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  • "barrato" translates to "with a slash" and while it's not a commonly used term (it's basically obscure "legalese" as far as I know) it is also a very specific part of the address. "Baker Street, 221B" or "Baker Street, 221 suite B" would not be considered a valid address by Italian postal services and public administrations. The only wat to write it is "Baker Steet 221/B": the "/" is mandatory hence the term "barrato"
    – Sogaki
    Commented Jun 1 at 16:03
  • @Sogaki But presumably you're making this translation for an English-speaking audience for whom those idiosyncracies of the Italian street-address "system" need to be explained. There is no corresponding slash-requirement in much of the English-speaking world, and thus no term for it.
    – TimR
    Commented Jun 1 at 17:35
  • I know it's tangential, but I'd like to point out that "221B Baker St" certainly does not designate "221 Baker St, Suite B". It is a quite separate address from 221 Baker St, and indeed from 221A Baker St, if that exists.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Jun 1 at 17:57

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