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Italian to English translations [PRO] Journalism / glossy magazine prose
Italian term or phrase:mecca
it may still be OK in Italian to talk about somewhere as the "mecca". But not in English. Can someone suggest a better one-word solution that does not offend any religion?
in your case I would translate : 'Chicago is the capital of architecture'
but I point out that 'mecca' in Italian is 'the best place on earth' about the topic you're speaking of. I'm pretty sure that 'capital of arch' would fix.
In other cases I would have filled other words though...
All of these suggestions are interesting, but currently I'm thinking Giles and meg are on the right track....I'm still thinking. It would be useful to solve this one because "Mecca" does seem to crop up quite a bit in Italian things I'm asked to translate.
The term "Mecca" has taken on a wider meaning in everyday speech; it is no longer taken as meaning purely a religious destination. I very much doubt a Muslim architect visiting Chicago would to take offence. And as for g-spot... since these are all suggestions given in response to the help you asked for... don't bite the hand that feeds...
As a native Chicagoan, I may be just a tiny bit biased here, but I don't think it would be offensive to call Chicago "the mecca" (small 'm') of modern architecture and design. Ever since reconstruction of the city following the Great Fire of 1871, Chicago has always attracted the best and brightest architects and has become something of a "sacred" place, where architects who have designed a major building in the city are considered to be the members of a pantheon of sorts. My Webster's unabridged dictionary defines 'mecca' as: "a place regarded as the centre of an activity or interest or as the goal of its practitioners or connoisseurs".
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +2
