God, this was different. It's still Ortolani, and it'll still steal a snicker here and there, but that'll be bitter. I don't know that this will get an international release, when I reviewed Kobane Calling by Zerocalcare years ago I expressed doubts about the possible effectiveness of the translation about the dialectal character of the exposition, but it's been translated in many languages since, and to international acclaim. It was just such a powerful book regardless.
Tapum, however, is a story of the Alpini, the mountain corps of the then recently born Italian army, and those people all came from the North, North-East of the peninsula, and spoke in a certain way, and I think it'll detract when that will be lost in translation, but such considerations notwithstanding for the international public who couldn't appreciate them anyway, there is always a barrier when things are translated. Not so much as reducing the work to its abstract concept to then express it with different words, thus giving up the artistic qualities of the original rendition (though that does stand, too), but rather because the context will inevitably have a different relevance to foreign readers, like a movie set during the Independence War in North America might not be completely alien to a non-US viewer but they won't have the same investment in the subject.
And while I'm certain lots of kids and young adults nowadays may be mostly unfamiliar with this war of 108 years ago, they'll at least have either the dialect in common, or a familiarity with its existence.
All this said, I really hope this gets an international edition, because it should be divulged more widely.
My only criticism is the perspective on the Italian generals, being described as stupid and inept, which I remember being the POV in a late-night movie on the TV decades ago... IMO, they weren't so much stupid as they placed zero value on the people surrounding them whom they commanded, they were so concerned with their own glory and everybody else was fodder, and that isn't as excusable as them not having the wits, they were evil, in this. If only there had been more cliffs right next to the palaces of power...