Dictionary and web evidence
Asked to translate into English the following sentence,
Per cogliere appieno le qualità di questo vino si consiglia di servirlo a temperatura ambiente, stappando la bottiglia un'ora prima di mescere.
one Italian student produced the following:
Apart from other infelicities, the choice of ambient temperature for temperatura ambiente seems dubious, given a more natural-sounding alternative, room temperature. But we are dealing here with a semi-specialised text (the description of a wine). To overly trust our intuitions may be dangerous...
The right temperature
Before turning to corpus evidence, let us search dictionaries and the web for a solution to this question.
First make a note of the translation equivalents provided by one or more bilingual Italian-English dictionaries. Then search the web for ambient temperature and room temperature. Does the first exist, or is it simply a calque of the Italian temperatura ambiente?
When you are done, click the button below.