Going from Italian to Malay (Bahasa Melayu) has a composite linguistic distance of 79% (heuristic estimate). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.
Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.
Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.
Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.
Latin → Latin/Arabic
Indo-European ↔ Austronesian
The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Italian:
A quick 3-question check between Italian and Malay. No signup.