Hello Starlet

Unfortunately it's not always possible to map Italian tenses directly
to English ones, but here's a rough guide. It's probably easiest to
take each tense separately in each language:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Passato remoto

Usually becomes the simple past, e.g. 'disse' > 'he said'.

(There is no special literary equivalent of the 'passato remoto'
in English.)

2. Passato prossimo

This often becomes the simple past, e.g. 'mi ha detto
tutto' > 'he told me everything'.

However, if the action has some kind of connection with
the present, you would use the 'present perfect', e.g.
'l'ho appena visto' > 'I have just seen him'.

3. Present perfect

This will usually translate directly into the 'passato prossimo',
e.g. 'have you seen the film' > 'hai visto il film?'

4. Present perfect continuous

This often translates into a simple present, e.g.
'it's been raining for 3 hours' > 'piove da tre ore'.

5. Simple past

This will translate into the 'passato prossimo' or 'passato
remoto', e.g. 'I bought a book' > 'ho comprato un libro'.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I say, a very rough guide, which doesn't take account of all the
strange idioms in each language. But you can always post examples
of your translations on this site for other users to check, if you're
uncertain!

MrP