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In these two sentences:
Il bambino sta per mangiare la banana.
Il bambino mangerà la banana.
If I understand it correctly, both seem to express "The boy will eat the banana" or "The boy is going to eat the banana".
However, I don't understand what is the difference, if any, between the two sentences. How can I use them properly?
The first sentence indicates an action that will happen in the nearest future, while the second one doesn't necessarily imply that the action will take place after a short lapse of time.
Just to give you an additional information on the historical development of that tense, the first sentence is rendered in latin with the participle future in combination with the verb "to be", which costitutes the so-called "periphrastic active" construction (profecturus sum means "I am going to leave"): this suffix remains productive in Italian language with the same sense of imminence in expressions like "nascituro" ("the one who is going to born") or "venturo" ("the one who is going to come").
will in English, in the latter sentence should the probability of him eating the banana be 100%? Or should the first sentence have a higher likelihood of him eating the banana?