Stage technology

The twelfth entry is il puntamento dei proiettori, and the noun in the middle is the one to watch. Il proiettore and « projector » overlap in exactly one place: the machine in a projection box or a meeting room that throws an image on a wall is indeed il proiettore, and an English reader who stops there has the word three quarters wrong. In an Italian theatre i proiettori are the lanterns — the lights hung on the bars over the stage and aimed one by one in a dark house — and puntare un proiettore is what English calls focusing. On a car the same noun is the headlamp: i proiettori anabbaglianti are the dipped beams, and no English driver would call them projectors. Underneath all three sits proiettare, to throw something forward, and Italian is content to let one noun name anything that throws light or an image. English divides the work by the object — « projector » for the image, « lantern » in the theatre, « headlamp » on the car — so the choosing happens on the way out of Italian and never on the way in.