The immune system and infection

The twenty-first entry is la sensibilizzazione, and it is the word on this page most likely to be carried into English unchanged and land in the wrong place. Inside the clinic the two languages agree: this is the first exposure that primes the body to react, and English calls it « sensitisation », as in a sensitisation to pollen or to nickel. Outside the clinic Italian keeps the very same noun and puts it to work in public life. Una campagna di sensibilizzazione sul dono del sangue is a blood-donation awareness campaign; sensibilizzare i cittadini is to make people alert to something they had been ignoring; un intervento di sensibilizzazione nelle scuole is a talk given to schoolchildren. « Sensitisation » can do none of that, and a sensitisation campaign would read as a campaign to give people allergies. English has divided the job instead: « sensitise » stays with the body and with the photographic plate, while the public sense goes to « raise awareness » or to « awareness-raising », which is not even a noun of the same shape. One Italian word, two English renderings, and only one of the two is a translation.