Civil protection

The third entry is il cordone di sicurezza, the security cordon, and the noun inside it marks a habit English has and Italian has not. With us the same word is already a verb: the police « cordon off » a street, and the reporter writes « the square was cordoned off » without feeling that anything unusual has happened. Nothing is added, no ending changes, a noun simply starts taking objects. Italian hardly ever does this. There is no verb built on cordone, so the sentence needs a verb that was always a verb: istituire un cordone, transennare la strada, chiudere gli accessi. The same gap runs through the whole list. We turn « sandbag » and « shelter » into verbs on the spot, while Italian keeps l’argine di sacchi di sabbia and il riparo al chiuso as nouns and puts mettere, portare or dare in front of them — mettere al riparo, dare l’allarme. So when an emergency report crosses, expect every short English verb to come back as a noun with a working verb ahead of it, and expect the Italian sentence to be one word longer every time.