Mobile networks

La zona d’ombra is the place the signal does not reach, and the picture inside it is a shadow: the hill stands between the mast and the phone, and what lies behind it is in shade. English has no single word for that and takes whatever the setting suggests — « dead spot », « dead zone », « black spot », or the newspaper coinage « not-spot ». Every one of those names an absence, while the Italian names an obstacle, which is nearer the physics, because a shadow needs something standing in the light. Learn the phrase in the plural too, because that is where it leaves the engineering behind. Le zone d’ombra di un’inchiesta are the parts of an investigation that nobody has cleared up, and a report will end on restano molte zone d’ombra. English reaches for another picture there, « grey area », and it is not the same thought: a grey area is genuinely ambiguous, whereas a zona d’ombra is simply not lit yet. One Italian phrase covers the hillside and the file with pages missing; we change words each time.