The ambulance service

Twentieth on the list is la posizione laterale di sicurezza, and it is the entry on this page that most repays not translating word by word. Taken apart, the Italian says what a pair of hands does: turn the casualty onto the side — laterale — so that the airway stays clear, and call the position a safe one. English describes the same body lying in the same place and names something else entirely, « the recovery position ». One language looked at the geometry, the other at what the position is for. That is a small difference until somebody assembles the phrase out of a dictionary, and then it matters, because « la posizione di recupero » is not Italian and « the lateral safety position » is not English. Both would be understood, and both would mark the speaker as translating rather than as trained. Fixed emergency wordings behave like this everywhere, and the way to hold this one is to learn it whole, along with the picture each language chose: Italian saw a body turned on its side, English saw a person coming round.