Packaging technology in Italian

La linea di riempimento translates itself, and then the first noun walks off into a field « line » never enters. In Italian, la linea is the shape of a body. Mantenere la linea is to keep one’s figure; ho perso la linea says the figure has gone; badare alla linea is to be careful about what one eats; and a biscuit sold as light will promise to be amico della linea. A whole shelf of an Italian supermarket is organised around the word, and none of it is geometry. English owns the outline — « the line of a coat », « clean lines » — but that line belongs to the garment or the building, never to the person inside it. For the person we change nouns altogether and say « figure », « waistline » or « shape », and no phrase with « line » in it will do. The consequence is small and constant. On a label, linea is a slimming claim rather than a row or a queue, and rendering it as « the line » turns a diet into a drawing.