Talking Italian

Just a few days till we depart for our Italian holiday....hooray! By some strange yet happy coincidence, this past week I've been working on a clinical report for a client that ran some trials in hospitals in Italy. In a moment of that infinite wisdom that is held in reserve for the most inept (or possibly bowing to budget cuts), the client decided not to get the patient data listings properly translated in their entirety, but to rather bang together a shoddy collection of common Italian medical phrases and words plus their English equivalent, thereby leaving us writers to trawl hundreds (and thousands) of pages of data to match up Italian phrases with the English, as we attempt to describe what actually happened to the patients and whether any of it is of clinical significance (di rilievo clinico).

Consequently, over the past few days, my grasp of the Italian language has come on leaps and bounds ... I'm not entirely sure how useful it will all be in the holiday context., but some of the following phrases would definitely put an authentic Italiano slant on the conversation....

testa e collo - meaning "head and neck"....as in I love the sunshine on my head and neck

fuori dalla norm - "outside the norm", could be teamed with many other phrases...say, di rilievo clinico...perhaps in response to the waiter's polite query if "everything was all right?"....The food was outside the norm, but don't worry, it's probably not clinically significant

diarrea and crampi addomiali - "diarrhoea" and "abdominal cramps"...I take back what I said to the waiter, must have been the prawns

aumento volume naso and aumento volume mani e piedi - corresponds to "increased volume of the nose" and "of the hands and feet"...clearly a literal translation, yet still a slightly alarming situation to be describing, possibly a consequence of too much sun or chianti...I felt my nose/hands/feet had increased in volume [wonder if there's one for stomach?]

senso di gonfiore - refering to "a sense of swelling"....endless possiblities, some probably best kept for the bedroom...

ispessimento generalizzato - or "generalised thickening"...see above

frattura ii dito piede destro - possibly a little too specific, unless I have the misfortune to "fracture the second toe on my right foot"

sindrome depressiva - literally "depressive syndrome"...probably most apt at the holiday's end, when we're about to head home to dark and gloomy days... I feel depressive syndrome coming on


[With apologies to all Italians and anyone fluent in Italian]