Modulare

Abstract

English language translates the Italian verb ‘modulare’ with two verbs: ‘modularize’ and ‘mod-ulate’. Effectively, the Italian modulare has two different meanings that properly correspond to the English verbs: the first meaning, that we can relate to ‘modularize’, refers to the action of “proportioning the plan of a building, the shapes and dimensions of certain members, etc., according to a measure taken as a module” [Treccani]; the second group of meanings, referring to the verb ‘modulate’, can be described with examples taken from music, as the action that “makes the voice or sounds pass from one tonality to another”, or with examples taken from physics, as “the variation or regulation of the values of a physical quantity, or of the intensity of a process” [Treccani]. ‘Modulate’ then refers to the concept of passage, of continuous transition, where discontinuities are missing or irrelevant.