Another Legal Term to Watch Out For

As we saw in an earlier post, there are certain terms that can cause translators to and from the Romance languages to stumble.

One of these terms is conflict of interest (plural: conflicts of interest).

In English we say conflict of interest, not "conflict of interests," but in the Romance languages, the word for "interest" is in the plural (so that literally they are saying "conflict of interests").

Thus we have:

French: conflit d'intérêts

Spanish: conflicto de intereses

Italian: conflitto di interessi

Portuguese: conflito de interesses

When we translate these into English, we must remember not to make the last word plural: it's conflict of interest in English.

And when we translate from English into one of the Romance languages, we must remember to make the last word plural (e.g. it's not conflicto de interés in Spanish but conflicto de intereses).