Working hours and pay

The thirty-sixth entry is il vincolo di non concorrenza, and the noun inside it is one of those Italian words an English reader has to translate afresh in every sentence. Un vincolo is anything that binds and will not let go, and the thing bound decides the English word. In a budget meeting i vincoli di bilancio are constraints. In a family il vincolo di parentela is a tie of kinship. On a planning map un vincolo paesaggistico is a restriction that can stop a house being built at all. In a bank un deposito vincolato is money locked in for a fixed term. And in the contract on this list it is a restrictive covenant, which is the phrase an employment lawyer in Britain would actually reach for. Even the cheerful form is fixed: senza vincoli is no strings attached. So the direction of travel matters. Reading into English, look first at what is being bound — money, land, a person, a promise — and choose from there; writing into Italian, all five collapse comfortably back into one.