Weighing up and qualifying

The eighteenth entry is in vista di, and it is a false friend that reverses the direction of time. The English phrase it resembles, « in view of », is causal and backward-looking: « in view of these figures, the conclusion changes » means that the figures are the reason and that they are already on the table. In vista di does the opposite. It looks ahead to something that has not happened yet and names the purpose or the prospect for which a thing is being done, so il testo è stato riscritto in vista di una firma rapida says the text was rewritten with a quick signature in mind, and in vista delle elezioni means in the run-up to the election. The renderings that hold are « with a view to », « ahead of » and « in anticipation of », and it is worth keeping « with a view to » and « in view of » apart on purpose, because they differ by one small word and by the whole direction of the sentence. What « in view of » really translates is the twentieth entry on this page, alla luce di.