Data protection law

The twentieth entry is l’autorità di controllo, and the middle word is one of the most expensive false friends in Italian legal prose. Il controllo hardly ever carries the English sense of command or mastery. It means checking, verifying, keeping an eye on. Il controllo dei biglietti is the ticket inspection, il controllo qualità is quality checking, tenere sotto controllo is to keep something monitored, and the everyday verb controllare simply means to check: controlla se la porta è chiusa asks somebody to go and look, not to take charge of the door. So l’autorità di controllo is the supervisory authority, the body that inspects and audits, and calling it the controlling authority hands it a power the phrase never gave it. Where Italian does want command it reaches for other words — il comando, la direzione, la gestione. One corner is shared: il controllo di una società, the holding of a company, keeps the English sense, and it is the exception that makes the rest look reliable when it is not.