Parental leave and family at work in Italian

Two thirds of the way down sits il contributo figurativo per i figli, and the adjective in the middle is the word on this page an English reader is likeliest to get wrong while feeling perfectly safe. « Figurative » in English means non-literal — a figurative expression, a figurative sense — or, in front of a painter, representational. Figurativo does that job in Italian too, in arte figurativa. In the language of pensions and social security, though, it does something else entirely. A contributo figurativo is a contribution entered on a record although nobody handed over any money, because the law treats the period as if it had been worked: months of parental leave, military service, spells of unemployment. So il contributo figurativo per i figli conta per la pensione says exactly that — the months count, and they cost the parent nothing. The English words for it are « notional », « deemed » and « credited », and a statement that lists them calls them « credits ». Read figurativo as « figurative » here and the sentence becomes a metaphor about pensions, which is a sentence no office has ever written.