Contract and liability in Italian

L’obbligazione di mezzi and l’obbligazione di risultato stand side by side here, and the noun they share does a second job that English hands to a different word. In the first sense l’obbligazione is the technical term for the tie itself, one person bound to render something and another entitled to demand it, which is why a doctor is said to owe un’obbligazione di mezzi, proper care, while a carrier owes un’obbligazione di risultato, arrival. In the second sense, and almost always in the plural, le obbligazioni are the bonds a company or a state sells on a market, and il mercato obbligazionario is the bond market. So le obbligazioni della società can be the company’s duties or the company’s debt securities, and only the sentence around it decides which. English keeps the two apart, but not tidily. Nobody buys « obligations » on an exchange; they buy « bonds ». And yet « bond » is itself the older word for a tie between two people. Each language fuses the knot and the paper — using different words to do it.