Contract and official language

The eighth entry is ressalvado o disposto em, and what it teaches is a construction rather than a phrase. Portuguese can put a past participle at the head of a sentence, make it agree with the noun that follows, and leave out both the auxiliary and any conjunction: ressalvado o disposto no número anterior, findo o prazo, encerrada a sessão, aprovadas as contas. The participle alone carries the tense and the condition, and the reader supplies everything else. English has nothing that works this way in running prose and has to open a clause instead — « save as provided in the preceding paragraph », « once the period has expired », « after the sitting had been closed ». The second half of the phrase is worth as much. O disposto is a participle used as a noun with nothing attached to it, and the pattern runs through the whole register: o exposto, o acordado, o referido. English cannot say « the provided », and reaches instead for a plural noun or a demonstrative — « the provisions », « the foregoing », « what has been agreed ».