Accessibility

The second entry is a inaptidão, and the English word it summons is the wrong one. « Ineptitude » looks like a straight translation and is not: in modern English it means bungling incompetence, a person making a mess of the thing in hand, and calling a colleague inept is an insult with no appeal. A inaptidão insults nobody. It is an administrative finding — a doctor’s line on a form, a panel’s conclusion after an interview — that one particular person and one particular post do not fit, and it says nothing about ability in general: somebody may be inapto for one job on the Monday and appointed to another on the Tuesday. English does keep a neutral word for this, « inaptitude », built on « inapt », meaning unsuitable; but it is rare enough that most readers hear « ineptitude » through it anyway. The safe renderings are the plain ones — unfitness for the post, not being suited to the role — and the verb that goes with them, « to be unfit for », belongs to medical boards rather than to judgement. So A inaptidão para o cargo ficou clara na entrevista reports a mismatch, and not a humiliation.