Landscape architecture

The eighteenth entry is o ganho de biodiversidade, and what answers it in English is not a translation but a term of art with one extra word inside. In England the phrase is « biodiversity net gain », and everything hangs on « net ». A « gain » on its own says only that something was added: plant a hedge, count the hedge, call it a gain. « Net » says that counting starts from a baseline taken before any machine arrived, that whatever the works destroy is subtracted, and that the figure left standing is the only one anybody may quote. That single syllable is the whole argument, because a scheme can plant a great deal and still finish below where it started. English uses « net » this way everywhere — « net profit », « net weight », « net zero » — and the habit is old enough that a reader hears the subtraction unprompted. The Portuguese entry leaves that job to the sentence beside it, é medido antes e depois, measured before and after, which says it in four words rather than in one. Both are honest. Only one of them is a term.