Interest representation

The tenth entry is o movimento de base fabricado, and it is worth stopping on, because English keeps two opposed words for the same picture and Portuguese keeps only one. The genuine article is « grassroots »: the grass and the roots under it, the level at which nobody has been sent by anybody. It works in front of a noun and it reads as praise — « a grassroots campaign », « grassroots support », Against it stands « astroturf », taken from the trade name of an artificial grass laid in stadiums and carried into political talk for a campaign paid for at the top and dressed to look as though it had grown from below. « Astroturfing » is an ordinary newspaper word. Portuguese has the first half of that pair, o movimento de base, and for the second half it has no noun at all: it adds fabricado, manufactured, and says in a participle what English says in a brand. So the Portuguese reader meets a description where the English reader meets an accusation, and a translator who writes « grassroots movement » on its own has quietly dropped the charge.