Projects and leadership

The twenty-sixth entry is boa prática, and the trap is not the meaning but the degree. The Portuguese phrase sits in the positive: a good practice, one of several, a way of doing the job that has been found to work. English reaches straight for the superlative and says « best practice », and hardly anybody hears the claim inside it — that of all the ways of doing this thing one has been established as the best, and the argument is closed. That is why the phrase has aged badly in careful writing: auditors and standards bodies have largely moved to « good practice », and « best practice » survives mainly as an office reflex. Three consequences follow for anyone translating. A report that says as boas práticas do setor is describing what the trade has found sensible, not naming a winner, so « good practice » is the honest rendering. « Best practice » is a mass noun and takes no article: one writes « in line with best practice », never « with a best practice ». And as boas práticas in the plural is perfectly ordinary Portuguese, where « best practices » still reads in British English as imported management prose.