Writing and arguing

The last entry is agradecer a atenção, and it is built the other way round from English. Our verb takes a person and only a person: you thank a colleague, you thank the committee, you thank me. What the thanks are for arrives afterwards, behind « for », and can never occupy the object slot itself — « thank you for your patience ». A thing put in that slot produces no sentence at all, which is why « we thank your attention » reads as a translation from the first word. Portuguese fills the same two places with the opposite pair. The thing is the direct object: agradecer a atenção, agradecer o convite, agradecer a resposta. The person, when named at all, comes second and indirectly, with a or with a pronoun: agradeço-lhe a atenção, agradecemos ao leitor a paciência. The closing line of a letter therefore has to be rebuilt rather than translated. Agradecemos a atenção dispensada ao nosso pedido becomes « we thank you for the attention given to our request », with a « you » inserted that the Portuguese never needed, and the noun pushed behind a preposition.