Small talk in Portuguese

The eighth entry is a escuta ativa, and the noun inside it covers a stretch of ground that English divides between words with nothing in common. Escutar is to listen — the deliberate kind, as against ouvir, which is merely to hear — and a escuta is the act of doing it. So far the rendering is easy, because « active listening » is exactly the entry. The second job is the one that catches a reader out. As escutas telefónicas are wiretaps, and the word turns up in that sense on the front page of any Portuguese newspaper: o juiz autorizou as escutas says that the judge allowed the telephones to be tapped, not that anybody was being attentive. A third job belongs to the radio room and to the sentry. Estar à escuta is to be listening out, keeping a watch on a frequency or on a door, and um posto de escuta is a listening post. English therefore needs « listening », « a tap » and « a listening watch », and the plain verb underneath all three stops being audible.