The audit of the annual accounts

The list opens with o trabalho de auditoria, and the noun inside it carries an everyday Portuguese turn that English cannot copy word for word. Trabalho is work and dar is to give, but dar trabalho gives nobody a job. It says what a thing costs in effort: este processo dá muito trabalho means the file is a great deal of work, não dá trabalho nenhum means it is no trouble at all, and, said of a person, aquele miúdo dá muito trabalho means the child is a handful. The one thing the phrase never means is employing somebody, which is dar emprego, with a different noun altogether. « To give work » exists in English only in that employment sense, so the idiom has to be rebuilt every time it appears: « it is a lot of work », « it takes some doing », « it is no trouble », « that child is hard work ». Two further turns belong with it and behave the same way: ter muito trabalho, to be very busy, and poupar trabalho a alguém, to save somebody the bother.