Science communication

The nineteenth entry is a escolha seletiva dos dados, and it is worth a stop because English would rather not name the thing plainly at all. Where Portuguese says what is going on — a selective choice — English reaches for fruit and says « cherry-picking », after the picker who takes the ripe ones and walks past the rest. That word is always an accusation. Its twin is built on the same gesture and is always a compliment: « handpicked », as in a handpicked team or a handpicked successor. The two sit at opposite ends of a judgement, and nothing but the choice of word puts them there. Portuguese has one idiom for the whole gesture, escolher a dedo, and it runs in both directions: uma equipa escolhida a dedo is praise, os casos foram escolhidos a dedo is a charge, and the same three words carry each. What decides is the sentence around them, never the phrase itself. So a reader who reaches for « cherry-picked » to render escolhido a dedo has settled the argument before translating it, and one who writes « handpicked » has settled it the other way.