Customs and foreign trade

The twenty-fourth entry is a conferência física, and an English reader who takes the first noun at face value will picture the wrong room. « Conference » in English is a meeting and nothing else, and « to confer » either grants something — a degree, a power — or means to consult. Portuguese kept a third job that English gave up altogether: conferir is to check, to go through something item by item and see that it agrees with what it should. One confere o troco at the till, confere a lista before signing it, and on a quay somebody confere a carga against the papers. The noun in this entry comes straight off that verb, so a conferência in a warehouse is the tally itself, and the person who does it has a job title of his own, o conferente. A conferência física is therefore the moment an officer opens the container and matches what is inside against what was declared. English has to change word entirely here: « examination » on the form, « checking » in the yard, and never the word the eye reaches for first.