Software architecture

La compensación entre atributos es inevitable: the trade-off between quality attributes is unavoidable. Trade-off — because la compensación is one of those Spanish nouns that reaches across four English words with no family resemblance between them. It is the « trade-off » of this list, giving up one good thing for another. It is the « compensation » paid for a loss, the money that follows an accident or a dismissal. It is the « offsetting » of one leg against another, which is why la saga de compensación further down is a compensating saga: every step has an undo that cancels it. And it is the « clearing » of payments between banks, where la cámara de compensación is a clearing house and nothing whatever to do with damages. A Spanish architecture document will use the first and the third on the same page, and the reader has to decide from the sentence which one is meant, because the noun will not say.