Collecting

Four things decide the value of a collected object, and each has a vocabulary of its own: el grado de conservación, la procedencia, la autenticidad, and the question of how many exist at all. Among the book entries stands la dedicatoria del autor, and there English is short of a word. « Dedication » is the line an author writes on the title page — and it is also devotion, the quality of somebody who gives themselves entirely to a task. One noun, two things with nothing to do with each other. Spanish keeps them apart: la dedicatoria is what is written in the book, la dedicación is what is given to the work. A sentence about a collector's dedication is ambiguous in English and cannot be in Spanish.