---
name: |-
  augusta-pt-copy
description: |-
  Write, translate or fix European Portuguese (pt-PT) business copy for Augusta Labs decks, proposals and client documents so it reads like a sharp Portuguese consultant wrote it, not like translated English or AI slop. Use this whenever copy has to be in Portuguese for a client (slides, proposals, one-pagers, emails), whenever someone asks to translate English deck copy to Portuguese, when Portuguese copy sounds weird, literal, sloppy, "corny" or "AI", and before any Portuguese deck goes out. Use it even if the user only says "make it in Portuguese" or "fix the PT".
notion_page_id: 3e876b8e-5e31-8108-a15f-c81edf7de24f
---

# Augusta pt-PT copy

Portuguese copy for Augusta should read like it was written in Lisbon by a senior consultant who knows the client: plain, specific, confident without shouting, and mixed with the English terms Portuguese executives actually use.

We looked at 13 Augusta Portuguese decks. The pattern is clear. Copy written for a specific client (the diagnosis, the questions, the commercial terms) is usually excellent Portuguese. The copy that goes wrong is copy translated from English: recycled boilerplate, positioning lines, slogans. So the whole skill comes down to one habit.

## The one habit: write from meaning, never from the English

Never rebuild the English sentence in Portuguese. For each block:

1. **Work out what it actually says.** The fact, the number, who does what, what the client gets. Drop the English wording, its metaphors and its rhythm.
2. **Say it the way you'd say it to the client's CEO across a table.** Verb and subject first. One idea per sentence. One English sentence often becomes two short Portuguese ones.
3. **Use the client's own words** for their world: their processes, their people, their legal and financial terms (adjudicação, cadernos de encargos, caução, fecho de contas, participadas, doentes…). Native copy always does this; translated copy reaches for generic nouns.
4. **Be allowed to say less than the English.** If the source is a slogan or a vague claim, write what it means, or cut it.
5. **Fit the space.** Portuguese runs longer. On slides, cut filler, not facts.

A sentence passes if a Portuguese executive reads it once and never has to guess the English behind it.

### What good looks like (real Augusta lines)

- "Todas as regras que hoje estão na cabeça do Renato, codificadas e atualizáveis."
- "Quando há um imprevisto, replanear em minutos, sem refazer o Excel todo."
- "Quando sobra capacidade numa linha, qual é o cliente que maximiza a margem?"
- "Caixa, dívida e folga vivem em modelos separados."
- "Cada participada compra por si."
- "Sem uma base comum, o que se aprende num piloto não passa para o seguinte."
- "Qualquer evolução após o go-live será orçamentada à parte, à taxa de 60 €/h."
- "A todos os valores apresentados acresce IVA à taxa legal em vigor."

What they share: short, concrete, a verb in every line, the client's vocabulary, English terms used naturally inside Portuguese grammar, no slogans.

A strong device: frame problems as the client's own questions, in their voice ("Onde é que perdemos tempo?", "Que moléculas devemos produzir internamente e quando?").

## English inside Portuguese

Augusta's Portuguese is deliberately mixed. Two rules decide it.

**Rule 1: English terms are fine; English grammar is not.** An English noun inside a Portuguese sentence reads naturally ("orçamentada à parte após o go-live", "não altera o roadmap"). An English adjective or word order glued to a Portuguese noun is the most common failure: "Tempo para Launch", "Integração Seamless", "Mindset de Owner", "agnóstica a vendors", "GenAI-based", "preço range", "rankeadas". Either use the English term as a clean noun or write it in Portuguese; never build a hybrid.

**Rule 2: over-translating is as bad as a calque.** "Laboratório de IA", "conselheiros", "anjos", "manual de transformação", "Sprint de Fundação de Valor", "com PE" all sound artificial. When in doubt, keep the English.

### Keep in English

- **Augusta names and roles**: Applied AI Lab, Kernel, Labs, Playbook, Value Foundation Sprint, AI Transformation Lead, Tech Lead, Forward-Deployed Engineers, Domain Advisors, Technical Advisors, Co-Founder, GTM Lead, Founding Team.
- **People and investor types**: advisors, business angels, founders, PE-backed ("Rede de clínicas dentárias PE-backed").
- **Business terms**: use case, workflow, business case, roadmap, pipeline, stakeholders, compliance, kick-off, go-live, handover, SteerCo, go/no-go, ROI, FTE, payback, churn, upsell, time-to-market, due diligence, data room, NAV, covenants, KPI, EBITDA, P&L, bottleneck, benchmark, follow-up, scoring, onboarding, back-office.
- **Delivery and tech terms**: sprint, pod, dashboard, deployment, evals, guardrails, connectors, harness, runtime, stack, cloud, LLM, RAG, API, skills.

Technical, legal and regulatory terms from another country's system stay as they are when there is no exact Portuguese equivalent: TIN, W-8BEN-E, GIIN, FATCA, CRS stay in English. Never swap in a Portuguese concept that only looks similar (a US TIN is not a NIF).

For a new term, ask: would a partner at a Lisbon consultancy say it in English in a client meeting? If yes, keep it. If not sure, keep it.

Give each kept term one gender and use it everywhere: o use case, o workflow, o roadmap, o dashboard, o pipeline, o sprint, o kick-off, a pod, a stack, os evals, os guardrails.

### Use Portuguese

- **Every label is in Portuguese too**: eyebrows, chapter titles, section headers, table headers, small caps labels, pills, case-card tags, client labels and card titles ("Snapshot" → "Em resumo", "Next Steps" → "Próximos passos", "AI Value Creation for X" → "Criação de Valor com IA para a X", "CHALLENGES" → "DESAFIOS", "HEALTHCARE" → "SAÚDE"). Only Augusta names and roles, document titles and the keep-list terms stay in English. One language per label.
- Plain words everyone uses: equipa, cliente, receita, custo, prazo, âmbito, entregáveis, reunião inicial, preço, taxa horária, governação, automatização, dimensão de mercado, doentes (or the client's own word, e.g. "pacientes" in aesthetic clinics), RH.
- Augusta's service lines in Portuguese: **Redesenhar, Implementar, Operar**.
- Metric label: **Taxa de Recontratação**.
- **IA** for the concept in running text ("agentes de IA", "a IA reduz…"). **AI** only inside English names (Applied AI Lab, AI-native, AI Transformation Lead). Never mix both for the same thing on one slide.
- These read naturally and are fine: vaga a vaga, agêntico, participadas, gestoras de private equity, casos de estudo (also as a label: "Casos de estudo").

## Slop: cut it or rewrite it

This is bad in English and worse in Portuguese, because the tricks don't travel.

- **Slogans and aphorisms**: "Tornamos AI em criação de valor", "Value-first, not tech-for-tech", "Conforto na Complexidade", "O relógio começa no pedido." Say what is done or measured, or cut the line.
- **Gerund tails**: "…, acelerando a adoção, unificando o conhecimento e escalando a IA." This is the clearest sign of a translation. Split into short sentences with their own verbs.
- **Rhythmic triplets and "cada X, cada Y"**: "Mais volume, a mesma equipa, pronto para auditoria." Write one plain sentence.
- **Defining by negation**: "não é uma caixa negra", "a receita, não a equipa". Say what it is.
- **Setup colons in titles and claims**: "Um Brain faz a Semapa AI-native: a Abordagem constrói, os Labs mantêm." Write the sentence.
- **Inflated claims**: translation tends to raise them ("we have experience" → "parceiro de referência"; "fastest-growing" → "um dos maiores"). Keep claims at or below the English. Describe what the work produces; don't promise outcomes; never round or change numbers.
- **Stacked adjectives**: "um agente ancorado em evals, soberano e co-construído". Break into sentences with verbs.
- **English sales metaphors**: wedge, spine, flywheel, substrate, slice, the prize, north star, first-class citizens, "ao ritmo da fronteira". Use the plain meaning.
- **Hollow phrases**: de ponta a ponta, à escala, desbloquear, potenciar, alavancar, sinergias, robusto, de classe mundial, "Estes são os próximos passos sugeridos na abordagem deste tema" (just "Próximos passos").
- **English passive**: "Foi considerado que 35% da receita…" → "Assumimos que 35% da receita…"
- **ALL-CAPS in running copy.** Write normal case; where the design itself sets a label in capitals, keep the design.

Verbless noun phrases are fine for diagnosing a problem ("Processo moroso, propenso a erro e dependente de uma pessoa.") but not for positioning Augusta, where they turn into an English skeleton without a verb.

## Literal translations that sound wrong

- frozen / locked → fechado, fixado (not congelado, trancado)
- live → em produção (not ao vivo)
- a (named) human → uma pessoa, o responsável (not um humano)
- to scale a business → crescer, alargar
- against a benchmark → face a (not contra)
- to support (clients) → trabalhar com (not suportar)
- engagement → projeto (not envolvimento)
- by design / by construction → rewrite the sentence
- owns (a task) → é responsável por, lidera (not detém)
- drives adoption → promove a adoção
- AI-enabled value drivers → onde a IA cria valor
- patient journey → percurso do doente / paciente (not jornada)
- fallback → fallback, or "em alternativa" (not "em recurso")

## Portuguese from Portugal, current spelling

- Not Brazilian: equipa, ecrã, ficheiro, utilizador, gerir, registo, controlo, planeamento, âmbito (not escopo), governação (not governança), pesquisa (not busca), estrangulamento or bottleneck (not gargalo), "estar a fazer" (not "estar fazendo"). Avoid "você".
- Post-1990 spelling: ativo, setorial, direto, atual, otimização, projeto.
- "Porque é que…" in questions, "Se aceitar…" (future subjunctive), gender agreement with every kept English noun.

## Numbers, dates, titles

- Money: 75 000 €, 706,5 M€, 2,5 mM€. Symbol after the number, space in thousands, decimal comma.
- Multipliers and ranges: 2,5×, 18 a 25%, 10 a 15 mil € por semana.
- Dates: 24 de Outubro de 2025 and, on slides, `Setembro de 2026`: **the month starts with a capital letter** (Augusta house style); never US order.
- Small numbers in prose written out ("seis meses", "três vagas").
- Headlines: sentence case, specific, ideally with a number ("Solução paga em 20 dias"). Generic headlines ("Do conceito ao impacto") are weak.

## Before handing it back

Read every line and check:

- Would a Portuguese partner say this out loud to the client's CEO?
- Do I need to know the English to understand it?
- Any hybrid (English adjective or word order on a Portuguese noun)?
- Anything over-translated that should be English (Augusta names and roles, the keep list)?
- Any slogan, triplet, gerund tail, inflated claim?
- AI vs IA consistent? One gender per kept term? Dates and numbers in pt-PT format?
- One language per label, and all labels in Portuguese (only Augusta names and keep-list terms in English)?

If a line fails, rewrite it from its meaning. More before/after pairs from real decks are in `references/examples.md`; read it when fixing a long existing deck or when unsure how far to rewrite.