Tricky Wordsi n this week‘s OVI

Board member. U. S. Steel is a corporation in the United States, something like “akciová spoločnosť”, but the shares (akcie) it has issued are publicly traded on the stock exchange. That means that the corporation is based on other people's (investors') money, and they want to be sure that the corporation is run as well as possible, so they elect representatives to sit on the Board of Directors and look after their interests. British and American corporations have only one Board of Directors each, which is basically a combination of “Predstavenstvo” and “Dozorná rada”. Some of the directors are also top managers working for the corporation, so they are executive directors. The others representing the investors (shareholders) are non-executive directors. For this reason it is not right to translate Board of Directors as Predstavenstvo; Rada riaditeľov is a better (compromise) option.

Andy’s Wordshop

I've been asked to explain the difference between “complex” and “complicated”. The best thing to do first is to invoke Tricky Words and make it clear that English “complex” is NOT “komplexné” in Slovak (that's “comprehensive” or “holistic”); it is “zložité” or “komplikované”. So “complex” looks like a synonym of “complicated”, but there is a small difference between them. “Complex” means difficult to understand because of many different aspects or factors making up the whole thing, whereas “complicated” means hard to understand because of many twists and turns involved in the issue. I'd say that Brexit is a complex issue because it has so many implications and ramifications, and it is “complicated” because of the conflicting attitudes and approaches involved in the ongoing negotiations.