Formal Catalan can package an event as a noun: avaluar les sol·licituds becomes l'avaluació de les sol·licituds. This nominal style is useful when the event itself is the topic, when arguments must be compared across a text, or when a technical process needs a stable name. It becomes obscure when several nominalizations hide who did what, to whom, when and why.
A verbal style restores finite or nonfinite clauses: Quan la comissió avaluï les sol·licituds... It usually exposes participants and logical relations more directly. Advanced writing does not ban nominalizations; it chooses deliberately between information density and clause-level transparency.
For the morphology that creates event nouns, see nominalization; this page concentrates on what those nouns do to sentence structure and style.
From clause to noun phrase
Compare the same event in two structures:
La comissió avaluarà les sol·licituds durant el mes d'octubre.
The committee will assess the applications during October.
L'avaluació de les sol·licituds per part de la comissió es farà durant el mes d'octubre.
The assessment of the applications by the committee will take place during October. (administrative)
The verbal version distributes roles through syntax: [agent la comissió] [action avaluarà] [patient les sol·licituds]. The nominal version puts the event avaluació at the center, marks the patient with de, and adds the agent with per part de. Tense and assertion move to the support verb es farà.
This restructuring has a cost. The preposition de can introduce the participant affected by the event, its agent, its content or a broader association. A finite verb normally distinguishes those roles more clearly.
What nominalization suppresses
Event nouns do not normally mark tense, person or mood. La revisió de l'acord alone does not say who reviews it, whether the review has occurred, or whether it is desired, ordered or merely possible. Context may supply all this efficiently; if not, the reader must infer too much.
Després de la revisió de l'acord, se'n comunicarà la modificació.
After the review of the agreement, its amendment will be announced. (formal, but agents remain hidden)
Who reviews? Who modifies? Who announces? The sentence may be suitable if an established procedure makes the actors irrelevant. If responsibility matters, recover it:
Després que els serveis jurídics revisin l'acord, la secretaria comunicarà quins punts s'han modificat.
After the legal department reviews the agreement, the secretariat will announce which points have been amended.
The verbal rewrite also replaces the abstract noun modificació with an embedded question whose verb identifies the affected punts. It is longer in syllables but lighter in inference.
When nominal style is the right choice
Nominalizations are valuable in several contexts:
- (academic) writing, when a process becomes an object of analysis: la variació lingüística, l'adquisició del català;
- (administrative) texts, when a named procedure recurs: la presentació de sol·licituds, la concessió de l'ajut;
- (legal) or technical writing, when stable terms support cross-reference;
- headings, labels and compact comparisons;
- discourse chains in which a previous proposition becomes the next sentence's topic.
L'equip va comparar les dues mostres. Aquesta comparació va revelar una diferència estadísticament significativa.
The team compared the two samples. This comparison revealed a statistically significant difference. (academic)
The second sentence's aquesta comparació packages the whole previous clause as given information and creates cohesion. Repeating L'equip va comparar... i això va revelar... is also possible, but the nominal term is useful if the method will be discussed repeatedly.
El termini per a la presentació de reclamacions acaba divendres a les dues.
The deadline for submitting appeals ends at two o'clock on Friday. (administrative)
Here presentació de reclamacions names a recognized procedure. Replacing every such label with a clause can make regulations less searchable and less consistent.
Empty support verbs and stronger lexical verbs
Administrative translationese often combines a broad verb with an action noun: procedir a la revisió, dur a terme l'elaboració, efectuar el pagament, realitzar una comprovació. Some combinations are established, but many can become one precise verb.
| Heavy expression | Clear verbal alternative | Register note |
|---|---|---|
| procedir a la revisió de | revisar | Use the first only when the procedural step itself matters. |
| dur a terme l'anàlisi de | analitzar | The compact verb is normally enough. |
| efectuar el pagament de | pagar | Both occur in administration; pagar is clearer. |
| prendre una decisió sobre | decidir | The noun can be useful when the decision is a later topic. |
| fer una valoració de | valorar | The verb makes the evaluator easier to express. |
❌ L'empresa procedirà a la realització de la reparació de la instal·lació.
Needlessly heavy administrative style — three abstract noun phrases obscure a simple action.
✅ L'empresa repararà la instal·lació.
The company will repair the installation.
The first is not ungrammatical, so the cross marks a style failure in the stated public-facing context, not an impossible Catalan form. In a contract, executar els treballs de reparació may be a defined technical action. Register and communicative purpose decide.
Per part de and the recovery of agents
Per part de can explicitly attach an agent to a nominalization: l'aprovació del pressupost per part del ple. It is legitimate (formal) Catalan, but repeated use creates long, back-loaded noun phrases.
L'aprovació del pressupost per part del ple permetrà l'inici de les obres.
The council's approval of the budget will allow work to begin. (formal nominal style)
Quan el ple aprovi el pressupost, podran començar les obres.
When the council approves the budget, work can begin. (verbal style)
The rewrite restores a temporal relation that the noun phrase left implicit: the works begin after approval. It also moves the agent next to its verb. English institutional prose readily piles up of-phrases and passives; calquing that density into Catalan is grammatical at times but rarely reader-friendly.
Avoid treating an initial nominal phrase as the subject when it is actually a frame. In Amb l'aprovació del pressupost, podran començar les obres, the subject of podran començar is les obres, not l'aprovació. The opening phrase expresses a condition or enabling circumstance.
Ambiguity inside de-phrases
The phrase la crítica de la directora can mean “the director's criticism” or “criticism of the director.” This is an argument-structure ambiguity inherited by the nominalization.
La crítica de la directora va sorprendre tot el claustre.
The director's criticism / the criticism of the director surprised the entire teaching staff.
Resolve the roles with a clause:
El que la directora va criticar va sorprendre tot el claustre.
What the director criticized surprised the entire teaching staff.
El fet que el claustre critiqués la directora la va sorprendre.
The fact that the teaching staff criticized the director surprised her.
La fotografia de l'escriptora has the same kind of ambiguity: a photograph owned or created by the writer, or a photograph depicting her. No comma fixes it. Use la fotografia que va fer l'escriptora or la fotografia en què apareix l'escriptora.
Information structure: nouns as topics, verbs as events
Nominal style is effective when an event is already given and should become a topic:
El Govern va ampliar el termini en dues setmanes. L'ampliació, anunciada ahir al vespre, dona més marge als ajuntaments.
The government extended the deadline by two weeks. The extension, announced yesterday evening, gives councils more time.
The reordered version El termini, el Govern el va ampliar en dues setmanes makes the definite object an explicit left-dislocated topic and resumes it with el; it does not serve the same cohesive function as the event topic L'ampliació.... Word order and nominalization are therefore distinct information-packaging tools.
Too many nominal topics, however, produce a static chain: La realització de l'avaluació permetrà la determinació de la necessitat de la modificació... The reader must unpack several latent clauses. Prefer Quan hàgim avaluat el sistema, podrem determinar si cal modificar-lo.
Agreement and reference
A nominalization heads its noun phrase and controls agreement regardless of the number of an embedded de-phrase:
❌ L'anàlisi de les dades són incompletes.
Incorrect — the singular head l'anàlisi, not the plural complement les dades, controls agreement.
✅ L'anàlisi de les dades és incompleta.
The analysis of the data is incomplete.
When referring back to the embedded complement rather than the event noun, use an unambiguous noun or pronoun. L'avaluació de les propostes es publicarà i després les debatrem uses les for les propostes; la debatrem would pick up l'avaluació.
A natural editing dialogue
—Aquí diu «procedir a l'efectuació de la verificació». Qui verifica què? —L'equip tècnic verificarà els comptadors. —Perfecte: posem-ho així i deixem «verificació» com a títol de l'apartat.
—It says here 'proceed to carry out the verification.' Who verifies what? —The technical team will verify the meters. —Perfect: let's put it that way and keep 'verification' as the section heading.
The dialogue shows the balanced solution: a stable nominal label for navigation, a finite clause for responsibility.
Short correction task
Rewrite La comunicació de la denegació de l'ajut per part del servei es produirà demà. A clear version is Demà el servei comunicarà que ha denegat l'ajut. If a different body denied it, preserve that distinction: Demà el servei comunicarà la decisió de denegar l'ajut que va prendre la comissió.
Common Mistakes
❌ Es farà la realització d'una inspecció dels locals per part dels tècnics.
Grammatical components assembled into needlessly redundant administrative prose.
✅ Els tècnics inspeccionaran els locals.
The technicians will inspect the premises.
❌ L'avaluació dels resultats seran publicats dilluns.
Incorrect agreement — the head l'avaluació is feminine singular.
✅ L'avaluació dels resultats serà publicada dilluns.
The assessment of the results will be published on Monday. (formal)
❌ Després de l'aprovació, es notificarà.
Poorly recoverable — neither what was approved nor what will be notified is identified.
✅ Després que la junta aprovi la proposta, la secretaria notificarà l'acord a les parts.
After the board approves the proposal, the secretariat will notify the parties of the decision.
❌ La revisió de l'assessor va provocar una queixa.
Ambiguous — the adviser may be the reviewer or the person reviewed.
✅ El fet que l'assessor revisés l'expedient va provocar una queixa.
The fact that the adviser reviewed the file prompted a complaint.
Key Takeaways
- Nominalizations package events as entities; clauses expose agents, patients, tense and modality.
- Nominal style is useful for stable technical terms and discourse topics, especially in formal registers.
- Replace empty support-verb chains with a precise verb when the procedure itself is not the focus.
- Recover agents explicitly when responsibility matters; repeated per part de is often a sign that a clause would be clearer.
- Resolve ambiguous de-phrases by restoring verbal argument structure.
- The best prose mixes the two styles: nouns for established concepts, verbs for actions and accountability.
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