Terminological Divergence

Where appraisers encounter it

1. The missing equivalent. One system has a single term for a concept and the other has none — which does not mean the other lacks the concept. The clearest case is eminent domain, which is chiefly United States vocabulary; the general terms are compulsory acquisition and expropriation, and a report addressed beyond the United States should use them.

The deeper case is the scheme — the Commonwealth term for the undertaking whose effects on value are to be disregarded (see The Scheme, and Effects on Value) — the disregard being what United States practice calls the project-influence, or scope-of-the-project, rule. Outside the Commonwealth and the United States, only Japan and Korea have a single statutory term for the undertaking; elsewhere the work is split. Germany splits it: modern usage says das Vorhaben; the doctrinal tradition (in civil-law countries, “doctrine” means the writings of legal scholars, as distinct from case law) says das Unternehmen, preserved in § 87 FlurbG (Unternehmens­flurbereinigung);¹ and the disregard rule is not keyed to a named scheme at all but to the expropriation’s own advance effect — § 95(2) Nr. 2 BauGB excludes “Wertänderungen … infolge der bevorstehenden Enteignung” (changes in value resulting from the impending expropriation),² legal writers and the courts calling this enteignungsrechtliche Vorwirkung. France says l’opération (“travaux ou opérations”, L. 322-2, dernier alinéa).³ Spain’s statutory form is el proyecto de obras (art. 36.1 LEF: “plano o proyecto de obras”);⁴ the modern planning term is la actuación (art. 7 TRLSRU 2015).⁵ Brazil speaks of a obra and o melhoramento (DL 3.365/1941, arts. 4–5).⁶ Türkiye’s Kamulaştırma Kanunu, m. 11,⁷ says imar ve hizmet teşebbüsü — and teşebbüs is “undertaking”, not “proje”; the loanword is not the statutory term.

In Russian statutes the undertaking appears as the object: объект (as in строительство объекта федерального / регионального / местного значения — construction of an object of federal, regional or local significance). The scheme-disregard’s nearest analogues live in two places: the Land Code (ZK RF), art. 56.8(5),⁸ which values on the prior use and directs that the planned taking not be taken into account (“Планируемое изъятие … не учитывается”), and art. 56.8(8) together with Civil Code (GK RF) art. 280, under which post-notice improvements are at the owner’s risk. Civil Code art. 281(2) contains no such exclusion, and citing it as if it did is an error the department has seen in reports.

Arabic-drafted statutes divide. In Egypt and the Gulf, المشروع (al-mashrū‘) is a genuine statutory noun: Egypt’s Law 10/1990, art. 2;⁹ Qatar’s Law No. 8 of 2022, arts. 6–7;¹⁰ Kuwait’s Decree-Law No. 33 of 1964¹¹ speaks of مشروع المنفعة العامة (the public-benefit project). Maghreb statutes on the French model use العملية / الأشغال (the operation / the works) instead — Algeria’s Law 91-11, arts. 6 and 9.¹² And the missing thing can be the name rather than the rule: Egypt has a real but narrow disregard — art. 18 of Law 10/1990 leaves out of account the increase arising from a prior public-benefit project if the taking comes within five years — and art. 17 takes into account the change in value of the remainder of a partial taking: an increase — betterment (the rise in value of the owner’s retained land caused by the works; in United States practice, special benefits) — is deducted from the award, and a decrease — worsenment (British; in United States practice, damages to the remainder or severance damages) — is added to it (إذا زادت أو نقصت قيمة الجزء الذى لم تنزع ملكيته …). But no general no-scheme rule exists across the Arabic-drafted statutes surveyed, and the narrow rules that do exist have no received collective name. A report should say so, not coin one.

East Asia divides three ways. Japan’s Land Expropriation Act (Act No. 219 of 1951)¹³ has a genuine statutory term of art: 事業 (jigyō), arts. 2–3, with the project approval (事業の認定, art. 16) and the satellite nouns 起業者 (the undertaker) and 起業地 (the project land) built on it. Korea’s Land Compensation Act (토지보상법) parallels that structure: 공익사업 (gongik saeop, art. 2(2)),¹⁴ with 사업인정 parallel to Japan’s project approval. Taiwan’s Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例) says 興辦事業 (xīngbàn shìyè, arts. 3, 3-2, 13),¹⁵ with the bare head noun 事業. The People’s Republic of China is the negative case: no term of art exists as a valuation reference. (The People’s Republic is also a context of its own, which the general frame does not fit: urban land is owned by the State and rural land by collectives, and holders hold land-use rights for a fixed number of years; like a lease, the right loses value as its remaining term shortens, and it is valued on the years left — it is not freehold (in American terms, fee simple).) The statutory collective noun is 建设活动 (jiànshè huódòng — construction activities: the Land Administration Law (土地管理法) art. 45; State Council Decree No. 590, art. 9);¹⁶ 建设项目 exists only as a generic planning noun (arts. 52–53) and must not be presented as the equivalent.

2. Directional pair, neutral noun, or verb. A directional pair uses separate expressions for the two directions of a change — one term for an increase in value, another for a decrease — where this journal uses the one neutral expression value effect. In the statutory materials surveyed for this issue, no statute uses a general abstract noun as a term of art for the scheme’s effect on value as such. Some statutes speak only directionally (an increase, a decrease); others use a neutral noun for a change in value (German Wertänderungen, French changements de valeur, Korean 가격의 변동) without making it a term of art. Germany pairs Wertsteigerung and Wertminderung (§§ 95–96 BauGB), with Wertänderung available as the neutral form. Of the directional words, France’s Code uses only plus-value (L. 321-5, set-off on the remainder), as Spain uses only the enhancement word; moins-value is the word of legal scholarship and does not appear in the Code. The disregard itself (L. 322-2) uses the neutral changements de valeur, so it reaches both increases and decreases. Spain has plusvalía (art. 36.1 LEF) — the enhancement side only — and expectativas for hope value (value from the prospect of a future gain or permission not yet realizable; art. 36.2 TRLSRU). Brazil pairs valorização and depreciação (DL 3.365, art. 27); the European Portuguese term of art is mais-valia (CE art. 23./2: “não pode tomar-se em consideração a mais-valia que resultar … da própria declaração de utilidade pública da expropriação”), verified this issue against the consolidated text of Lei n. 168/99 (Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa) and the gazette text as enacted (Diário da República — Portugal’s official state journal promulgating its statutes — I Série-A, n. 219, 18 September 1999). Türkiye pairs değer artışı and değer düşüklüğü (m. 11–12), and its m. 12 set-off of enhancement against a partial-taking award is capped: the deduction may not exceed half the compensation for the part taken. Arabic-model statutes pair الزيادة / النقصان في القيمة (the increase / the decrease in value); Egypt’s betterment term of art is التحسين (al-taḥsı̄n; the betterment levy, a charge on owners whose land gains from public works: مقابل التحسين) — and it is not القيمة المضافة, which is value-added-tax vocabulary.

Russian sits at the verb end of the axis: the statutory technique is verbal, not nominal — effects “are not taken into account” (не учитываются) — and no noun of art exists. Where a Russian-language report needs the noun this journal’s analysis uses, the department’s recommended rendering is изменение стоимости, with the pair прирост / снижение стоимости.

The East Asian statutes leave the axis altogether: rather than a noun or a verb, they use structural devices (a frozen valuation date, a no-set-off rule). In Japan’s statute no term of art for the scheme’s effect on value was identified; its devices are structural. Art. 71 freezes value at publication of the project approval (価格固定制), rolled forward only by general price movement (物価の変動); art. 90 names the scheme-derived benefit — 起業利益 (kigyō rieki), a statutory noun — and prohibits setting it off against severance losses (losses to retained land from being cut off from the part taken; in United States practice, severance damages). The doctrinal noun for the excluded gain is 開発利益 (kaihatsu rieki); 価格の変動 (change in price) is an ordinary descriptive phrase, not a term of art. Two Japanese items remain in this issue’s list of unverified sources (the pending ledger in the Prolog addendum): the 1962 Cabinet-decision compensation standards outline (公共用地の取得に伴う損失補償基準要綱), which may contain an explicit no-scheme phrase but was not reached, and the Supreme Court’s decision of 11 June 2002 on art. 71,¹⁷ cited here from doctrine rather than from the judgment text.

Korea’s art. 67(2) states a general no-scheme rule in terms — 해당 공익사업으로 인하여 토지등의 가격이 변동되었을 때에는 이를 고려하지 아니한다 (where the price of the land has changed on account of the public-works project concerned, it shall not be taken into account) — built on the noun 가격의 변동; and art. 70(1)’s 지가의 영향 (influence on land prices) is the closest any surveyed statute comes to a literal “value effect”. The doctrine is the 개발이익 배제 원칙 (exclusion of development gain), which the Constitutional Court, in 89heonma107 (25 June 1990),¹⁸ held to place 개발이익 outside the objective value that full compensation covers; the restitution-of-development-gains statute defines 개발이익 (art. 2(1)) as the increase exceeding the normal rise in land prices. The caveat carries weight: 개발이익 is enhancement-only, and does not answer the depreciation limb.

In Taiwan’s instruments no equivalent noun and no full scheme-disregard clause were identified. Art. 30 takes 徵收當期之市價 (the current market price at the time of the taking), with the range of market-price change (市價變動幅度) reviewed every six months; art. 30 of the implementing rules fixes the date with a one-way ratchet — where the current market price is lower than at announcement, the announcement price governs, so depreciation is neutralized while enhancement is not systematically excluded — and art. 7 of the appraisal rules¹⁹ excludes anticipation-affected transactions (期待因素影響之交易) from the comparables. The directional vocabulary is 增值 / 漲價 against 減損 / 貶值, under the constitutional principle 漲價歸公 (art. 143).

In the instruments checked for the People’s Republic of China no scheme-disregard rule was identified. Decree No. 590, art. 19, is a floor: compensation not below the market price of comparable property at the date of the expropriation-decision announcement (征收决定公告之日); the 2011 appraisal measures, arts. 10–11, fix the valuation date at the announcement day and mandate disregard only of tenancy, mortgage, and seizure factors. Rural land takes an administratively set 区片综合地价 (composite zone price, set by each province under Land Administration Law art. 48), under which no market counterfactual exists. The directional pair in practice is 增值 / 贬值. This negative finding rests on the two national instruments and the 2011 measures; local rules and the national appraisal standard remain unchecked, and the pending ledger in the addendum records that limit.

The practical rule: when writing into a directional-pair system, cite the pair, not one half. A rule quoted by its enhancement-term alone can misstate a provision that also reaches depreciation — the error that The Scheme, and Effects on Value documents in the symmetric-rule jurisdictions.

3. Same word with a different referent. The central point of The Basis of Value and the Approach is the distinction between basis of value (the kind of value an assignment must produce, such as market value) and valuation approach (the procedure used to reach the figure, such as the cost approach). In Poland, the Real Estate Management Act (ustawa o gospodarce nieruchomościami, UGN)²⁰ separates the two concepts in two articles and shows why the distinction matters. The term wartość odtworzeniowa (replacement value) is a basis of value (article 150). The cost approach that produces it is separate and named independently (article 152(3)). A translator who renders both as “the cost approach” ignores the statutory distinction. An appraiser who treats “replacement value” as a method confuses the kind of value with the procedure. The Russian проект discussed at the opening of this entry is the opposite case: there one familiar-looking word points to the wrong thing; here two distinct statutory concepts are collapsed into one English phrase.

4. Institution names that do not survive translation. The vocabulary of court structures dates quickly, and this is a divergence in time as much as in language: a name correct at one date is not a correct reference to the institution at another. If a valuation report refers to a tribunal by an obsolete name, it damages its credibility, and worse, it can make a citation appear to refer to the wrong tribunal, or to one that did not exist on the relevant date. Three examples illustrate this. In Mexico, following the judicial reform of 2024, the Salas no longer exist.²¹ The elected Suprema Corte, which began sitting in September 2025, meets en banc (Pleno) only. A report written after the reform should not describe a current decision as coming from a Sala; Sala decisions from before September 2025 are still cited by their Sala. In Hungary, the regional court — first instance for larger cases, appeal court for the district courts — has been the törvényszék since 1 January 2012; “county court” (megyei bíróság) is the pre-2012 name.²² Pakistan has a Federal Constitutional Court, established by the 27th Amendment in November 2025;²³ so the Supreme Court is no longer the final court on constitutional questions, as texts written before November 2025 say.

5. Calendar eras. The same alignment problem affects dates as well as words. Instruments from Taiwan use Republic of China (minguo) years: minguo 115 corresponds to 2026. Those from Japan use era years: Reiwa 8 equals 2026. Instruments from Thailand use the Buddhist Era, which is 543 years ahead of the common era. If a valuation date is incorrectly converted because of an era offset, this is not a typographical error. It shifts the valuation date and the evidence base by decades or centuries. When reports quote such instruments, they should provide both forms: “minguo 115 (2026)”.