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Q&A "ing" words in technical translations from Japanese to English

I proofread technical documents that have been translated from Japanese into English. The translations must be "literal." I cannot, generally, make them more concise. One thing that pops up over...

1 answer  ·  posted 10y ago by Kathleen Wiersch‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question translation legal
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:40:56Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/12589
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Kathleen Wiersch‭ · 2019-12-08T03:40:56Z (almost 5 years ago)
I proofread technical documents that have been translated from Japanese into English. The translations must be "literal." I cannot, generally, make them more concise. One thing that pops up over and over are the dreaded -ing words. I can make the argument that a phrase should be changed if the construction makes it difficult to understand.

Here is an example "For separating connector A and connector B, the worker first must......"

My gut and all my writing baggage really want it to say "In order to separate..." but I cannot articulate why. Can someone point me to a concise explanation that would make sense to non-native speakers?

Feel free to tell me this is a "happy" to "glad" change and I will attempt to stop sweating it.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2014-08-11T06:29:28Z (over 10 years ago)
Original score: 5