In an article I am currently translating into English, the author says "сделать экономику более конкурентноспособной". It literally means "to make the economy more capable of competition". The Russian word "конкурентноспособный" (capable of competing) is actually a buzzword that is used about 5 times per page in any modern Russian economics paper, just because everyone else is using it and it has a comfortably familiar ring to it. Most bilingual dictionaries translate it as "competitive", but as I learned a long, long time ago, this is a typical "false friend". "Competitive economy" would be very likely to understood as an economy inside which competiton occurs, or something like that. And that is definitly not what the author means. What he basically wanted to say is that the economy should become more robust and thus capable of holding its own in competition (implied: against foreign economic powers). So I tried to coin a phrase to convey this meaning, and I'd like to run it by native English speakers. My current tentative translation says ""to make the economy more competition-worthy" (as in "sea-worthy", you know). What do you think? Does it make sense? If not, any ideas/suggestions?