Thread: Need Corrections and Advice - Updated

My turn to ask for help

Below is my translation that I made for someone. Just to give you some idea, it will be located on the front page of a Web site belonging to a Russian company.

I realize that the text is huge and it is too much to ask from anyone to make a complete review of it single-handedly, but if someone just read it through and pointed out most conspicuous or blatant errors (or repeated errors), places that don't make sense or jar your ear badly, I'd appreciate it very much.

American business people being the target public, the text should not contain expressions that sound typically British. So if you spot any, point them out too. Thanks

Here is the text itself:

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Our Goals

To attract investments into Russia's high-technology areas;
To create an online meeting point of supply and demand for science-intensive inventions;
To develop methods of evaluation of science-intensive projects;
To develop and perfect mechanisms of financing innovative projects and various methods of getting these projects on the market;
To encourage scientists, inventors, and engineers to work more actively;
To provide assistance to scientific groups in getting their products on the international market;
To create a favorable public opinion of Russia’s innovation potential;

How to Become a Participant

Add your project to the “Hi-Tech” database and it will be accessible to thousands of foreign investors.
Any Russian scientific team, research institute, organization or individual, without any limitations (such as age, gender etc), who is an author or creator of an invention, idea, project, information or owns a patent, can participate in our project. The invention database contains high-technology, science-intensive ideas and projects. Preference is given to implemented, completed projects or inventions, although non-implemented projects or ideas as such are definitely of interest as well. To become a participant, you need to fill in an application in the format provided on our site, after which the information about your project will be included in the “Hi-Tech” database.

“Hi-Tech” Database

“Hi-Tech” database is a database of high-technology inventions created by Russian organizations and individuals. The database contains brief, standardized information about projects worked upon by Russian enterprises, companies and individuals seeking to attract the attention of Russian and foreign inventors.
Information on each project includes a description of the main parameters of each invention and general information about the developing company.
The design of the database allows users to enter and edit their own information, but the founders of this project reserve the right to allow or disallow publication of the information depending on whether or not it is relevant to the purpose of our Web site.
The database is supported by Inventors.Ru Inc. and is hosted on servers belonging to this company, but the information contained in the database is not the property of this company.

Finding Investors

We provide potential investors with the possibility to browse the "Hi-Tech" database or search for investment projects matching specified parameters.
The most promising projects can be offered to investors directly. Our company has connections with many Western (primarily American) economical institutions, including stock exchanges, entrepreneur associations, chambers of commerce, and venture funds.
Placing links to the "Hi-Tech" database on Web sites that belong to such institutions will be one of the ways of exposing our site to foreign investors.
Our Web site is bilingual and is located on an international dot-com domain. Investors will be able to access it from most popular English-language business directories and search engines.
This site's support includes public events whose purpose is to inform potential investors and attract their attention to the site. All participants intend to make promotion of this project a part of their presentations and their publications such as newsletters, press releases and media publications.
All potential investors have free access to the database; they have the possibility to select projects by specified parameters as well as the option to receive automated mailings containing information about new projects matching specified parameters.
On our Web site investors can also find a selection of analytical materials dealing with investments.


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Edit: any other opinions about "science-intensive"?

I rushed this. Others may do a better job, but it might help..

Originally Posted by translations.nm.ru

Our Goals

To attract investments into Russia's high-technology areas;
To create an online meeting point of supply and demand for science-intensive inventions;
To develop methods of evaluation of science-intensive projects;

That sounds wrong. As usual with this technical stuff, it's difficult to suggest a good alternative; maybe : 'science-heavy projects'? Depends on exactly what you mean, and it's still hard anyway.

To develop and perfect mechanisms of financing innovational projects and

Only a suggestion, but is 'innovative' better here? There are probably other possibilities, but I'm rushing ...

various methods of getting these projects on the market;
To encourage scientists, inventors, and engineers to work more actively;
To provide assistance to scientific groups in getting their products on the international market;
To create a favorable public opinion on Russia’s innovation potential;

OF rather than ON

How to Become a Participant

Add your project to the “Hi-Tech” database and it will be accessible for thousands of foreign investors.

i prefer accessible TO but conceivably it's arguable

Any Russian scientific team, research institute, organization or individual, without any limitations (such as age, gender etc), who is an author or creator of an invention, idea, project, information or owns a patent, can participate in our project. The invention database contains high-technology, science-intensive ideas and projects. Preference is given to implemented, completed projects or inventions, although non-implemented projects or ideas as such are definitely of interest as well. To become a participant, you need to fill an application in the format

fill in or fill out - fill an application form sounds wrong to me

provided on our site, after which information about your project will be included in the “Hi-Tech” database.

after which THE information ..

“Hi-Tech” Database

“Hi-Tech” database is a database of high-technology inventions created by Russian organizations and individuals. The database contains brief, standardized information about projects worked upon by Russian enterprises, companies and individuals seeking to attract attention if Russian and foreign inventors.

seeking to attract THE attention OF .. might be a typo there

Information on each projects includes a description of main parameters of

Information on EACH PROJECT or EACH OF THE PROJECTS includes a description of THE main parameters

each invention and general information about the developing company.
Design of the database allows users to enter and edit their own

THE design of the database..

information, but founders of this project reserve the right to allow or

but THE founders

disallow publication of the information depending on whether or not it is relevant to the purpose of our Web site.
The database is supported by Inventors.Ru Inc. company and is located on servers belonging to this company, but the information contained in the database is not a property of this company.

Not THE property of..

Finding Investors

We provide potential investors with a possibility to browse the "Hi-Tech"

I would prefer 'the possibility'

database or search for investment projects matching specified parameters.
The most promising projects can be offered to investors directly. Our company has connections with many Western (primarily American) economical institutions, including stock exchanges, entrepreneur associations, chambers of commerce, and venture funds.
Placing links to the "Hi-Tech" database on Web sites that belong to such institutions will be one of the ways of exposing our site to foreign investors.
Our Web site is bilingual and is located in an international dot-com domain. Investors will be able to access it from most popular English-language business directories and search engines.
This site's support is accompanied by a number of public events whose purpose is to inform potential investors and attract their attention to the site.

I don't really understand the use of 'accompanied' there. Perhaps 'is further enhanced by..'? But I'm just guessing.

All participants intend to make promotion of this project a part of their presentations and their publications such as newsletters, press releases and media publications.
All potential investors have open/free access to the database; they have an option to select projects by specified parameters as well as to receive automated mailings containing information about new projects matching specified parameters.
On our Web site investors can also find a selection of analytical materials dealing with investments .

Lose the space before the full stop ...?

Thanks a lot

A couple of mistakes were actually typos, but the rest of your comments is very valuable.

For 'science-intensive':
(@waxwing, science-heavy sounds weird in such a formal text)Scientifically intensive? Intensively scientific?

For 'innovational':
Either innovating or innovative (innovating puts emphasis on being ground-breaking, innovative more on being creative, but this may just be my intuition). Innovational, while correct, isn't that widely used.

Any Russian scientific team, research institute, organization or individual, without any limitations (such as age, gender etc), who is an author or creator of an invention, idea, project, information or owns a patent, can participate in our project.

Nit-picking: strictly speaking, a team, institute or organization can't be referred to as 'who'.

For 'each projects':
each (of the) project(s), all (of the) projects, every project

For 'Inventors.Ru Inc. company':
Inventors.Ru Inc., the "Inventors.Ru Inc. company"

For 'in a ... domain':
Don't know, maybe 'on'?

For 'an option':
Sounds as if there are only two options ("have an option to select projects by specified parameters as well as one to receive automated mailings). The. Though this sounds weird too if you repeat it too often...

For open/free:
Free.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

For 'science-intensive':
(@waxwing, science-heavy sounds weird in such a formal text)Scientifically intensive? Intensively scientific?

What about science-requiring or science-demanding?

Thanks for comments and suggestions, everyone!

Waxwing, I agree with most of your comments and I have made the corrections accordingly.

Jasper, I agree about "who". Sounds wrong, especially in a text that is supposed to look professional. I am not sure about that on vs in (domain) issue, I think I need to do some research on it.

As to this sentence with "option", see the new version.

I also spotted a couple of stylistic errors and corrected them.

For lack of a better solution, I decided to keep "science-intensive" for the time-being. I figured that since people know expressions like "labor-intensive" and "capital-intensive", they won't have any problem understanding another expression build on the same pattern. It seems I figured wrong.

Actually, it is a translation of the Russian expression "наукоёмкий", meaning "requiring/involving a lot of scientific work and research", e.g. "наукоёмкие отрасли производства" -- "science-intensive industries".

Does anyone have any ideas about any other English equivalents?

"Scientifically advanced"? Or just "advanced"?

Originally Posted by translations.nm.ru

Thanks a lot

A couple of mistakes were actually typos, but the rest of your comments is very valuable.

I'm nervous about correcting your excellent command of the English language, but
A couple of mistakes were actually typos, but the rest of your comments were (or, I guess are) very valuable.

I'm nervous about correcting your excellent command of the English language

So you should be, seeing how you corrected a grammatically perfect sentence. 'The rest' is singular, my friend.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

I'm nervous about correcting your excellent command of the English language

So you should be, seeing how you corrected a grammatically perfect sentence. 'The rest' is singular, my friend.

'A couple of mistakes were actually typos, but the rest of your comments is very valuable'.

'A couple of mistakes were actually typos, but the rest of your comment is very valuable'.

I knew I should not have bothered

Never mind.

In general, very good and to the point.

Science-intensive is not going to sound right to English speakers. Yes, they will know what you mean, but there must be something better. "Scientifically advanced", as was suggested, is better, or maybe "scientifically complex".

Under "Our Goals", standard format would be to end the penultimate senctence with ;and and then end the last sentence with a period instead of a semicolon.

In the first senctence under "Our Goals", I think "sectors" sounds better than "areas". The fourth and sixth point under "our goals" seem somewhat redundant. Can you collapse them into one, or make the difference between them clearer?

The first sentence under "HI-Tech Database" should begin "The Hi-Tech database"... You need the definite article here.

Might "opportunity" work better than "possibility" in the first sentence under "Finding Investors"?

Under "Finding Investors", I think a more logical pagagraph break would be to move the last sentence of the first paragraph to the following paragraph.

In the penultimate paragraph, "they have the possibility to select projects by specified parmaters as well as the option to receive..." could be simplified to something like "They can select projects by specified paramaters, and request (or maybe "register for") automated mailings.."

Hope this response isn't more long-winded than it's worth! Good luck.

The rest of your comments are very valuable. Mike's gotta be right here. Comments can be divided into discrete units, unlike say, the soup. (Never mind about cups of soup for now)

The rest of the soup is cold

The rest of the children are sleeping.

Originally Posted by begemot

The rest of your comments are very valuable. Mike's gotta be right here. Comments can be divided into discrete units, unlike say, the soup. (Never mind about cups of soup for now)

The rest of the soup is cold

The rest of the children are sleeping.

Let's face it, the lack of flexions in English makes both variants viable, and the preference is idiolectal.

Thanks for your comments, guys! Mike, thanks again for your PM!

And just for the record, I am buying what you said about "rest of your comments".

I'll give my translation a read-over and incorporate some of the proposed corrections after I have some sleep.

I agree, to use 'is' may sound strange, but it is better, grammatically at least.

The rest is sleeping
The children are sleeping
The rest of the children is/are sleeping

Originally Posted by Jasper May

I agree, to use 'is' may sound strange, but it is better, grammatically at least.

The rest is sleeping
The children are sleeping
The rest of the children is/are sleeping

I checked some dictionaries, and here is what I found in Random House:

1. the part that is left or remains; remainder: The rest of the students are in the corridor.
2. the others: All the rest are going.

Hmm, I don't know, it does sound mighty strange... I wouldn't say 'is' either, but I always thought I'd always done it wrong.

'The rest of' implies plurality, so 'are' or 'were' are the only options.

Originally Posted by scotcher

'The rest of' implies plurality, so 'are' or 'were' are the only options.

The rest of this idiotic message of yours are even more imbecile than... or would you prefer "is" here?