Thread: Need help with understanding a sentence

I run into this sentence in a text that I am supposed to translate:

"A resource-based conflict mediated by human and environmental factors, warfare is a continuous process of move and countermove where opposing forces are constantly trying to impose their respective wills on one another"

I have difficulty understanding the first part of it: A resource-based conflict mediated by human and environmental factors

I have a kind of idea regarding what the author might have meant by this, but I'd like to compare notes. And if he meant what I think he meant, this is a very strange way to express this idea.

Thanks

Nice to see you back
I'm guessing the word 'mediated' is what's bothering you.. I mean I won't attempt to comment on whether it's in any way a reasonable description of 'war', but I really think 'mediated' is dubious there.

enacted, enabled, modulated (?!), activated, actualised, ? ugh, no, I don't seem to be able to find a good word.
How about facilitated?
Or conditioned? Different idea, but could be good too.
oh and I wonder whether 'agents' might be better than 'factors', although of course that's a very different meaning.

OK I'll suggest either:
A resource-based conflict conditioned by human and environmental factors.
or:
A resource-based conflict enacted by human and environmental agents.

They're not very good but they might help you to think about it..

[Будучи] Конфликт[ом], в основании которого лежат ресурсы (или: сводящийся[имся] к ресурсам), опосредованный[ым] человескими и природными (за неимением лучшего перевода "environmental") факторами, война (военные действия) есть непрерывный процесс действий и противодействий, где противостоящии стороны постоянно пытаются заставить друг друга выполнять свою собственную волю (impose надо как-то элегантней перевести, но пока ничего в голову не приходит).

Thanks for the replies .

Waxwing, yes, indeed, it is "mediate" that bothers me. "To mediate a conflict" normally means about the same as "to mediate a settlement of a conflict" - in other words, do something to help settle the conflict.

In this particular sentence, the author obviously meant something different.
I think that s/he wanted to say that any war is, essentially, about resources and that human and environmental factors affect the warfare, shape it, determine its form and course.

I think you're exactly right.

Will you try to put this in clear Russian or recreate the opaque style of the original?

To say that "war is a....conflict mediated by human...factors" is actually absurd--as if war existed outside those factors and waited around to be enacted by them.

Конфликт из-за ресурсов, в котором задействованы человеческие и природные факторы...
или " в который вовлечены..."
impose will — навязать волю