Re: [needs translation/needs proofreading] News item about Youth Hacking 4 Freedom

I have proofread this news item in the webpreview.  I am attaching a
revised version of the xhtml from the webpreview, with my suggestions.

1.  "The 3rd programming period of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom has ended."
 I suggest replacing "3rd" with "third."  The abbreviated form is used
informally, but in formal writing ordinal numbers are generally
written in words.  The abbreviated form is generally used only for
large numbers for the sake of brevity, or when a number of different
items are being compared.

2.  "And eventually submitted their work for evaluation to the jury."
I suggest replacing the period [full stop] at the end of the previous
sentence with a comma, and replacing "And" with "and."  I have several
reasons.  First, the sense of the combined sentence seems highly
appropriate.  I think that this is an improvement.  Second, this
sentence as it stands is a sentence fragment.  Sentence fragments can
be used for special effects, but should be used sparingly.  Third,
this fragment starts with "And."  Some people (but not I) feel that
this is ungrammatical in Engish.  Fourth, the last sentence of this
paragraph also starts with "And."  This is too often.

3.  "To give you a teaser, 2024 submissions include: Free Software
research and scientific projects, projects that tackle social problems
and some fun games are submitted."

(a)   I suggest removing the colon.  The sentence reads well (better,
in my opinion) without it.  "Teaser" is informal; the colon is very
formal.  The two clash.

(b)  Insert an Oxford comma after "problems."

(c)  Remove "are submitted."  This is redundant after "submissions include."

4.  Heading:  "Why your company or organisation should sponsor YH4F?"
Remove the final question mark.  This is not a question, it is a
statement.  (To phrase this as a question, it would read "Why should
your company or organisation sponsor YH4F?"

5.  "Just recently OpenSSF joined as financial supporter."  Insert "a"
after "as."

6.  "With their support, the FSFE can keep organising the programming
competition for young Europeans and help to spread knowledge about
Free Software, help the participants to develop programming and
project management skills while having fun and meeting new people from
all over Europe."

(a)  I suggest replacing the first occurrence of "the" (after
"organizing") with "this."  To say "the" is not wrong, but "this" is
more natural.

(b)  Replace the second occurrence of "help" with "helping."  This is
a relatively long and complex sentence.  In its structure, this verb
is actually parallel to "keep organising."  (Note that the comma after
"Free Software" is not -- as it might have been if the sentence were
different, and as the reader might expect -- the first separator of a
series.  The series would have only two members.)

7.  "states Harry Toor, OpenSSF's Chief of Staff."  I suggest
replacing "states" with a long dash.  [I am not sure how to write this
in xhtml.  I have used the usual typing substitute -- two hyphens --
in my xhtml version, just as I have just done in this sentence.]  This
attribution is grammatically clumsy.  It is a sentence fragment
starting with a lowercase letter after the last full sentence of the
quotation.  As a typographical matter, substantial quotations like
this are often set differently from ordinary text, but that is up to
you.

8.  "By supporting Youth Hacking 4 Freedom, you contribute to
strengthen young people's skills, enhancing their understanding about
Free Software, and helping them to develop crucial competences like
time management."

(a)  Replace "strengthen" with "strengthening" for parallelism with
the verbs of the other clauses.

(b)  Replace "competences" with "competencies."  The words sometimes
have the same meaning, but here one is more appropriate than the
other.

This is a convenient occasion for me to recommend the latest edition
of Fowler's "Dictionary of Modern English Usage" (the fourth edition,
edited by Butterfield, 2015) and to repeat an offer I have made
before.  If any of you want me to give you a copy of the Fourth
Edition, please ask (and send me detailed shipping information, for me
to pass along to internet vendors).  The Fourth Edition is a worthy
successor to Fowler's monumental original work, which is still in
print and which I do regularly consult.  It is a classic and a
wonderful snapshot of English usage a hundred years ago.  But it is
now no longer modern, and the Fourth Edition is.

9.  "Watch Reinhard Wisesmann, founder of the Linuxhotel and the
Vielrespekt Stiftung,an inspiring donor donor, who explains why YH4F
is so rewarding for him."

(a)  Insert a space after the comma after "Stiftung."

(b)  Remove one of the two occurrences of the word "donor."

(c)  I am not suggesting that you change this, but you might consider
changing the emphasis from the watching to the explanation by saying
"Reinhard Wisesmann, founder of the Linuxhotel and the Vielrespekt
Stiftung and an inspiring donor,  explains why YH4F is so rewarding
for him."

10.  "Learn more about how a programming cash prize, in his youth
helped him to found his first company."

(a)  I urge you to replace "Learn more about how a programming cash
prize" with "Winning a similar contest"  His recorded statement in
English does not tell how the cash prize helped him.  The caption of
the picture says that he used the prize to advance his professional
development.  The recording does not mention the prize at all!

(b)  In any event, remove the comma.

11.  Picture caption:  "Now Youth Hacking 4 Freedom is financially
supported with donations by Reinhard Wiesemann, Linuxhotel, and
Vielrespektzentrum."  I think that this caption is obsolete.  The
middle third of this news item reports an additional sponsor.

(a)  I suggest removing "Now."

(b)  I suggest replacing "is" with "has been."

12.  "other like minded teenagers"  Replace "like minded" with "like-minded."

=====

As I entered the xhtml for my suggestions, I tried to understand the
parser errors in the webpreview that I reported earlier.  I cannot
understand them.

I did, however, notice the tag "blockqute."  This seems a strange
spelling, but since the same spelling was used both at the beginning
and the ending of the quotation it does not seem to be an error.


On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 7:18 AM Bonnie Mehring <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hej all,
>
> We have some exciting news to share about Youth Hacking 4 Freedom. So we
> created a news item about them. You find the news item ready for your
> proofreading or translating here: https://webpreview.fsfe.org/?pad=1255
>
> Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about Free Software and
> in this case Youth Hacking 4 Freedom.
>
> Best regards,
> Bonnie
>
> --
> Bonnie Mehring - Project manager -
> Free Software Foundation Europe
> Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
> Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030  |(fsfe.org/support)
> _______________________________________________
> Translators mailing list -- [email protected]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>
> This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All
> participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:
> https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct



-- 
"The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is difficult to
determine whether or not they are genuine." -- Abraham Lincoln

_______________________________________________
Translators mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]

This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All
participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:
https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct