Re: [proofread] [EN] Software Freedom in Europe 2024dear

"Richard L. Schmeidler" <[email protected]> Sat, 21 Sep 2024 00:45:09 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.org.fsf.europe.translators
Message-ID	<CAKbK2axz6T-SNJTBnyup5aDY0JG6h3tYCu-Lm5UOjirZAuv7_Q@mail.gmail.com>

Because of the length of this text, this is a very preliminary
proofreading. When I proofread for the FSFE, what I normally do goes far
beyond what is normally considered proofreading and goes into (and even
beyond) copyediting.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/whats-the-difference-between-copy-editing-and-proofreading/

For now, I am often really proofreading: finding accidents that have crept
into the text in the course of typing it. I also report deeper grammatical
and usage errors: those that seem particularly important, or that I find
particularly annoying. (Most often I am annoyed when there are two or more
corrections to be made in the same sentence.) But, for example, I am not
asking that usage of Oxford commas be consistent as I normally would for
shorter documents, and I am passing over many issues of English usage I
would normally correct. As always, if I see a potential error of fact, I
shall also question it.

I am omitting most of my usual explanations. If anything is unclear, please
ask me about it.

Occasionally if a correction seems necessary, I suggest a more extensive
rewriting to improve text that -- although a clear error has been corrected
-- is still unworthy in my opinion.

I am attaching a version of an .odt file that reflects my suggestions.
This contains only the text of the news report, not the pictures. It comes
with the warning that applies to all the revised versions like this that I
send out in the hope that they will be useful: If there is an accidental
discrepancy between the list of suggestions in this message and the file
that is supposed to reflect the suggestions, the probability is that the
list of suggestions is correct and the file contains the error.

1. "a heartfelt and unprecedented ask for help to our community" Replace
"ask" with "request." Yes, "ask" is sometimes used as a noun, but often
jocularly. And it seems to be more a US usage than British.

2. "The FSFE is the only non- profit that is intervening, with the aim to
to leverage the voice of the Free Software community against the company’s
unfair practices "

(a) Remove the space after the hyphen.

(b) Replace "to to" with "to."

3. "Unfortunately, the broader landscape for Free Software is facing more
additional challenges." Remove either "more" or additional." I would
choose removing "more," I think as a matter of rhythm.

4. "In the last months we have continued focusing also in the younger
generations."

(a) Replace "the last" with "recent." This use of "last" is not as bad as
in some similar phrases, but it is still not the normal English usage
(certainly in the US).

(b) Replace "in" with "on."

5. "The Ada & Zangemann book, is becoming" Remove the comma.

6. In the Table of contents: "Policy work: Advocating for Free Sotware"
Replace "Sotware" with "Software."

7. "Legal Support: giving advise to projects and individuals" Replace
"advise" with "advice."

8. "the FSFE has faced monopolistic power over devices heads on" Replace
"heads" with "head."

9. "Apple's DMA compliance and it's impact on Free Software." Replace
"it's" with "its."

10. "We are calling for volunteers and civil society organisations to help
us resonating the message against monopolization of digital markets."
Replace "us resonating the message against monopolization of digital
markets" with "the message against monopolization of digital markets
resonate." English usage.

11. "so alternative to gatekeepers can flourish in a fair and safe
environments"

(a) Replace "alternative" with "alternatives."

(b) Remove "a." (Or replace "environments" with "environment.")

12. "It is a litigation brought by Apple against the European commission
in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)."

(a) I suggest removing "a." In my experience (although entirely in the
US) litigation is treated as a mass noun.

(b) Replace "commission" with "Commission."

(c) I am not suggesting removing "(CJEU)," because I am not familiar with
European usage. But I note that the abbreviation is not used anywhere else
in this long report, so it seems unnecessary.

13. "some Internet Service Providers (ISP) still unduly limit how
customers have to use to connect to the Internet, or discriminating against
owners of alternative devices"

(a) Replace "ISP" with "ISPs."

(b) Remove "have to use to."

14. "Fiber operators required the national regulator BnetzAg to create an
exception against Router Freedom" A factual concern: Did the operators
require this or merely request it? If the latter, replace "required" with
"requested" (which I suggest in my attachment). It seems unlikely to me
that the operators were able to compel the regulator as this text suggests.

15. "its own 2016’s decision" Replace "2016’s" with "2016."

16. "The FSFE demanded that other regulators take this as an good
example." Replace "an" with "a."

17. "Despite of the outcry" Remove "of." English usage is inconsistent:
we say "in spite of," but "despite" without the "of."

18. "in not attending civil-society demands" Insert "to" after
"attending."

19. "Aside our policy and legal efforts ito conduct a European-wide
initiative"

(a) Replace "Aside" with "In addition to." At the very least, insert
"from" after "Aside."

(b) Replace "ito" with "to."

20. "practical guide" Insert "a" before "practical."

21. "The landing page is designed to, in a simple and easy way, explain
the essential." I suggest rewriting as "The landing page is designed to
explain the essentials in a simple and easy way." At the very least,
replace "essential' with "essentials."

22. "developed for public sector" Insert "the" after "for."

23. "introducing them into the REUSE specification
<https://reuse.software/>, a tool that can simplier the license process."

(a) Replace "into" with "to."

(b) Replace "simpler" with "simplify."

24. "Currently, the FSFE is working on four NGI0 programs: NGI Entrust,
NGI Core, NGI Review, and NGI Commons Fund programs." Remove the second
occurrence of "programs" (the last word).

25. "Last June the alpha version v3.1.0a1 of the REUSE tool was released
containing the new REUSE.toml functionality, and after the publication of
the REUSE Specification v3.2, soon v.3.3 will be released. Currently, the
tool is in its version v4.0.3." This is confusing, but I don't know what
should be done about it.
"v3.3" apparently refers to an upcoming (as of September, 2024) release of
the specification. But the current version of the tool (as distinct from
the specification) has a version number of v4.0.3, which would seem to be
quite a bit more advanced than the (as yet unpublished) specification.

26. "We are supporting a generation that can control their technology and
empowering themselves." Replace "empowering" with "empower."

27. 'The illustrated book Ada & Zangemann - A Tale of Software,
Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream"
<https://fsfe.org/news/2024/ada.fsfe.org> by the FSFE, tells the story of
the famous inventor Zangemann and the girl Ada, a curious tinkerer.'

(a) The book title has a double quotation mark after it. There should
also be a matching double quotation mark before the title.

(b) Correct the description of the authorship of the book. It is not "by
the FSFE" but rather by Matthias Kirschner, who is the President of the
FSFE. He should either be identified by name, by title, or both. In my
version, I am using both.

28. "During this last months" Replace "During this last" with "In
recent." At the very least, replace "this" with "these."

29. "encouraging children, and especially girls to get into STEM" Insert
a comma after "girls."

30. Heading: 'They are young + they need the code", FSFE's Format to
bring Free Software in the schools (online)'

(a) There shouldl be an opening double quotation mark at the beginning of
the heading, to match the closing mark after "code."

(b) Do not capitalize "Format." This usage of the word "format" is very
strange to me, but since I do not know what the intended meaning is, I
cannot make any useful suggestions for change. However, there is no reason
to capitalize the word in the heading, especially since it is not
capitalized in the text.

31. 'The FSFE's pilot project “They are young + they need the code” is
inspired from the book Ada&Zangemann.'

(a) Replace "from" with "by."

(b) Replace "Ada&Zangemann" with ' "Ada & Zangemann." ' Note two
punctuation changes: adding quotation marks and inserting spaces before
and after "&".

32. "Currently the project is taking place in Italy and we are we are
waiting to hear back from our volunteers, which are bringing the format to
the schools and or libraries"

(a) I suggest replacing "taking place" with "being tested."

(b) Insert a comma after "Italy."

(c) Replace "which" with "who." "Which" would only be appropriate if the
volunteers were not people, and these volunteers are surely not AI. 8-)

(d) Remove "or." Each volunteer may bring the format (whatever that
entails) to one or more schools or one or more libraries, or both kinds of
establishments. But the volunteers as a body simply are bringing the
format to schools and libraries.

33. "Last January, and as part of this studies academic program, the FSFE
delivered educational content about Free Software, with a focus on Free
Software legal issues, policy aspects and public awareness in the form of
lectures."

(a) I suggest removing "studies," because I do not know what the intended
meaning of this word is. If it is a reference to the experimental nature
of the project, and if the project were set up as a study, "study's" would
make sense. But that seems far-fetched.

(b) Since I am making corrections to this sentence anyway, insert an
Oxford comma after "aspects."

(c) Insert a comma after "awareness." This comma coordinates with the one
after "Software." Without it, one focus of the content contributed by the
FSFE would be "awareness in the form of lectures."

34. "Besides, again this year the students will attend SFSCON." Replace
"Besides" with "In addition."

35. "Since 20 years the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) engages
with policymakers to ensure that the Free Software community voice is
heard."

(a) Replace "Since" with "For."

(b) Replace "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)" with "FSFE."

(d) Replace "community" with "community's." This is not strictly
necessary, but I prefer this usage.

36. "Free Software funding urges to be addressed at the European Level"

(a) Replace "urges to" with "should."

(b) Replace "Level" with "level."

37. "Already at an early stage, the FSFE argued in a hearing in the EU
Parliament, for the inclusion"

(a) I suggest removing "Already."

(b) Remove the comma after "Parliament."

38. "The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has called on policymakers
to" Replace "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)" with "FSFE."

39. "The Cyber Solidarity act aims at strengthening" Replace "act" with
"Act."

40. "Already in a hearing at the Committee of the Regions", Remove
"Already."

41. "this is only possible prioritizing the use of Free Software" Insert
"by" after "possible."

42. "communities.It is impossible to achieve Device Neutrality, and a free
and open internet"

(a) Insert a space between the period [full stop] and "It."

(b) Remove the comma after "Neutrality."

43. "policies and funding.That is why it is important that we are keep
educating decision/makers in the importance"

(a) Insert a space between the period [full stop] and "That."

(b) Remove "are."

44. "The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), along with NLnet Labs
and the Open Source Security Foundation, submitted feedback on the Network
and Information Security (NIS) implementation act
<https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240715-01.en.html>,"

(a) Replace "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)" with "FSFE."

(b) There are discrepancies in terminology between the name of the
original legislation and the name of the draft of its successor. The names
may indeed be different. I am not in a position to determine the correct
nomenclature. (I gave up when I see that in
https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240715-01.en.html there are references to
both "the NIS2 implementation act" [lower case and "tion"] "the
consultation on the European Commission’s draft NIS2 Implementing Act"
[initial capitals and "ting"].)

45. "many complex software products, central to the digital infrastructure
sector, are often developed by independent individuals, non-profit
organizations, or academic institutions" I suggest removing "often." This
seems to me to be duplicative of "many," and to say both things is overkill.

46. "For the FSFE is important to give input in this kind of processes as
it makes the free Software community’s voice heard, and we can make sure
the the community demands reach the European Institution in crucial phases
of the legislative process."

(a) Insert "it" after "FSFE."

(b) Replace "processes" with "process." (Or replace "this kind" with
"these kinds.")

(d) Replace "the the" with "the."

(e) Replace "community" with "community's."

(f) Replace "the European Institution." I am not sure what is intended;
it might be "policymakers," "decision-makers," or something else. I am
suggesting "policymakers." (In the United States, both administrators and
legislators establish policies; I am not sure about Europe. In this
context, however, it is the legislators who are the primary targets.)

47. "the Free Software Foundation Europe has responded to the growing
concern by asking the community to take part to a public consultation
<https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240911-02.en.html> of the European
Commission, "

(a) Replace "Free Software Foundation Europe" with "FSFE."

(b) Replace the second occurrence of "to" (after "part") with "in."

48. "The community stressed the /news/2024/news-20240911-01.htmlurgent
need for sustainable, long-term financial support for Free Software
<https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240920-01.en.html>" Remove
"/news/2024/news-20240911-01.html"
<https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240920-01.en.html>

49. "With the participation of our community in the public consultation,
we ensured that Free Software solutions receive the long-term funding they
need." Factual concern: Are you certain that long-term funding has indeed
been ensured? By whom, and for how long? The next sentence clearly
suggests uncertainty as to the outcome. "Ensured" in English means a real
certainty. I suggest something milder, perhaps replacing "ensured" with
"hope" and inserting "will" after "solutions."

50. "This year we got the help of some students that improved the took and
added some results." I suggest replacing "took" with "look"; I think that
this is what is intended.

51. "eForms the EC standard
<https://docs.tedective.org/developers/etl/eforms-processor>, has been
introduced and implemented" Insert a comma after "eForms."

52. Heading: "Legal Support: giving advise to projects and individuals"
Replace "advise" with "advice."

53. "At the Free Software Foundation Europe we help answer licensing
questions" Replace "Free Software Foundation Europe" with "FSFE."

54. "Free Software, nd organise an annual conference for" Replace "nd"
with "and."

55. "Free Software's role in developments in large language models, and
artificial intelligence" This is ambiguous, and should be corrected. If
it refers to Free Software's role in developments in both large language
models and artificial intelligence, the comma should be removed. If it
refers to two of Free Software's roles: a role in developments in large
language models and a distinct role in artificial intelligence (in general,
not just in developments), the comma should remain, and "in" should be
added after "and." Take your pick.

56. "expertise in European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)"
Replace "small" with "small-".

57. "Another part of our work with the ZOOOM initiative was to promote and
to disseminate the research that we've conducted on these topics." This
sentence is repeated. It occurs as the last sentence of one paragraph and
the first sentence of the next paragraph. The first occurrence should be
removed.

58. "From a technical standpoint, we have the overhauled the translation
status page." Remove the first occurrence of "the" (before "overhauled").

59. We also have made some progress in the migration from wiki.fsfe.org to
docs.fsfe.org made progress" Remove "made progress" at the end of this
phrase.

60. "We published this year 4 episodes, which might be a bit less that
previous years but the person in charge was during several months in 2024
in maternity leave."

(a) Replace "We published this year 4 episodes" with "This year we
published 4 episodes."

(b) Replace "that" with "than."

(c) Replace "during several months in 2024 in maternity leave" with "on
maternity leave for several months in 2024." (Notice that in addition to
changing the word order, I suggested two changes in wording to conform to
better English usage: "for" for "during" and "on" for "in.")

61. "in our society, in US and Europe, and we had a special episode in
Christmas about What is Free Software and we learned about MirageOS."

(a) Remove the comma after "society."

(b) Insert "the" before "US."

(d) Replace "in" (before "Christmas") with "at."

(e) Put quotation marks around the phrase "What is Free Software" (as I
have done here).

(f) Since I am making corrections to this sentence anyway, insert an
Oxford comma after "Software."

62. "Starting with fundraising actions with the Italy mailing campaigns
(but this might only be an internal info to share) where we gifted all
supporters and ex-supporters a copy of the book and informed them about the
activities happening in Italy." I have several issues with this sentence.
My suggestion is that it simply be removed unless you are able to deal with
all of them.

(a) This is a not a grammatical sentence, but just a sentence fragment,
starting with "Starting" but never saying what followed.

(b) This sentence starts with "Starting with fundraising actions." It is
not clear to me what the intent of this phrase is.

(i) If it were followed by a comma, and if there were subsequent
descriptions of other fundraising actions than the one in Italy, this
phrase would be an introduction to the series of descriptions of different
fundraising activities.

(ii) If this phrase is intended to say that the Italian campaigns were the
first of other campaigns that are now being planned, the first occurrence
of "with" should be removed. In this case, "where" should also be removed.

(iii) Of course, this phrase could be rewritten, perhaps by replacing
"Starting" with "We started" and continuing rewriting from there.

(c) I think that the parenthetical "(but this might only be an internal
info to share)" should be removed (although this text has been prominently
published on the FSFE website).

(i) As a matter of English usage "an" should be removed, whatever is done
to the rest of the phrase. "Information" (of which "info" is an informal
shortened form) is a mass noun, and should not be preceded by the
indefinite article "an."

(ii) If this is not internal info, saying that it might be adds nothing,
and is misleading.

(iii) Anything that is actual internal info should be removed. In that
case, it does no good to indicate that internal info that is no longer
visible has been removed.

(iv) If the rest of the sentence is retained, but the parenthetical is
removed then (depending on how the sentence is rewritten) it may be
appropriate to replace the pause generated by the parenthetical with a
comma.

63. Heading: "I Love Free Software Day:" Remove the colon.

64. I Love Free Software Day" 2024 focused on the younger generations

Remove the unmatched quotation mark after "Day."

65. This is three short paragraphs. They actually have a picture embedded
in the middle. I suggest shortening the first paragraph and combining them:

"This year we worked on adding new stickers to our -already- great
collection some new merchandising and stickers.

"At the end of last year, we focused on expanding our already impressive
sticker collection. With our team's creativity, we developed new slogans
and illustrations <https://fsfe.org/contribute/spreadtheword.en.html>,
resulting in fresh stickers in a variety of colours and formats.

"In the months that followed, we attended various conferences and events,
where we gathered valuable feedback on these new stickers."

The import of "some new merchandising and stickers" is not clear. (Note
that "merchandising" is the act of promoting merchandise.) My suggestion,
just one possibility, is to end this first sentence of the paragraph at
"collection" and leave the other merchandise to be dealt with a little
later.

This shortened sentence would become a good topic sentence for what is now
the second paragraph. And the single-sentence third paragraph would fit in
well, too.
=====

As I indicated at the top, this first proofreading effort has largely been
directed toward traditional proofreading, finding errors that come or could
have come from mistyping. I have also attempted to fix the most
significant of the other errors I have found.

I have left untouched dozens of places where I might have made suggestions
for improvements to an ordinary FSFE news item. These deliberate omissions
on my part were (to the best of my ability) chosen from cases in which I do
not think an ordinary reader would either be upset or confused by the error.

I am sure that there are other things that I missed unintentionally. But
"the perfect is the enemy of the good," and -- after well over 12 hours
today working on this, it is time for me to call it a night.

Obviously, it might be useful for me to review this again (but not
tomorrow; I have plans that will take me out of the house all day). I keep
finding more things to fix. (One of the last was my #27(b)! I wonder what
Matthias thinks about the published description of the authorship.)

If anyone wants me to engage in another bout of proofreading to fix
everything I see that I think can be improved, please tell me. Otherwise,
since no corrected English version is likely ever to be published, I don't
expect to bother. (It is a somewhat paradoxical fact that small details
are more difficult for me to deal with than large obvious defects. They
require more explaining.)

On Fri, Sep 20, 2024 at 5:55 AM Ana Galan <[email protected]> wrote:

> dear translators,
>
> we have just published our yearly report, Software Freedom in Europe
> 2024, with the summary of what we have done during the past 12 months.
>
> As our report is quite long and we had a lot of work to do, we did not
> have time to send it in advance, but once you have proofread it, I will
> look at your suggestions and change it accordingly.
>
> https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240920-01.en.html
>
> Best,
>
> Ana
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> 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

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