Until late last year, I used to write the way that you recommended for achieving conciseness by, among other ways, removing “that” or “who” or “which” in relative clauses. For example, in my synopsis of the hit Korean-historical drama “Empress Ki” [
https://campusconnection.blogspot.com/2014/10/empress-ki-koreanovela-on-gma7-episodes.html ], I previously used the following sentences:
Before1. But the band of Koryo boys
she leads is actually trying to save their sisters
taken as concubines to Yuan.
2. Wang Yu defeats the Turks
using the Koryo slaves he inspired and trained.
3. El Temur forces Togon to seal an abdication decree
naming Prince Maha as Emperor and Tanasiri as Empress Regent.
4. When the soldiers quit rather than serve him, Wang Yu takes in beggars and other men
wandering aimlessly on the streets.
5. El Temur plans to assassinate Togon and SeungNyang during the Royal Hunt
using the imperial guards under Yom Byungsu.
After
1. But the band of Koryo boys
that she leads is actually trying to save their sisters
who have been taken as concubines to Yuan.
2. Wang Yu defeats the Turks
by using the Koryo slaves
whom he inspired and trained.
3. El Temur forces Togon to seal an abdication decree
that names Prince Maha as Emperor and Tanasiri as Empress Regent.
4. When the soldiers quit rather than serve him, Wang Yu takes in beggars and other men
who are wandering aimlessly on the streets.
5. El Temur plans to assassinate Togon and SeungNyang during the Royal Hunt
by using the imperial guards under Yom Byungsu.
I have three reasons why my attitude and writing style changed:
Reason Number 1:My attitude towards deleting “that” or “which” started changing after I read an article by William D. Lutz (author of “Doublespeak” and a Plain English consultant of the US Securities and Exchange Commission). In that article, Lutz warned against what linguists call “whiz deletion.”
Reason Number 2:Last year, I came across the article “Improving Translatability and Readability with Syntactic Cues” by John R. Kohl, which was published in “Technical Communication” journal (Second Quarter 1999). Kohl is the author of “The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market.”
The important thing to remember about Kohl’s guidelines is that they are meant:
1. to help learners who come from ESL or EFL backgrounds, and
2. to facilitate “machine translation” (MT) and human translation of English documents.
Excerpts from Kohl’s article:(1) Syntactic cues are elements or aspects of language that help readers correctly analyze sentence structure and/or to identify parts of speech. For example, suffixes, articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and word order ....
(2) Some syntactic cues that are optional in some contexts:
thatthat + the verb
to bethe articles
a,
an, and
theto (both as a preposition and as an infinitive marker)
modal verbs such as
can, should, mayauxiliary verbs such as
is/are/was/were, has/have/had,has been/have been/had been, and
will have beenprepositions such as
by, for, with, incorrelative pairs such as
either ... or, both ... and, if ... thenpunctuation such as hyphens, commas, and parentheses
pronoun or noun subjects
(3) .... the historical emphasis on conciseness in technical communication leads many technical writers and editors to routinely and deliberately eliminate syntactic cues from their documents.
(4) In most cases, syntactic cues actually reduce translation costs by reducing the number of ambiguities that translators are forced to resolve.
(5) Overcoming concerns about conciseness and word counts
The syntactic cues approach contradicts the training of many editors and writers, who have been taught for years to eliminate every “unnecessary”
that, to use punctuation sparingly, and, in general, to strive for brevity. In addition, management may be concerned about syntactic cues adding to the costs of translation and publication because they increase word counts.
(6) Look for past participles—verb forms that usually end in -ed, such as
described,
provided, and
specified a. Consider expanding them by inserting that or that plus some form of the verb to be (
that is/that are/that was/that has been/etc.). However, don’t feel that you have to expand ALL past participles, and don’t expand them if doing so would make the sentence sound unnatural to native speakers or would change the emphasis in the sentence.
Rationale: Although other languages besides English permit relative clauses to be reduced to participle in this way, it is more difficult for readers to analyze sentences when this particular syntactic cue is missing—especially if other syntactic cues are missing as well. Also, sometimes a translator has to “expand” the participle into a relative clause, either because the target language does not permit reduced relative clauses or for other reasons.
b. If a past participle comes before the main verb in a sentence or clause, make a special effort either to expand the participle or to revise the sentence in some way.
Rationale: Research has shown that readers form a tentative analysis of a sentence before reaching the end of a sentence. If they encounter a word that looks like it could be the main verb of a sentence, they are likely to interpret it that way. We shouldn’t mislead them by putting a participle (reduced clause) in a position that could lead to such a misinterpretation. In addition, some MT systems may be unable to translate such sentences correctly.
3. Look for present participles (verb forms that end in -ING) such as
corresponding,
describing, and
using.
a. If the -ING word follows a verb such as
begin,
start, or
continue that can take an infinitive complement, then consider changing the -ING word to an infinitive.
Rationale: In English -ING words (present participles) can represent many different parts of speech and grammatical constructions. Therefor, they are inherently confusing to many non-native speakers of English. It’s best to add syntactic cues to them (to make them utterly unambiguous) or to eliminate them altogether when it is possible to do so.
b. If the -ING word follows and modifies a noun, then always either expand the -ING word into a relative clause or find some other way of eliminating it.
Rationale: It is often possible that the -ING word is modifying a previous clause rather than the preceding noun. An MT system cannot reliably determine the correct interpretation.
f. If an -ING word is acting as an adjective (occurring before a noun), then consider whether it could be mistaken for a gerund (acting as a noun), or vice-versa. If so, revise the sentence or phrase.
Koh’ls article cites numerous other guidelines on syntactic cues and provides specific examples for each guideline.
Reason Number 3:I found out that with Android devices (smartphones or tablets) that use the Chrome browser, the browser automatically translates into English a web page that’s written in another language. For example, when I visit a web page that’s written in Bahasa Indonesia, my Chrome browser automatically translates the page into English.
And vice-versa. For example, if someone from Russia browses any of my blog posts, Chrome will automatically translate my English text into Russian.
Having found this out, I considered Kohl’s guidelines on syntactic cues and machine translation (MT). I have seen some egregiously-bad examples of translations by Google Translate, and I’ve concluded that, by following Kohl’s guidelines, my blog posts can be translated better into other languages.
But I have also followed Kohl’s foundational principle for “Global English”; if a sentence construction sounds weird or unnatural for a native-English speaker, revise the sentence.