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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / January 2004citizen's appeal ...
Every now and then I have to write a piece of news about our company and then translate it into English. Could anyone look through the following one and suggest what could be corrected and improved? I am not, for example, sure that I found the right translation for "citizen's appeal department", which may sound weird for native speakers. Thank you in advance. ***** Chernigov Regional State Administration Decided on FossDoc! December 18, 2004 FossDoc was selected as the electronic document management system for the Chernigov regional state administration. According to administration officials, the key decisive factors in favor of FossDoc were its ability to be easily tailored to the current processes of document turnover and management within the organization, ready-to-use solutions for the office and for the citizen's appeal department as well as its simplicity to work with and low price. Chernigov Region is one of the biggest regions of Ukraine (31,9 thousand sq. km.) in terms of its area. The population is around 1.32 million. ***** >Every now and then I have to write a piece of news about our company and >then translate it into English. Could anyone look through the following one >and suggest what could be corrected and improved? I am not, for example, >sure that I found the right translation for "citizen's appeal department", >which may sound weird for native speakers. What does this Appeal Department do? Presumably it is a government office where citizens can go to 'appeal' with respect to something, but what? Their taxes? Government policies? Are their appeals complaints or just applications for some sort of relief? What I'm really trying to decide I guess is what sort of government office in our western system this office corresponds to. "John Ings wrote: > What does this Appeal Department do? Presumably it is a government > office where citizens can go to 'appeal' with respect to something, > but what? Their taxes? Government policies? Are their appeals > complaints or just applications for some sort of relief? What I'm > really trying to decide I guess is what sort of government office in > our western system this office corresponds to. This department deals with citizen's complaints of almost every kind. For example, somebody may submit a complaint about not receiving his/her pension on time, a disabled person may ask for some aid, and etc... >This department deals with citizen's complaints of almost every kind. For >example, somebody may submit a complaint about not receiving his/her pension >on time, a disabled person may ask for some aid, and etc... I guess Appeals Department is as accurate a title as I can think of for a single office that is prepared to handle such a wide variety of problems. In my country there are several offices that divide up such appeals into categories and handle them separately. e.g. http://canada.gc.ca/cdns/indiv_e.html I can see some advantages in having only one department handling such a variety of problems, but I bet there are some long lines of appellants when they open in the morning! John Ings wrote: > I guess Appeals Department is as accurate a title as I can think of > for a single office that is prepared to handle such a wide variety of [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > a variety of problems, but I bet there are some long lines of > appellants when they open in the morning! Thank you, John! What would you say about the general style? Maybe something sound weird or unnatural? Or all is perfect for such kind of news? >Thank you, John! >What would you say about the general style? Maybe something sound weird or >unnatural? Or all is perfect for such kind of news? The second sentence is rather long, so I would recommend some semi-colons. "FossDoc was selected as the electronic document management system for the Chernigov Regional State Administration. According to administration officials, the key decisive factors in favor of FossDoc was its ability to be easily tailored to the current processes of document turnover and management within the organization; its ready-to-use solutions for the office and for the Citizen's Appeal Department; its simplicity to work with and reasonable price." Another way of addressing the problem would be to break up that last sentence into a bulleted list. | I am not, for example, sure that I found the right | translation for "citizen's appeal department", | which may sound weird for native speakers. | Chernigov regional state administration. ... citizen's | appeal department What are the citizens appealing against? Criminal convictions? Property valuations? Parking tickets? Owain > Every now and then I have to write a piece of news about our company and > then translate it into English. Could anyone look through the following [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > km.) in terms of its area. The population is around 1.32 million. > ***** Possibly 'ombudsman' (although I think this office is usually independent of the organisations it exists to regulate), 'complaints department' or, in a lot of public departments these days, 'Customers Services'. DCC >> Every now and then I have to write a piece of news about our company and >> then translate it into English. Could anyone look through the following [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] > > DCC 'Customer Services'. Alex, I guess this department is more likely to handle general complaints of the government and her execution of policy. If it involves criminal cases etc, it would be named 'Appeal Court', right? Acutally I wonder if u has any choice over the use of word, because these days many non-english countries would have set the offical English name for their various ministries at the very beginning. If there exists an offical name, you should not come up with another translation, since it will cause confusion aboard. If there is no offical english name before, then Alex should convince the department that they should be the one to decide a Englih name, and do it right now. It could be the 'Citizen's Appeal Department' as Alex originally intended, or 'Office of the Ombudsman'(If your department is functionally so). My point is, afterall, the information is about an official department, and getting the name right, proper and consistent is important to the professional image of your country. As for the passage itself, I agree with others that the last sentence appears to be too long and it should be broken down, preferably into a number of short sentences. Anthony >>> Every now and then I have to write a piece of news about our company and >>> then translate it into English. Could anyone look through the [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] > > 'Customer Services'. I would like to thank all those who have expressed their opinions on the topic. Yes, most of the government institutions in Ukraine do have their English names. But I am not sure whether they set official names for their departments, especially for small ones. I sometimes need to make up our company's news and occasionally encounter problems finding proper terms. You all wrote citizen's appeal. This would mean an appeal procedure for one citizen. As this group is about English Language, it would be better if the contributors studied their punctuation and spelling. i.e. citizen's and English > Every now and then I have to write a piece of news about our company and > then translate it into English. Could anyone look through the following one [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > km.) in terms of its area. The population is around 1.32 million. > ***** > As this group is about English Language, it would be better > if the contributors studied their punctuation and spelling. > i.e. citizen's and English Get you! > You all wrote citizen's appeal. > This would mean an appeal procedure for one citizen. Oh my God!!! That's right, isn't it!!! If we put it in the plural, then my original typo, '*customers(') service' would be correct. But the usual usage is 'customer services' so maybe the answer should be 'citizen appeals' and we're using 'citizen' or 'customer' as an adjective... Or maybe we *are* thinking about each individual's right to appeal... So how would we apostrophise, say, 'driver's airbag'? Anyway, thanks for the advice. #) How interesting that I should type {citizens'} and have it come up as citizen's Is there an auto correct in Outlook express? > Every now and then I have to write a piece of news about our company and > then translate it into English. Could anyone look through the following one [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > km.) in terms of its area. The population is around 1.32 million. > ***** |
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