increase the sum of the club’s individual parts

[Kenny同志]

I am translating a book and at a loss as to what the highlighted sentence means. Does it mean they have to increase the total amount of money spent on all the players of the team?

 

Also why was it probably impossible to do that when the roster remained largely unchanged?

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

 

 

Picture removed.

 

 

Edit: Although I am not bound by any NDA, Pease note that this picture may be removed when I get the answer to this question. Thanks for your understanding.

[li3wei1]

I think it means that they're stuck with a bunch of crap players, and they have to somehow get them to work as a very good team. There is a common saying, 'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts', which means that people or things working together can do much more than they can working separately.

 

I do not envy you this task. Sports writing is full of technical jargon, and it's usually straining to make something very boring sound exciting. Much like financial reporting. Teams win and lose, stocks go up and down. How many ways can you say 'win', 'lose', 'up', and 'down'?

[Kenny同志]

Seems I was totally wrong. Thanks Liwei.

 

No, it's not any enviable work at all. Baseball is complicated and there's a huge amount of very specialised terms! I only wish I didn't make too many stupid mistakes.

[Kenny同志]

Picture removed.

 

One more question.

 

Weren’t the first few sentences trying to say that Hurdle was fast? Why did the author say at the end of the paragraph that the only thing Hurdle lacked was speed? Thanks.

[Flickserve]

I think each player in a playing position has a value. The highlighted part means the owners are not able to increase the value of the player in each individual playing position because they are still mostly the same players from the previous season. It's not quite clear if that means a pure monetary value or playing value.

[Flickserve]

截图二.png

One more question.

Weren’t the first few sentences trying to say that Hurdle was fast? Why did the author say at the end of the paragraph that the only thing Hurdle lacked was speed? Thanks.

Good question. It said batting speed as in ability to hit the ball. When it referred that he lacked speed, I assume this means running speed. Running speed might be acceleration or maximum velocity or both together.

[Kenny同志]

Very helpful comments. Thanks Flickserve!

[Demonic_Duck]

For what it's worth, it seems pretty badly written overall... I agree with @li3wei1's interpretation, but if that's the case, they misunderstood the meaning of the word "sum". They also use flawed baseball players in a pack of baseball cards as an "analogy" for flawed baseball players in a team... so it seems they also don't understand how analogies work.

[Shelley]

I noticed in the first extract that there is the word sea-son I think this should probably be season. It is usually used in sports to mean the period of the year the sport is played.

[Kenny同志]

Thank you, Duck and Shelly.

 

@Duck

Agreed.

 

I am not sure what you meant specifically by 'pretty badly written overall' though. To me, it was badly written because the author habitually 東拉西扯 and seemed unable to keep things in an order that was easy to follow. As a result, I was often lost in the story.

 

 

@Shelly

Yes, it is just season. 

 

In the original document, the body of the texts was narrow and many lines had a hyphenated word at their ends. In order to show all the relevant paragraphs in a small picture, I reformatted the texts. That’s why you see so many hyphenated words in places where they should not appear.

[陳德聰]

I think in general, the tolerance for repetition in English writing is very low if not specifically for literary or poetic reasons, so the first bit seems lazy with "The Pirates... The Pirates... They would... They would...". Also failed analogies, and mixed register makes it just feel like the person doesn't really know what they're talking about. Add to that the run-on sentences and bam, you have a painful read.

[lips]

and you're supposed to translate to the source text's style ....

[Kenny同志]

I think in general, the tolerance for repetition in English writing is very low if not specifically for literary or poetic reasons, so the first bit seems lazy with "The Pirates... The Pirates... They would... They would...". 

 

 

I had also noticed that issue; besides words, some sentences were repetitive as well.

 

Thanks very much for your comments, 陳德聰 and Lips.

 

 

Edit: Good news is that the translation will not bear my name.

[Lu]

I think in general, the tolerance for repetition in English writing is very low if not specifically for literary or poetic reasons, so the first bit seems lazy with "The Pirates... The Pirates... They would... They would...". Also failed analogies, and mixed register makes it just feel like the person doesn't really know what they're talking about. Add to that the run-on sentences and bam, you have a painful read.

I haven't actually read the text in question, but I think it's perfectly possible for the author to know very well what s/he is talking about without being able to write well. Someone good at making a baseball team work is not likely to also be good at writing, but they may very well be a good coach or trainer.

 

Also I think if the writing is not intentionally bad, the translator should be free to improve upon it. A badly written text doesn't always have to be badly written in translation.

[Kenny同志]

Also I think if the writing is not intentionally bad, the translator should be free to improve upon it. A badly written text doesn't always have to be badly written in translation.

 

 

I would like to. However, while sentences are easy to fix, it is impossible for a translator to improve the way in which the story is told.

[Flickserve]

It is a tough task for translator to improve on the original article if it is badly written or has ambiguity. Being a person interested in sports helped me read the article. For a non-sports person, it doesn't make sense.

[Kenny同志]

Anyway, I will do all I can to make it as good as it can be. : )