Do you understand it?

[jiang]

Dear teachers,
The following is a translation of a work report. I'd like to know whether the translation is idiomatic enough. And whether you understand the sentences or not. To save your time I have numbered each sentence. Pleas send back the numbers of the sentences you don't understand.


1. Accelerating the transformation of government functions. 2. Great progress has been made in reforming government institutions and in transforming government functions, but many problems remain to be solved. 3. We need to further emancipate our minds, shake off the fetters of the traditional planned economy, and transform government functions into economic regulation, market supervision, social management and public service. 4. We need to further define the functions of government departments to prevent cases like shifting one's responsibility to others or having no one take responsibility. 5. We should conscientiously implement the basic principle of "running the country according to law" perform official duties lawfully and managing the government by high standards. 6. We should deepen reform, reduce the scope of administrative examination and approval, standardize and simplify necessary approval procedures, stress openness and transparency, and clearly define responsibilities. 7. For this purpose, the State Council has already issued instructions, and all local governments and departments should implement them conscientiously. 8. We must accelerate the utilization of information technology in government administration, and promote e-administration to improve our working efficiency and exercise more effective supervision.

Thank you in advance.

Jiang

[Tdol]

1. is not a complete sentence. It's fine as a heading, though.

[Tdol]

2. I'd change the phrase 'government functions', maybe to 'administration'.

[Tdol]

4.- you could use 'shirking responsibilty' if you want something idiomatic.

[Tdol]

5. We should conscientiously implement the basic principle of "running the country according to law" perform official duties lawfully and managing the government by high standards.

I'd put a comma before 'performing' and turn it into 'performing'
Do we manage the government? We could use 'running'.

[RonBee]

Re:

• . Accelerating the transformation of government functions.

To accelerate something is to make it go faster. To transform something is to change it. To accelerate the transformation of government functions is to speed up the change of government operations, or procedures. Presumably, the writer is talking about somebody trying to reform (change) certain government procedures to make them more efficient.

Re:

• Great progress has been made in reforming government institutions and in transforming government functions, but many problems remain to be solved.

They have gone a long way (made great progress) in the effort to reform (change, hopefully for the better) government institutions and transform (change) government functions, but there is still a ways to go before all the goals have been achieved.

[Tdol]

6. We should further reforms & (instead of stress) emphasising

[Tdol]

7.- I'm not too sure about 'instructions'. They could be directives, which is the EU term.

[RonBee]

Re:

• We need to further emancipate our minds, shake off the fetters of the traditional planned economy, and transform government functions into economic regulation, market supervision, social management and public service.

Government control of the economy (planned economy) simply does not create prosperity. In fact, the reverse is true. Nevertheless, we don't want to admit that outright. (Thus the gobbledegook.) Instead, we will pretend that "economic regulation" will somehow produce greater prosperity. We will claim credit for the efforts of private citizens. When something goes wrong will we blame other people.

Re:

• We need to further define the functions of government departments to prevent cases like shifting one's responsibility to others or having no one take responsibility.

We need to be able to hold somebody accountable when something goes wrong. The problem is that nobody wants to take the blame for anything, and instead they attempt to shift the blame to others. The way the system works now it is often difficult to pin the blame on anybody. Nobody wants to take responsibility for anything.

:)

[RonBee]

Re:

• We should conscientiously implement the basic principle of "running the country according to law" perform official duties lawfully and managing the government by high standards.

We will have to cut down on instances of bribery. It has gotten out of hand. (People are well aware that the way to get what you want from a government official is to bribe that person.)

Re:

• We should deepen reform, reduce the scope of administrative examination and approval, standardize and simplify necessary approval procedures, stress openness and transparency, and clearly define responsibilities.

We haven't done a good job yet at replacing the system of bribing government officials with something else. Instead, the old system is hanging on tenaciously.

Or:

We should reduce the amount of government regulation and make it clear both what the procedures are and what people are supposed to be doing. (Of course, there has always been the way things are supposed to be done and the way things are actually done.)