[Grammar] Noun+noun/gerund or +infinitive?

[Jack8rkin]

Hello, everybody:
I've been translating a text from Russian and
encountered an issue with the form to be used in the following example:
"the purpose of work is to optimize characteristics of...", or
"the purpose of work is optimization/optimizing (of)characteristics of..."
So, the question is what is best to chose in this situation: an infinitive or a noun/gerund?
There are lots of such structures in the texts I translate and Russians prefer to use nouns in translations. I think it's wrong. So, what do you say?

 

[bhaisahab]

Hello, everybody:
I've been translating a text from Russian and
encountered an issue with the form to be used in the following example:
"the purpose of work is to optimize characteristics of...", or
"the purpose of work is optimization/optimizing (of)characteristics of..."
So, the question is what is best to chose in this situation: an infinitive or a noun/gerund?
There are lots of such structures in the texts I translate and Russians prefer to use nouns in translations. I think it's wrong. So, what do you say?

Welcome to the forums.
If you are talking about a specific job of work, you need the definite article, "the purpose of the work is to optimize".

 

[Jack8rkin]

Thank you for the advice. I'll add the article.
Why can't I use gerund here? Any scientific background for that? Or it's just uncommon?