WARSAW, July 22 (Reuters) - Poland said on Saturday that a maintenance hub for tanks damaged in Ukraine during the conflict with Russia had begun operating in its southern city of Gliwice.
Poland, one of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s biggest allies since Russia’s invasion last year, had been negotiating with Germany to create a joint workshop for Leopard tanks, but no common position has been announced.
Correct parse:
(Poland says (hub to fix (tanks damaged in Ukraine)) opens)Incorrect parse:
(Poland says ((hub to fix tanks) damaged in Ukraine) opens)The tanks were in Ukraine; the hub wasn’t.
As a Ukrainian, I hate English sometimes. In Ukrainian, we have many ways to make a short title phrase very much precise, but in English you have to speak large to speak clear.
The sentence wasn’t necessarily unclear, you just have to have a good grasp on how the rules of English grammar establish the subject and object of the sentence, and you need a good sense for how context clues work, and enough cultural context to know what errors the writer is making so you can correct for them. As with many things, we can blame the French for this.
Too much deep knowledge is needed for such basic things, as for the International Language, isn’t it? :)
Title gore
This is when more words could help: “Poland says the hub to fix tanks that are damaged in Ukraine is now open”. Or even rephrasing: “Poland says its hub opens, making it possible to fix tanks that are damaged in Ukraine”. But for Reuters that would be way too many words, I guess.
Thank you, Poland.
