October 15, 2007 ASSistance needed

Meegs to Me: 12:34 PM

"Okay, miss english - I need your ASSistance (as courtney would say).

I'm an assistant editor for a communication journal and currently, I'm editing one of my professor's papers!! Its a bit intimidating. He's Chinese and so the language is a bit awkward. I'm having SUPER trouble with these two different sentences. Can you help?

Here we go:
1. "The Chinese as well are reluctant to talk about death; they tend to believe that talking about death may lead it to come soon." (this one, the 'may lead it to come soon' i think is awkward. i can't change the language TOO much, but need it to make sense.)

2. "Since its establishment in 1996, Tzu Chi Body Donation Center’s, located at the Medical School of Tzu Chi University, campaigning for body donation has become one of Tzu Chi’s on-going endeavors." (this one is giving me EXTRA difficulty, for whatever reason.)

So...whaddya think?"

Me to Meegs 1:37 PM

"Original Sentences
1. "The Chinese as well are reluctant to talk about death; they tend to believe that talking about death may lead it to come soon."

2. "Since its establishment in 1996, Tzu Chi Body Donation Center’s, located at the Medical School of Tzu Chi University, campaigning for body donation has become one of Tzu Chi’s on-going endeavors."

What I Says:
1. is actually okay, even though I understand where you get the awk feeling... but if you want to change it, I suggest one of these endings (or something similar):
'The Chinese as well are reluctant to talk about death; they tend to believe that talking about death' encourages it to arrive/appear/etc--OR-- draws its inevitable appearance [somehow] closer.

2. this sentence is over crowded. It needs to be either split up into two sentences, or re-subordinated somehow:

'Since the establishment in 1996 of Tzu Chi Body Donation Center, located at the Medical School of Tzu Chi University, campaigning for body donation has become one of Tzu Chi's on-going endeavors.'---but this even feels redundant (of course this would be one of it's on-going endeavors; it is the main objective of the organization, or so says the name, right?). Or, did he mean this last clause to be first, kind of a cause of the Center's existence, that this Tzu Chi means business about body donation, which is why it started the center in 1996??

sorry if my comments are just as confusing as your own thoughts on the matter of these.
ugh. editing is fun."