260 words into 120: the fundraising notice on one A4 page
Losa is on the committee organising a fundraising evening for eighteen junior players travelling to Auckland for a tournament. The target is $9,000 and $2,400 has been raised so far. The notice must go on the church hall board as one A4 page and also into the community Facebook group. Her first draft is 260 words, and the committee has told her the printed page must carry 120 words or fewer. It must include the date (Saturday 12 April), the 6 pm start with lotu first, the venue (the hall), what families should bring, the $5 entry, and a contact number. The readers are mostly elders who read Vagahau Niue daily, plus teenagers who read English faster. Losa's draft is a single Niuean paragraph translated line by line from her English notes, so several sentences keep English word order and the numbers appear twice.
1. Losa must cut 260 words to 120. What stays, what goes, and what is the principle behind the order you choose?
Read the worked answer
Priority order - what a reader must be able to act on:
- What the evening is for (eighteen players, Auckland) - one clause.
- When: Saturday 12 April, 6 pm, lotu first.
- Where: the hall.
- What to bring and the $5 entry.
- Contact name and number.
Cut: the paragraph about how the team has improved, the list of past fundraisers, the general thanks to everyone who has helped so far, the explanation of why the trip costs what it costs, and every second mention of a number. Progress towards the target ($2,400 of $9,000) stays only if it fits in one short clause - it gives a reason to come, so it is doing work that the paragraphs about team spirit are not.
The principle: cut information, not courtesy. The greeting and the closing line of thanks remain, because they are what makes this a community notice rather than an advertisement. A notice that opens with a demand and ends with a bank account reads as a bill.
2. How should the two languages be laid out, and why should Losa not simply translate her English version into Niuean?
Read the worked answer
Write two notices that say the same things - not one notice translated.
- Put Vagahau Niue first on the page. The elders are the readers most likely to act on it, and Niuean is the language the evening is being held in; putting English first quietly signals that Niuean is the translation, which it is not here.
- English follows, because the teenagers read it faster and some parents read English more comfortably. Both versions carry all five facts. Never split the facts between the languages, or one group receives an incomplete notice and turns up at the wrong time.
- Do not translate line by line. Her draft does exactly that, which is why the sentences carry English word order. Build the Niuean version from the facts, with its own short clauses and its own sentence order; then build the English version from the same facts. If the sentence order differs between the two, that is correct - they are the same notice, not the same sentence.
3. Identify the drafting problems in the Niuean paragraph that come from translating her English notes, and say how each is fixed.
Read the worked answer
Word order. Her English notes produce sentences that begin with a long subject. Fix by asking 'what happened?' first, starting the sentence there, then naming who did it, then the detail. Split any sentence carrying two 'and's into two - a reader scanning a noticeboard for the time should not have to find it inside a subordinate clause.
Numbers and dates. Give the day and date once, together (Saturday 12 April), then '6 pm' once, then the entry price once. Her draft states the time twice and the date twice in different forms, which is exactly how a contradiction gets into a printed notice. Use figures so the page is scannable, and keep the identical format in both language versions so the two cannot disagree.
The last line. The contact should be a person's name plus a number, in both versions, at the bottom of the page - the reader who has decided to come looks there first, and should not have to read the paragraph about the venue to find it.