whew

For the past several hours, I've been stuck on a most alien turn of phrase:

Company X Declares "Field Management"

It's the headline for one of the magazine articles I've been proofing (I don't feel I'm at liberty to reveal the company's true name, hence "Company X"). I finally gave up and wrote BK to request the original Korean version of the article: my Google searches for the exact phrase "declare field management" (and its inflected variants: declares, declared, declaring) turned up zero hits. They also turned up far too many examples of "field management," which means a million different things depending on context.

So I got an email with the Korean original attached. In Korean, the locution in question is "X 현장경영 선언." I'm now re-tailoring the sentence to read "Company X Announces New On-site Management Strategy," which isn't an exact translation, but which makes for a clear headline. Let's break this down:

현장 = field, site, (current) location, locale, spot, scene
경영 = management, administration
선언 = declaration, proclamation, announcement

The sentence "Company X declares field management" is gibberish. The phrase "field management" is vague and therefore conveys no information. The verb "declare" further blurs things because it's an awkward word choice.

If we change this to "X announces field management," we're still speaking gibberish. "Announce" is the correct verb, because companies often announce big changes, but what follows that verb still points to nothing specific.

When you Google the exact phrase "on-site management," however, you get over 1.1 million results, which is a small hint that that phrase means something, and is probably widely understood.

But we still have a problem: the sentence "X announces on-site management" sounds unnatural in business English. Something seems to be lacking, and that's why I've taken liberties by adding "new" and "strategy." Now we've got an intelligible headline!

Company X Announces New On-site Management Strategy

It plays. And it's consistent with the article that follows it.

Whew.


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