Control the Action of Your Verbs

The sentences basically say the same thing, only the subject and object are switched in the sentence. The focus of the sentence shifts (the boy is the focus in the first sentence; the ball in the second sentence). Count the words. The active voice sentence has five words; the passive voice sentence has seven. Calculate that by word count and multiply by the number of languages (my current employer translates into five languages, a client translates into eight, and when I worked at GE Medical there were 14 languages) and you can see that these extra words add up.

Next time you are asked to trim word count or reduce translation costs, look at your verbs and see if you can do some pruning there with a consistent use and/or eschewing the passive voice for the active voice.

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