Challenging myself

[marmoset]

Please help me with translating this part of an article. I feel like I've almost got it.

"En Londres, grupos de jóvenes sembraron el desorden por tercera noche consecutiva, provocando incendios de edificios, vehículos y depósitos de basura, el saqueo de negocios y la policía agredida con botellas y cohetes, mientras grupos de jóvenes arrasaban los vecindarios. Se trata de un desagradable recuerdo de la inestabilidad londinense para los líderes que organizan las Olimpiadas del 2012 en menos de un año."

In London, groups of young people spread disorder for the third consecutive night, starting fires to buildings, vehicles, and trash cans, the looting of businesses and police attacked with bottles and rockets, while groups of young people destroyed neighborhoods. It is about (this comes as) a terrible reminder of the instability of London to the leaders who are organizing the 2012 Olympics in less that a year.

I think I understand what the article means to say, but I don't understand the clauses with in the first (long) sentence.:thinking: And in the second sentence, "se trata de" must have a better translation than, "it is about".

I look forward to your input. :)

[aleCcowaN]

The original text in "Spanish" looks like a very bad translation from English -a twitteresque English, too many things going on if a few characters- , maybe translated using software and later edited by a human that is a native English speaker and was in a hurry. "Provocaron ... la policía agredida..." is the sort of construction one expects from an intermediate Spanish student ("provocaron daños" and "agredieron a la policía" is the right thing).

"Se trata de ..." works as a sort of conjunction that opens a paragraph which analyses the meaning and consequences of the event or introduces details or additional explanations that allow the readers to get their own conclusions. Your translation of it includes lots of common sense: the original text might have looked similar to that, so you did a very good job. Anyway, consider that many texts that seem "easy enough" to translate may have this kind of problems.

[marmoset]

That is really good to know. I will start reading articles from a real spanish newspaper site.