Is this even allowed?

[AldenG]

Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat vaikuttaa syöpäsoluihin niiden kasvua hidastavasti, tutkijat arvioivat.

Original article

My ear says no. But then I don't write for Helsingin Sanomat.

My first choices would have been

Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat hidastaa syöpäsolujen kasvua, tutkijat arvioivat.

or if you really wanted to use vaikuttaa, then

Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat vaikuttaa hidastavasti syöpäsolujen kasvuun, tutkijat arvioivat.


Farther down the list, I might accept

Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat vaikuttaa syöpäsoluihin niiden kasvua hidastaen, tutkijat arvioivat.

...though I think my inner editor would have urged simplification.

I just don't see how the sentence as written is even acceptable.
But I suppose I'm about to get schooled again.

[silk]

I'm with you Alden: The sentence in the original HS article sounds awkward to me. In contrast, your first two sentences convey the message effortlessly. Your third sentence... hmmm... This is coming from a native speaker (albeit one who has lived most of her life abroad).

This makes me think why journalists, presumably with better than average writing skills, so often produce poorly written articles. Deadlines?

[CH]

No, "vaikuttaa kasvua hidastavasti" is fine. Google "hidastavasti", and you will find lots of hits, and always with "vaikuttaa ... hidastavasti". I have no idea how to explain the rules for it (well... count me as native), but it means that something is causing or affecting the growth rate to slow down (or um... in a growth rate slowing down way). So, in the linked English article we have "It is believed the drugs interact with cancer cells to slow tumour growth.", and in the Finnish "Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat vaikuttaa syöpäsoluihin niiden kasvua hidastavasti, tutkijat arvioivat.". So, both sentences leave it a bit open what is excactly slowing down the tumor growth, but Ibuprofein is somehow involved.

"Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat hidastaa syöpäsolujen kasvua, tutkijat arvioivat." Now, this is "Ibuprofein can slow down tumor growth"... close, but not quite the same meaning. The actor here is more direct in its action.

Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat vaikuttaa hidastavasti syöpäsolujen kasvuun, tutkijat arvioivat. Well... to me it leaves it a bit open what word "hidastavasti" here is moderating. I do get it what it means, as the word is hidastavasti, and so it must mean that it is slowing the growth. But as you could also have "vaikuttaa nopeasti syöpäsolujen kasvuun" which means that it acts fast, it kind of makes my mind go "um, or did I read that wrong... did they mean that it is affecting slower and slower to the growth... or, um...". When you have "hidastavasti" last it really is no other way to decipher than it's affecting the "syöpäsolujen kasvuun <millä tavalla>".

Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat vaikuttaa syöpäsoluihin niiden kasvua hidastaen, tutkijat arvioivat. This is the closest, in my opinion. Just a slight different meaning in how I see the action happening, but it means more or less the same. Um... like here it's "Ibuprofein can affects the tumor cells to slow down their growth" vs. "Ibuprofein can affect the tumor cells in a slowing down the growth way". So, a "what does ibuprofein do" vs. "what is the effect on the cancer cells".

But well... that's just what my ear says, no idea if it is correct or not.

[jahasjahas]

I kinda agree with CH's analysis, but I'd like to point out that the original English sentence has both "cancer cells" and "tumour growth", while the Finnish actually talks about the growth of cancer cells. The original sentence structure makes more sense when "cancer cells" and "tumour (growth)" are treated as separate entities (A effects B which slows down C), but if you do away with the latter, you might as well simplify the sentence to AldenG's "Ibuprofeenia sisältävät tulehduskipulääkkeet voivat hidastaa syöpäsolujen kasvua".

So the main problem is half assedly translating original articles almost-but-not-quite word-to-word, which you see every day in Finnish newspapers, especially their online versions.

EDIT TO ADD:
To my ear, all the suggested sentences are acceptable, some just more clunky than others.

[Upphew]

This makes me think why journalists, presumably with better than average writing skills, so often produce poorly written articles. Deadlines?

Toimittajavuosinani sain erityiskiitosta silkasta nopeudesta. Kiireen hetkellä kirjoitin nopeasti, muistin asioiden laidat, tiesin ihmiset ja heidän puhelinnumeronsa… Löin vaikka vartissa jutun määrämittaan ja otsikon päälle. Joku vanhoista kollegoista saattaa muistaa, missä kunnossa minut roudattiin kapakasta toimitukseen hädän hetkellä. Minä en niitä pahimpia hetkiä muista – onneksi.

http://niklasherlin.puheenvuoro.uusisuo ... aa-kiusata

[AldenG]

Rushing as so often, I didn't notice that the Finnish sentence was a translation of an English one. (Still not sure where I could have seen that, actually.) All by itself, that typically explains many convoluted sentences. There's often too much effort put into needlessly mirroring relatively insignificant nuance. (Or too little effort into not doing so, perhaps.) I hate translating from Finnish because so much of the nuance is little more than idiom, but you constantly have to wrestle with whether to make something of it or just write a good, clear sentence that conveys the notion. That's much less of a problem going from Swedish to English.

I don't think I would have done a double-take on any kind of vaikuttaa sitä hidastavasti, though my (often so imperfect) instincts would have said to use siihen.

If I try to analyze what is going on in my brain, I think what gets me here is that once you pass soluihin, you have "used up" vaikuttaa and cannot later bring it back for use in vaikuttaa kasvua hisdastavasti. (Though obviously there are some qualified claims that actually, you can.) The real wrench in the works here is niiden.

That's why I wanted something like hidastaen niiden kasvua if it was really necessary to say that it influences the cells and then explain how it influences them. Hidastamalla is another candidate, but to me that makes it sounds like slowing the growth was a mechanism or means to another end (i.e. influencing the cells) rather than the end itself, or the manner of influencing the cells.

Still, the most shocking thing of all about that sentence is the price tag in the picture above it: 2.39 Euros for 4000 mg of ibuprofen.

[Rosamunda]

Still, the most shocking thing of all about that sentence is the price tag in the picture above it: 2.39 Euros for 4000 mg of ibuprofen.

... enough to give anyone a headache.