Sojuz-kantoraketin kuljettama lasti.....

[Rob A.]

Here is a classic Finnish sentence....a good example, which I thought would be fun to parse....from a story in today's HS:

Baikonurin avaruustukikohdasta Kazakstanista laukaistu Sojuz-kantoraketin kuljettama lasti saapuu maata kiertävälle kansainväliselle avaruusasemalle keskiviikkona.

The subject is lasti..."cargo"...[Aside: I notice in the lead-in to this story the word, rahti, was used...so a little "vocabulary bonus"... ]

The verb is, saapuu...saapua..."to arrive".....everything else is explanatory.

So here it is in English as literally as I can make it:

"From space centre of Baikonur from Kazakhstan launched, carried by Soyuz booster rocket, cargo will arrive to Earth circling international space station during Wednesday."

The essential sentence is: "The cargo will arrive Wednesday." There is a string of adjectival elements...a past participle clause with an elative object and an agent participle clause with genitive elements....modifying the subject noun, lasti. The indirect objects after the verb pretty much follow the same pattern as in an English sentence.

Standard English would be:

"The cargo, carried by a Soyuz booster rocket launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Space Centre, will arrive at the Earth orbiting international space station on Wednesday."

I think I've parsed this correctly?? Any improvements??...

[AldenG]

I would say your parsing is technically correct and you made this an exercise about parsing rather than translation.

But isn't a booster rocket just one of several stages in a launch vehicle? I believe kantoraketti refers to the whole vehicle. I don't know what NASA would call it, but I think kanto refers to carrying freight rather than people. So is that a "cargo rocket?"

[Rob A.]

I would say your parsing is technically correct and you made this an exercise about parsing rather than translation.

But isn't a booster rocket just one of several stages in a launch vehicle? I believe kantoraketti refers to the whole vehicle. I don't know what NASA would call it, but I think kanto refers to carrying freight rather than people. So is that a "cargo rocket?"

This was also in a part of the story:

Kantorakettiin kytketty Progress -rahtialus ammuttiin avaruuteen Baikonurin avaruustukikohdasta.
="To booster rocket connected Progress cargo vessel...."

So I suppose the main part of the story was focusing on the Soyuz rocket....which was carrying the cargo vessel. I haven't been keeping up with the Russian space program...maybe this Soyuz booster rocket is some new "latest and greatest" technology...????

[CH]

Kantoraketti is lauch vehicle, or perhaps a more describing name is carrier rocket. It's a rocket that takes a payload up to space. The booster rocket would indeed be the first stage of that rocket that gets the rocket off the ground. The payload in this case was the Progress spacecraft, an unmanned spacecraft that will dock with the ISS to resupply it. Note, that there is also a Sojuz spacecraft (which Progress is based on, but as it is unmanned it can be made much lighter), which is different from the Sojuz carrier rocket.

So, long story short... kantoraketti is carrier rocket. But hmm... I have no idea what booster rocket would be in Finnish. I actually found a lot of online dictionaries that said booster rocket is kantoraketti, but I don't think that is correct... but I can really not think of any other word than "ensimmäinen vaihe", the first stage of a "monivaiheraketti".