I proofread technical documents that have been translated from Japanese into English. The translations must be "literal." I cannot, generally, make them more concise. One thing that pops up over and over are the dreaded -ing words. I can make the argument that a phrase should be changed if the construction makes it difficult to understand.
Here is an example "For separating connector A and connector B, the worker first must......"
My gut and all my writing baggage really want it to say "In order to separate..." but I cannot articulate why. Can someone point me to a concise explanation that would make sense to non-native speakers?
Feel free to tell me this is a "happy" to "glad" change and I will attempt to stop sweating it.