Agreed. I found the first sentence immediately understandable, and the second one confusing and ambiguous.
> A strong tremor in her hand
The fact that "tremor" is uncommon helped me instantly understand that this was a medical condition, and "strong" helped me understand that it's debilitating for her. It sounds long-lived, if not permanent.
> Her hand shakes
Ok ... is it a medical condition, or a nervous tick, or just a bad habit? Is it really strong or just a light, well, tremor? And of course as you pointed out, the confusion with with other words like "handshake", and the fact that "shakes" is transitive, so we could be about to read "Her hand shakes the salt shaker". "Tremor" is not transitive, so my mind doesn't need to leave open a branch that could accept another noun as part of it.
> [condition] makes it impossible for her to ...
Ok, her condition is really bad. We should not expect her to be able to lots of other things, either. Please don't ask her about it; it could be embarrassing.
> [condition] so she does not do ...
"so" should have a comma before it. "Her hand shakes so" is actually a complete sentence, which leaves room for "Her hand shakes so; she does not do" as being more separable thoughts rather than one being the consequence of the other. This is yet another possible "branch" of the sentence that my mind has to leave open while trying to understand it.
She does not do it? That is so much more ambiguous than "it is impossible for her".
The only possible improvement is the omission of the word "American", but that's not even clear: it gives us additional information about the subject (i.e., she is American) since it's already clear that any sign language would be hard for her.
And dropping "american" both changes the meaning and reveals the mind of the translator. There are other sign languages, some perhaps easier for those with hand tremors. I think it safe to say that only a fellow american would drop that adjective to make the sentence more readable.
> A strong tremor in her hand
The fact that "tremor" is uncommon helped me instantly understand that this was a medical condition, and "strong" helped me understand that it's debilitating for her. It sounds long-lived, if not permanent.
> Her hand shakes
Ok ... is it a medical condition, or a nervous tick, or just a bad habit? Is it really strong or just a light, well, tremor? And of course as you pointed out, the confusion with with other words like "handshake", and the fact that "shakes" is transitive, so we could be about to read "Her hand shakes the salt shaker". "Tremor" is not transitive, so my mind doesn't need to leave open a branch that could accept another noun as part of it.
> [condition] makes it impossible for her to ...
Ok, her condition is really bad. We should not expect her to be able to lots of other things, either. Please don't ask her about it; it could be embarrassing.
> [condition] so she does not do ...
"so" should have a comma before it. "Her hand shakes so" is actually a complete sentence, which leaves room for "Her hand shakes so; she does not do" as being more separable thoughts rather than one being the consequence of the other. This is yet another possible "branch" of the sentence that my mind has to leave open while trying to understand it.
She does not do it? That is so much more ambiguous than "it is impossible for her".
The only possible improvement is the omission of the word "American", but that's not even clear: it gives us additional information about the subject (i.e., she is American) since it's already clear that any sign language would be hard for her.