-ing and -ac

Whenever a sentence contains a phrase like “uzyskując stopień doktora filozofii”, the simplest recourse is to use a gerund or participle in English, so here it will be “receiving the degree of doctor of philosophy”. But there are problems. First, Polish is richer in participles and gerunds than English. The English “-ing” could be the Polish “-ący, -ącego, ącej, -ąco, ąc, etc. etc.). The second problem is that the “-ąc” form does not contain information about the subject of the verb. Usually that is implied, but in many cases a writer has not considered how it might be ambiguous and uses it instead of “-ący”. In some ways, it is like the Latin absolute construction, that is, something is done to something by something, and that whole event is related in some way to the rest. It might simply be simultaneous, or might be a cause, or an effect, or other relation. Often, I simply translate the phrase as a separate sentence + “and”. So the example becomes “… and he received a doctorate in philosophy”. English can use an absolute construction, but it is somewhat alien to English. There are some absolute constructions that are commonplace, like “notwithstanding”, e.g., “notwithstanding your objections”, or “Considering the weather, there will be a crowd” (If we consider the weather …).