My plate is almost bare...

I did the edit due for Monday, and that's all that can be said about it. As I've undoubtedly said before, editing is about two times harder than translation, and pays about half as much.

When you translate, you read the source, grok it, and write out the thought in the "target" language. When you edit, you read the source, grok it, and then compare it with the target thought expressed by someone else, and make any necessary changes.

That word, "necessary," involves a lot of judgment calls. Some people can't help essentially rewriting any translation given to them to edit, because... well, because they feel that their version is not only superior to, but more correct than what the other fellow wrote.

When I was in Houston, I once sat down and classified edits into four categories:

1. Correcting major errors. The source says, "Turn the switch on." The translation says, "Turn the switch off." Or a sentence is missing. These are no-brainers to identify, and they must be corrected in a translation, no matter the cost in time.

2. Correcting minor errors. There are some people in the world for whom there is no such thing as a "minor error." All errors are egregious, and an offense to the Universe, according to these people. (If you've ever had a teacher who does not believe in "partial credit" answers, you know the kind of persion I'm talking about, but I digress...)

A minor error may involve two words run together, or a run-on sentence, an awkward construction, or a miscapitalization, or something along those lines. If there is time to correct these kinds of errors, they should be corrected. However, while working in Houston, I became used to a working environment where clients demanded impossible deadlines (and were accommodated).

Thus, if there is only a limited time to check a translation for completeness and accuracy - and again, this was why this category was created - these kinds of corrections must be skipped.

3. Making improvements. This correction involves taking text that probably is okay and making it more "rigorous." Another way of looking at it is the correction of very minor errors. This kind of activity should be undertaken only when one has the skill and a lot of time on one's hands.

4. Rewording. There isn't a text in the world that could not be reworded, and most of the effort would likely result in an improved product. I've seen editors who could not, to save thier lives, refrain from massive rewording, arguing that the original wording was "wrong" when it clearly wasn't.

A memorable experience in this regard was the time I went up against a native Russian editor, who objected to my translation that so-and-so was "born in Moscow," insisting that the correct English for this translation was for the person to be "born at Moscow." This person also insisted that my rendition of "the Shuttle will fly to Mir" should be reworded to match the Russian, which literally translated, would have read: "the Shuttle will fly toward Mir."

Of these four categories, the first should be done always; the fourth, never. Of the remaining two, it depends.

Cheers...

On translation editing, part 2...

Fellow LJer bsgi asks, based on my previous post:

I would think that there is another category of editing that does not fit neatly into the four you have listed.

One is to rewrite to IMPROVE READABILITY. This improves the chances that the "correct" message is perceived by the reader. This is certainly an improvement, but not the correction of major or minor errors. It is a rewording but one that is the appropriate purview of an editor, in conjunciton with an author. Should this be a fifth category?

This is an important point, and I've escalated both the question and my response here to my "main" journal, as it is essentially a continuation of my previous musings.

Improving readability is subsumed mostly by the second category I formulated (categories 3 and 4 fit too, but to a much lesser extent). For example, if a translator submits work that betrays an unnatural tendency to overuse the passive voice, e.g. "the man was bitten by the dog," it might make sense to recast such sentences, if time permits. (If time does not permit, one must at least make sure that the dog and man are the participants, that the dog is biting, and the man is being bitten, i.e., make sure there's no first-category errors in the translation.)

In the final analysis, though, a typical edit of a translation does not involve the same level of intervention as does, say, editing an article to be published in something like The New Yorker. This is explained, by the way, by the rather broad continuum of what constitutes "editing," distinguished primarily by the authority the editor has to make changes in whatever text is being edited.

At the bottom end, for example, proofreaders typically have authority only to correct the most striking errors (punctuation, misspellings, and so on that are typically introduced during typesetting); they may not raise issues of fact or matters of style. At the top end, you have editors who are, in some cases, more famous than the authors whose work is edited, who can and often do rewrite text, and who may make "suggestions" to an author that must be heeded, if the author is to be published. Translation editing is closer to the lower end of the spectrum.

There is, however, another aspect to readability that is almost unique to translation, and that lies in the answer to the question: should a translation be more readable than the original? (In fact, a colleague of mine advertises his service with the tag line to that effect.)

My take on this aspect of the craft is no, translations should not attempt to improve upon the original, though there are limits. If the original is filled with typos and poor grammar, run-on sentences, lack of parallelism, and so on, the translation should, obviously, not follow suit (though a footnote, directed at the client, mentioning such shortcomings may not be out of place).

On the other hand, if the thinking expressed in the text is turgid, if the author's logic is flawed, or if the overall presentation is lackluster, the translator cannot - must not - attempt to make the text more "readable." To attempt to do so may likely introduce something into the target text that was not in the original.

Hmmm. I do have a tendency to ramble on, don't I. Sorry if this is more of a reply than you asked for, but it just kinda came out.

Cheers...