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Being edited...
Mar. 6th, 2004 06:29 pmA strange thing happened to me yesterday at the client's office.
On Thursday, Boris R., who is he lead translator for the non-NASA job I'm working on, came by with a translation of mine that had been edited by hand by an older gentlemen whom I've seen here and there in the office. The pages were dripping with red ink. Boris asked me to incorporate the changes into my translation, and hinted that doing so might be beneficial, as the Al, the editor, was an experienced engineer.
Permit me to digress.
I have been edited by the best. And the worst. Through it all, I've developed an equanimity toward the process.
Lots of writers, and particularly translators, haven't. When anyone suggests changing any of their text, they get quite vituperative. The situation is, I think, worse for translators, because editors are charged with the correction of translation errors in addition to making sure grammar, spelling, usage, terminology, etc. is up to snuff, and an awful lot of translators that I've met - good ones as well as bad ones - get awful touchy when their errors are pointed out to them. I have to admit to not feeling quite chipper myself when someone points out an error in my work.
But in my view, errors are going to happen, despite my best efforts as a translator to avoid them or find them and correct them, so there really is no percentage in feeling bad about them, unless they're stupid errors, a genre I am generally quite good at avoiding. Sometimes the errors I do commit will be the result of my own shortcomings; sometimes, the clock will be a major contributing factor. The idea, of course, is to keep the errors on the rare side (as opposed to one translator of my acquaintance, who once was late in handing in a job where, it turned out, every sentence needed a major fix).
There are few sights, in my mind, more sad than to watch a translator attempt a point-by-point rebuttal of an editor's changes, unless the editor was a complete idiot, in which case, no point-by-point argument need really be made. I remember a session with one translator who handed in an assignment replete with numerous errors. After arguing (in vain) about literally every change for ten pages, we finally ran across a change the editor should not have made. The look of righteous indignation on the face of the translator was something to behold, but in the context of the discussion, wholly misplaced.
(One example of the kind of error we're talking about was the translated sentence "Mr. Ryumin will fly toward the Mir space station as part of a Shuttle crew." The editor changed this to: "Mr. Ryumin will fly to the Mir space station as part of the Shuttle crew." The word "to" was used instead of "toward" because NASA flies missions "to" places and not "toward" them, and since the overall document referred to the specific crew going to Mir, the article "the" replaced the article "a.")
So in the end, I counted three mistranslations, which is not awful for a 3000 word text. Then there were about a dozen terminological corrections, which (the way I translate) basically involves doing a global search-and-replace to make things right (I called a test "device" a test "appliance" consistently throughout the text, for example).
The rest? Basically improvements in wording, as far as I can see (my "bystanders may not be allowed to remain in the area" became "no unauthorized personnel are permitted in the area"). I have no problem with the suggested change, but I think my version is fully serviceable. And given the client's mania to complete oodles of pages per week, I wonder how good a use of editing time it is to make such changes.
In any event, to return to the story...
Yesterday morning, I get called into two separate offices and the managers therein were very apologetic about what happened, and it almost seemed they expected me to be upset about having one of my translations be the subject of so many suggested changes. This surprised me, since I don't think I've ever given anyone any grounds to think I'd get upset about being edited, or overedited. (Apparently, one of the other editors saw the extent of the edits and raised hell with management.)
I incorporated the changes, noted the errors and terminological corrections, and filed away two turns of the phrase that I plan to use in future translations of specifications. Everything works.
Cheers...
On Thursday, Boris R., who is he lead translator for the non-NASA job I'm working on, came by with a translation of mine that had been edited by hand by an older gentlemen whom I've seen here and there in the office. The pages were dripping with red ink. Boris asked me to incorporate the changes into my translation, and hinted that doing so might be beneficial, as the Al, the editor, was an experienced engineer.
Permit me to digress.
I have been edited by the best. And the worst. Through it all, I've developed an equanimity toward the process.
Lots of writers, and particularly translators, haven't. When anyone suggests changing any of their text, they get quite vituperative. The situation is, I think, worse for translators, because editors are charged with the correction of translation errors in addition to making sure grammar, spelling, usage, terminology, etc. is up to snuff, and an awful lot of translators that I've met - good ones as well as bad ones - get awful touchy when their errors are pointed out to them. I have to admit to not feeling quite chipper myself when someone points out an error in my work.
But in my view, errors are going to happen, despite my best efforts as a translator to avoid them or find them and correct them, so there really is no percentage in feeling bad about them, unless they're stupid errors, a genre I am generally quite good at avoiding. Sometimes the errors I do commit will be the result of my own shortcomings; sometimes, the clock will be a major contributing factor. The idea, of course, is to keep the errors on the rare side (as opposed to one translator of my acquaintance, who once was late in handing in a job where, it turned out, every sentence needed a major fix).
There are few sights, in my mind, more sad than to watch a translator attempt a point-by-point rebuttal of an editor's changes, unless the editor was a complete idiot, in which case, no point-by-point argument need really be made. I remember a session with one translator who handed in an assignment replete with numerous errors. After arguing (in vain) about literally every change for ten pages, we finally ran across a change the editor should not have made. The look of righteous indignation on the face of the translator was something to behold, but in the context of the discussion, wholly misplaced.
(One example of the kind of error we're talking about was the translated sentence "Mr. Ryumin will fly toward the Mir space station as part of a Shuttle crew." The editor changed this to: "Mr. Ryumin will fly to the Mir space station as part of the Shuttle crew." The word "to" was used instead of "toward" because NASA flies missions "to" places and not "toward" them, and since the overall document referred to the specific crew going to Mir, the article "the" replaced the article "a.")
So in the end, I counted three mistranslations, which is not awful for a 3000 word text. Then there were about a dozen terminological corrections, which (the way I translate) basically involves doing a global search-and-replace to make things right (I called a test "device" a test "appliance" consistently throughout the text, for example).
The rest? Basically improvements in wording, as far as I can see (my "bystanders may not be allowed to remain in the area" became "no unauthorized personnel are permitted in the area"). I have no problem with the suggested change, but I think my version is fully serviceable. And given the client's mania to complete oodles of pages per week, I wonder how good a use of editing time it is to make such changes.
In any event, to return to the story...
Yesterday morning, I get called into two separate offices and the managers therein were very apologetic about what happened, and it almost seemed they expected me to be upset about having one of my translations be the subject of so many suggested changes. This surprised me, since I don't think I've ever given anyone any grounds to think I'd get upset about being edited, or overedited. (Apparently, one of the other editors saw the extent of the edits and raised hell with management.)
I incorporated the changes, noted the errors and terminological corrections, and filed away two turns of the phrase that I plan to use in future translations of specifications. Everything works.
Cheers...
