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The art of editing...
Apr. 30th, 2008 12:17 pmBack when I worked in-house, we had an editor who lacked computer skills and therefore, literally used a red pencil to edit translations. Over the period of the editor's employment, there was not a single document that didn't end up completely rewritten, and no amount of discussion would dissuade said editor from the utter rightness of every last change.
That's about when I came to the conclusion that extensive editing of a translation is the result of either an unsuitable translation, an editor acting outside the scope of his or her job description (a nice way of saying "doesn't know what he or she is supposed to be doing"), or some combination of these two factors.
When undertaking an editing job, or any job, it's supremely important to understand the scope of what you're supposed to do. And the spectrum of the kinds of things one can do with text is pretty extensive.
For example, of the many "proofreading" jobs I've accepted over the years, only a handful actually involved what I call classical proofreading, i.e., the correction of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors in text. In my universe, classical proofreading does not require access to the source text or even knowledge of a second language.
In my first publishing job at Plenum Publishing, however, the job of "proofreader" required access to the source text, but no language skills, because in addition to what was required for classical proofreading, the Plenum proofreader was responsible for making sure that numbers and symbols in the source appeared in the target as well.
In recent years, pretty much all editing jobs - including most "proofreading" jobs (called that, I suspect, to justify the pittance offered as pay) - have involved everything that goes into classical proofreading as well as comparing the meaning of the translation to that of the original and correcting translation errors, which involves a lot more work.
You can even take the job one step further, and require that the editor made edits to enforce a specific set of terms or even impose a house "style" (which is beyond the scope of this post).
Anyway, as it was part of my job to do such things, I came up with a description of how to edit a translation. For the typical edit, where the goal is to make sure the translation conveys what was said in the original, there are three general types of changes that an editor might make:
1. Fix things that are outright wrong. (For example, the original says "Turn the switch on," and the translation says "Turn the switch off").
2. Fix things that are awkwardly stated, which is a huge gray area. A lot of these involve the use of technical jargon (or lack thereof). Example: edit "sending of drawings reflecting actual construction" to say "as-built drawing transmittal."
3. Applying the editing equivalent of a spit shine. An example might be changing "the woman became unconscious" to "the woman lost consciousness."
What's what depends on time and budget. Consistency of terminology, for example, generally falls into category 1, but may became category 2 if time and budget are lacking (and even such a categorization can be narrowed by restricting the set of terms that must be consistent).
The experienced editor will develop an understanding of how to balance these categories.
Personally, the scope of things I'd change within the category 2 gray area used to be huge, but I've learned to exercise restraint over the years, with good results. In the job I just completed, for example, I basically allowed myself to agree with the previous editor, which made life a lot easier.
Enough rambling. Daylight is burning.
Cheers...
That's about when I came to the conclusion that extensive editing of a translation is the result of either an unsuitable translation, an editor acting outside the scope of his or her job description (a nice way of saying "doesn't know what he or she is supposed to be doing"), or some combination of these two factors.
When undertaking an editing job, or any job, it's supremely important to understand the scope of what you're supposed to do. And the spectrum of the kinds of things one can do with text is pretty extensive.
For example, of the many "proofreading" jobs I've accepted over the years, only a handful actually involved what I call classical proofreading, i.e., the correction of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors in text. In my universe, classical proofreading does not require access to the source text or even knowledge of a second language.
In my first publishing job at Plenum Publishing, however, the job of "proofreader" required access to the source text, but no language skills, because in addition to what was required for classical proofreading, the Plenum proofreader was responsible for making sure that numbers and symbols in the source appeared in the target as well.
In recent years, pretty much all editing jobs - including most "proofreading" jobs (called that, I suspect, to justify the pittance offered as pay) - have involved everything that goes into classical proofreading as well as comparing the meaning of the translation to that of the original and correcting translation errors, which involves a lot more work.
You can even take the job one step further, and require that the editor made edits to enforce a specific set of terms or even impose a house "style" (which is beyond the scope of this post).
Anyway, as it was part of my job to do such things, I came up with a description of how to edit a translation. For the typical edit, where the goal is to make sure the translation conveys what was said in the original, there are three general types of changes that an editor might make:
1. Fix things that are outright wrong. (For example, the original says "Turn the switch on," and the translation says "Turn the switch off").
2. Fix things that are awkwardly stated, which is a huge gray area. A lot of these involve the use of technical jargon (or lack thereof). Example: edit "sending of drawings reflecting actual construction" to say "as-built drawing transmittal."
3. Applying the editing equivalent of a spit shine. An example might be changing "the woman became unconscious" to "the woman lost consciousness."
What's what depends on time and budget. Consistency of terminology, for example, generally falls into category 1, but may became category 2 if time and budget are lacking (and even such a categorization can be narrowed by restricting the set of terms that must be consistent).
The experienced editor will develop an understanding of how to balance these categories.
Personally, the scope of things I'd change within the category 2 gray area used to be huge, but I've learned to exercise restraint over the years, with good results. In the job I just completed, for example, I basically allowed myself to agree with the previous editor, which made life a lot easier.
Enough rambling. Daylight is burning.
Cheers...
