Being edited...
Mar. 6th, 2004 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpA 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...
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-07 04:25 am (UTC)imho, a glass jaw approach to editor's critique make translators stagnate. you certainly get a lot of crap packed in red ink, but sometimes they are really onto something, and then it's about to keep eyes and ears open
no subject
Date: 2004-03-08 12:37 am (UTC)I really don't mind all the red ink in the world if it's *useful* to all concerned - nowadays at least. I have - and have had - correctors I admire hugely and I bear their approach in mind when correcting myself. Being on both sides of the 'fence' nowadays (well, for the last 4-5 years) means I'm far more zen about the whole thing than I used to be (as in no longer cowering under my desk in mortification on seeing some of my blunders or being a tad harsh on overworked translators who have had to produce within ridiculously tight deadlines).
Yes, the 'justification sessions' are dreadful for all concerned - which is why I don't get into them with the Corrector from Hell (I just rant about them on LJ instead, which gets it out of my system). I don't even get to *see* what he's done some of the time - the agency who employs us has decided that the buck stops with him (fair enough), so it's only for repeat orders that I get the 'corrected version' to refer to and am supposed to abide by that.
But oh boy, it's hard sometimes... for example when I know he's got terminology or the sense *wrong*, which he does with infuriating regularity. Basically, he's a disaster - he *misses* my typos and other things but does a great deal of unnecessary ink-spreading in order to clock up his hours. And never forget - this guy is *not* a native speaker of English, but a Swiss. That's one hump I'll never get over as his wording is, at times, flagrantly Germanic. Aaarghhh. The agency (German-speakers) are in a tricky position because they don't have the knowledge to *see* how useless he is, and of course any complaints on my part just sound like bitching - although the fact they're losing clients since he started is, in my opinion, fairly revelatory. I've taken to pointing out a few horrors, mind - professional pride and all that - while saying that YES I'm glad he does find things that *are* wrong but I wish he knew when to leave the red ink alone.
In a way, though, it's also a learning experience - i.e. how *not* to do the job of correcting. Also, I do very little agency work now so it's more of a recurring irritation than a major issue. I'm lucky in that most of my private clients have native speakers who are experts in the field who check my translations, so with each new job I incorporate their changes from the last one, so the entire process improves for all concerned. This makes everybody happy, and there's none of the indignance / mortification / frustration that achieves very little.
Getting back to your experience, it sounds like your editor is unable (for whatever reasons) to accept alternatives and has his own 'mental glossary' for things like the 'bystander' issue. That's not very flexible in my opinion: if there's one thing I've learned it's to realise that unless there's a very good reason for rephrasing, and if the style and tone aren't way out of line, it's just nit-picking. For technical stuff, elegance of phrase is not a priority anyway, as long as the message is clear. Just my 2 cents' worth.
Tempted to ramble for a whole lot longer here because the whole translator / editor thing is so complex and so easily frustrating for all concerned, particularly when neither translator nor editor knows exactly what the ground rules should be - and that's often the problem because the clients have no idea what they *should* be. Which means that the translator and editor have to sort it out between them - and which can often lead to power struggles and just the situations like we've both encountered.