Comments on: Editing skills; the USDA Grad School

By: Eve

Eve — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:06:23 +0000

Funny that you mention “that” vs “which”. I actually attended a seminar by Lillian Clementi (FR to EN translator and businesswoman extraordinaire) in which she discussed just that issue at length. Can’t say (unfortunately) that I recall the differences as clearly as she explained it, but those types of issues are being discussed out there somewhere!

By: Corinne McKay

Corinne McKay — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:34:50 +0000

@Ryan- Yes, I think that it’s the one curse of living in your source language country; I remember when I lived in France, I could never remember if “address” in English had one “d” or two. The USDA courses look great, at least on their website! Let me know if you end up signing up for one.

@Durf- Thanks for all of the reinforcement of the importance of editing; for some reason I think it’s quite overlooked in the industry in the U.S. Nearly everyone edits on the screen and almost no one I’ve worked with has specialized training in target language editing. Thanks also for the recommendation for Chicago Style!

By: Durf

Durf — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:36:06 +0000

As an in-houser whose job has expanded over the years to include plenty of editing, your post makes perfect sense to me . . . The part about “you improve your own output by paying attention to the output of others” is especially worthwhile. There are an awful lot of translators out there who seem to think that they produce solid gold and the editor’s job it to perform reverse alchemy on it, without ever stopping to think about the signs provided by a good editor that their work might actually be leaden.

I don’t understand why you would stoop to doing line-editing on single-spaced pages, though. Double-space it before you print, if you’re the one wasting the ink, or demand that the translators do that step for you! Big margins and plenty of white between lines are absolute requirements for all texts we deal with.

Finally, the Chicago Manual of Style has a nice section describing proofreaders’ marks. It’s a book that should be on the shelf of just about every translator working in American English IMO.

By: Ryan Ginstrom

Ryan Ginstrom — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:52:49 +0000

Thanks for the link — I don’t think I’d ever have thought to look there.

I’ve been living in my source-language country (Japan) for about 9 years now; one of the reasons I started my own blog was because I was worried that my English-writing skills were getting rusty. So I’ll definitely be checking out these classes. Thanks again!