Red ink and tweaking and cutting and adding and stuff.
Mininisoo wondered, in an exchange of mails, how much you can / should change / improve / add to stuff when translating (or editing or report writing), and I told her this one one of my soapboxes.
First: rule of thumb is... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Bad editors like to impose their style on something, which is, bascially... bad. Hardly any wonder that some writers feel somehow robbed.
Nothing wrong with making suggestions t that might improve something, though... although make sure a) they are only suggestions, and b) it really does improve it somehow, or make it more clear. This tends to mean that an editor actually needs to know stuff about the writer's style or the subject matter, or have a feel for the characters.
Quick word on editing for foreign language writers or real beginners - both require a fairly similar approach, to be honest. This takes a LONG time. Whoever's working on it needs a lot of patience, to explain a lot, and to be encouraging. Sometimes, you can see a glimmer of real talent despite the awkward phrasing or bad spelling. Sometimes you can't. Then a lot depends on how they develop. Foreign language writers maybe aren't going to develop that much on the 'command of the language level' to be honest, unless they really work on it.
With such writers, though, it's particularly tempting to imprint your own style, as often they haven't actually got a style. And yet their plots can be absolutely bloody marvellous, and their characters spot on if you can 'see through' the problems and nudge them into place.
Also, you need to decide whether to go for the works and try and help with everything (spelling, grammar, flow, characterisation, plot, etc.) or focus on just one thing. That's tricky too: doing a full edit can be a lot to swallow, but if - say - you only focus on a couple of things like dialogue punctuation or grammar mistakes, if you then turn to something else on a later edit, you get 'But you didn't say anything about that last time'. Work out ground rules. SAY what you're going to look for (and not).
On 'making a translation better than the original' (which is not unlike editing in many ways): You know that phrase of not being able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? Well, I see a lot of sow's ears. Sometimes, you really can't do much - a lot depends on the client. Some throw a wobbly if you're too 'free', whereas others do likewise if it's not free enough. So it does help if you ask the client what they want, particularly if the text lends itself to a little freedom.
And sometimes you get texts that are just so amazing that you sit and worry if your translation will be anything like as beautiful, as flowing, as exciting as the original. That's the good part, in a way. I once spent a day... and I mean a day translating a one-page text by a guy who won the French Goncourt prize (big literature prize). It was that beautiful. OK. However, you need to work just a tad faster than that if you're going to earn money. Translation is piecework - simple as that. And yet it's creative too, so the constant paradox is to take the time to make it good... and work fast enough to earn a living from it.
Translation is, however, particularly tricky if the client doesn't know what he wants, or thinks his dodgy knowledge of English permits him to correct what you've written: "Bereft? Is bereft a word? Are you sure?" The problem of translating for a non-native speaker of the target language is that they don't always know how good (or bad) the translation is - and sadly, if they don't understand translation, tend to think one translation must be as good as another. "So tell me, Mrs K, why do you charge more than this guy?" (age 19, two semesters of high school French, website profile would indicate he can't spell or write in whole sentences, but he's really cheap).
On the other hand, if you're translating for a native speaker of your language, from a source language he doesn't understand, how does the client know whether you've got it right? Or if you've been too free? Here, of course, you run the danger of Dear Client showing your translation to somebody else, who rather fancies themself as a translator, and immediately picks fault ("this translator is useless. She calls it an occupational benefits scheme, and it's an occupational pension plan" (hey mate... so why did you provide an official company glossary that clearly gives the term I used?).
See, rather a lot of people who know another language tend to think that freelance translation or report writing is a great way of making easy money. Yeah, right. Please go away immediately and translate 30 pages of pension fund legislation followed by some punchy advertising text for cigars, and then make sure you know all the terminology for an academic article on migration that has to be produced within a ridiculous deadline. And do lots of background reading on DNA technology and the small arms problems in Africa.
As for making changes to source texts I translate - and I really do mean changes apart from tweaking or smoothing, that depends a whole lot on the client. I'm lucky in that I have a lot of clients who give me fairly free reign, and I make extensive use of the 'comments' button in the track change feature to outline such changes and the why, or at least when it's anything more than splitting a too-long sentence. Some clients, however, consider this is downright cheek: "Mrs K, we asked you for a product, not your opinion on the text." (Fine, then keep your 17-hole golf course on page 6 and your bobsled run in the wrong town on page 27, and your totally inconsistent formatting).
Same goes for adding things to reports I write when, strictly speaking, they weren't said. For instance, if I get somebody saying 'we decided at a meeting last year to keep working on the X problem', I need to put: 'At the Xth session of X held in 2005, the group of experts on Y was tasked with continuing work on ways of halting the illegal production of Y in (country)' Z. See, if somebody needs to refer to that discussion five years later, saying 'the X problem' or simply 'we'... not a lot of help. This isn't hard, it just demands a good memory and lots of reference material at hand.
Cutting things, on the other hand, is scary. If you get a guy (Mr Y) who makes a damned stupid comment, proving he hasn't a clue about what's going on, it's sometimes kinder to sort of lose it somehow, as in "In reply to a question by Mr Y, the Director of Z, outlined the situation regarding...'. Sometimes, people are grateful that the fact they mixed something up isn't recorded for posterity, or in some cases they even ask for what they've said to be left out. Others, however, wish they'd said something, convince themselves they did, and splutter that the report doesn't include it. Very, very tricky, that one. Some people are paid by their authorities to come to a meeting, so feel they have to speak, even if it's totally irrelevant or off-topic. I'll never forgot a lovely gentleman from Africa rattling off a 10-page speech on financial crime in his country during a seminar on anti-terrorist training. Um.
Enough said. For once, I'm making this public (although that may change if it attracts accusations of being pompous). After nearly 30 years of writing, translating, correcting, editing, etc., I don't pretend to be God's gift, but sometimes people ask me 'what it's all about'. Well... now you know.
First: rule of thumb is... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Bad editors like to impose their style on something, which is, bascially... bad. Hardly any wonder that some writers feel somehow robbed.
Nothing wrong with making suggestions t that might improve something, though... although make sure a) they are only suggestions, and b) it really does improve it somehow, or make it more clear. This tends to mean that an editor actually needs to know stuff about the writer's style or the subject matter, or have a feel for the characters.
Quick word on editing for foreign language writers or real beginners - both require a fairly similar approach, to be honest. This takes a LONG time. Whoever's working on it needs a lot of patience, to explain a lot, and to be encouraging. Sometimes, you can see a glimmer of real talent despite the awkward phrasing or bad spelling. Sometimes you can't. Then a lot depends on how they develop. Foreign language writers maybe aren't going to develop that much on the 'command of the language level' to be honest, unless they really work on it.
With such writers, though, it's particularly tempting to imprint your own style, as often they haven't actually got a style. And yet their plots can be absolutely bloody marvellous, and their characters spot on if you can 'see through' the problems and nudge them into place.
Also, you need to decide whether to go for the works and try and help with everything (spelling, grammar, flow, characterisation, plot, etc.) or focus on just one thing. That's tricky too: doing a full edit can be a lot to swallow, but if - say - you only focus on a couple of things like dialogue punctuation or grammar mistakes, if you then turn to something else on a later edit, you get 'But you didn't say anything about that last time'. Work out ground rules. SAY what you're going to look for (and not).
On 'making a translation better than the original' (which is not unlike editing in many ways): You know that phrase of not being able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? Well, I see a lot of sow's ears. Sometimes, you really can't do much - a lot depends on the client. Some throw a wobbly if you're too 'free', whereas others do likewise if it's not free enough. So it does help if you ask the client what they want, particularly if the text lends itself to a little freedom.
And sometimes you get texts that are just so amazing that you sit and worry if your translation will be anything like as beautiful, as flowing, as exciting as the original. That's the good part, in a way. I once spent a day... and I mean a day translating a one-page text by a guy who won the French Goncourt prize (big literature prize). It was that beautiful. OK. However, you need to work just a tad faster than that if you're going to earn money. Translation is piecework - simple as that. And yet it's creative too, so the constant paradox is to take the time to make it good... and work fast enough to earn a living from it.
Translation is, however, particularly tricky if the client doesn't know what he wants, or thinks his dodgy knowledge of English permits him to correct what you've written: "Bereft? Is bereft a word? Are you sure?" The problem of translating for a non-native speaker of the target language is that they don't always know how good (or bad) the translation is - and sadly, if they don't understand translation, tend to think one translation must be as good as another. "So tell me, Mrs K, why do you charge more than this guy?" (age 19, two semesters of high school French, website profile would indicate he can't spell or write in whole sentences, but he's really cheap).
On the other hand, if you're translating for a native speaker of your language, from a source language he doesn't understand, how does the client know whether you've got it right? Or if you've been too free? Here, of course, you run the danger of Dear Client showing your translation to somebody else, who rather fancies themself as a translator, and immediately picks fault ("this translator is useless. She calls it an occupational benefits scheme, and it's an occupational pension plan" (hey mate... so why did you provide an official company glossary that clearly gives the term I used?).
See, rather a lot of people who know another language tend to think that freelance translation or report writing is a great way of making easy money. Yeah, right. Please go away immediately and translate 30 pages of pension fund legislation followed by some punchy advertising text for cigars, and then make sure you know all the terminology for an academic article on migration that has to be produced within a ridiculous deadline. And do lots of background reading on DNA technology and the small arms problems in Africa.
As for making changes to source texts I translate - and I really do mean changes apart from tweaking or smoothing, that depends a whole lot on the client. I'm lucky in that I have a lot of clients who give me fairly free reign, and I make extensive use of the 'comments' button in the track change feature to outline such changes and the why, or at least when it's anything more than splitting a too-long sentence. Some clients, however, consider this is downright cheek: "Mrs K, we asked you for a product, not your opinion on the text." (Fine, then keep your 17-hole golf course on page 6 and your bobsled run in the wrong town on page 27, and your totally inconsistent formatting).
Same goes for adding things to reports I write when, strictly speaking, they weren't said. For instance, if I get somebody saying 'we decided at a meeting last year to keep working on the X problem', I need to put: 'At the Xth session of X held in 2005, the group of experts on Y was tasked with continuing work on ways of halting the illegal production of Y in (country)' Z. See, if somebody needs to refer to that discussion five years later, saying 'the X problem' or simply 'we'... not a lot of help. This isn't hard, it just demands a good memory and lots of reference material at hand.
Cutting things, on the other hand, is scary. If you get a guy (Mr Y) who makes a damned stupid comment, proving he hasn't a clue about what's going on, it's sometimes kinder to sort of lose it somehow, as in "In reply to a question by Mr Y, the Director of Z, outlined the situation regarding...'. Sometimes, people are grateful that the fact they mixed something up isn't recorded for posterity, or in some cases they even ask for what they've said to be left out. Others, however, wish they'd said something, convince themselves they did, and splutter that the report doesn't include it. Very, very tricky, that one. Some people are paid by their authorities to come to a meeting, so feel they have to speak, even if it's totally irrelevant or off-topic. I'll never forgot a lovely gentleman from Africa rattling off a 10-page speech on financial crime in his country during a seminar on anti-terrorist training. Um.
Enough said. For once, I'm making this public (although that may change if it attracts accusations of being pompous). After nearly 30 years of writing, translating, correcting, editing, etc., I don't pretend to be God's gift, but sometimes people ask me 'what it's all about'. Well... now you know.