Learn with Me! Editing Workshop in Sacramento

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School is back in session here in California — are you ready to learn something new this fall? Join me September 22, 2018 in Sacramento for a 3-hour editing workshop, hosted by the Northern California Translators Association.

We will cover every stage of the revision process, from broad-stroke decision-making to the finer points of proofreading. You’ll walk away with customizable tools for managing your professional projects and a list of further resources. No matter how long you’ve been translating or editing, I guarantee you will learn something new!

You must register in advance for this class. Details are available here.

I’m looking forward to bringing this popular workshop to my hometown area — see you soon!

How to Be a Better Translator

If you’ve been translating for a while and feel stuck at your current skill level, I have good news! It’s likely not your translating that needs improvement—it’s your editing. All first drafts are terrible. No one thinks in perfect English (or French, or Swahili) when they’re focused on forming ground-breaking, substantive thoughts. And that’s OK! What wouldn’t be OK is to release that brain dump as a final product.

Unfortunately, editing seems to be an afterthought when we think about translation as a whole. After all, translators work from finished products, right? Well… only sort of. You may be working from completed ideas and logic chains, but you need to leave yourself enough time to clean up the parts that didn’t transition easily into the target language. Done properly, the editing process can take as much time or longer than getting the initial translation down on the page (screen).

You don’t have to learn editing to translate, or to translate well. Not one of the 20 professionals in my workshop at ATA58 had ever taken a formal class in revision before (and many of them have been translating for over 20 years!).  But if you want to improve your translations, you should strongly consider taking a course on how to improve your quality control.

In-person classes are often available through your local university or writers association. ATA offers my revision webinars on demand (here and here). Or, if your time is limited right now, I can personally recommend any of these books as a soft starting point:

• Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read. (Brooks Landon)
• The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. (Steven Pinker)
• On Writing—A Memoir of the Craft. (Stephen King)
• The Fine Art of Copyediting. (Elsie Myers Stainton)

I’m curious: Have you completed any training in revision? What resources can you recommend? Add your favorites in the comments below!

Revision Refresh Workshop – Last Chance to Register

There are just a few spots left in my editing workshop at ATA58. If you have never had formal training in copyediting or proofreading, consider signing up now for the 3-hour session on October 25th. 

You’ll get hands-on training for every stage of revision and walk away with several customized tools for your language pair(s) and subject matter specialties. We’ll discuss how to manage individual projects, long-term client styles, and team translations. There is a pre-workshop assignment you can do now, or turn it in after the live class for personalized feedback.

In this tech-focused world, quality revision makes your work stand above the machine output. Click here to register for AST-14 today: http://www.atanet.org/conf/2017/astday/ 

Proofreaders’ marks

Thanks to everyone who participated in today’s webinar with the ATA! It was fun leading you through the creation of a proofreading system. I’ll be following up on some questions that came up afterwards over the next few days.

One participant asked, “Where can we download or get the proofreaders’ marks?” That’s an easy one, so here you go:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/mw/table/proofrea.htm

And a similar version from the Chicago Manual of Style:

Happy translating (and proofreading)!
Carolyn

Revise, or re-translate?

One issue I notice translators love to complain about is being asked to revise someone else’s translation. I absolutely get the annoyance when it is clearly a request to improve a cheaper translator’s work after your quote was rejected as being “too late” five minutes after the initial email. Been there, felt the burn. I’m with you on calling that out as poor etiquette.

But, sometimes, I find translators using this as a blanket excuse to turn away editing requests from professionals who want to write in a non-native language. And that’s something I just don’t understand.

Revising a non-native speaker’s English (or French, or other written language) creates a win-win situation for you and for your client. The original author gets practice writing in a language they might need to use for other professional purposes. And it offers you, the translator, an ideal exercise for improving your revision process and watchlist.

Think about it: a non-native writer’s written language is a direct translation of a French, German, Kiswahili, namethelanguage thought. So, it offers an opportunity to observe real-time examples of subtle, concept-level translation mistakes that can easily slip into your own work unnoticed.

This idea is similar to how we [translators] use parallel texts to identify appropriate vocabulary/register/etc. Revising a non-native writer’s work allows you to be more neutral in how you approach the text, more analytical, and more open to asking, “Why did that happen?” Instead of poking holes in your own hard work, you can approach the revision process as a learning tool.

In French-to-English translation, for instance, I find myself making oddly negative sentences where a positive statement is needed—because that’s how the French write. In Hungarian-to-English translation, I’m always watching out for how I’ve used commas and transition words. There’s no shame in making these mistakes in your first draft, as long as you are aware of your typical “mistranslations” of grammar and punctuation and correct them in your editing passes.

Other common translation errors to watch for when revising, depending on your language pairs:

• When to use definite versus indefinite articles

• Errors in subject-verb agreement

• Plurals—or unusual absences of them

• Incorrect verb in metaphorical/abstract sentence (lexical misconception)

What grammar and lexical oddities crop up in your language pairs? How do you accommodate them your translation/revision process?

On the English language

This month, I’m going to loosely focus on the English language and how to improve your skill in wielding it. These are some posts I’ve already published on writing and revising English:

• Researching American idioms

• Adding cultural flair

• The passive voice {a guest post}

• The revision process

• Copyediting as an essential skill for translators

Are there any questions you would like answered related to this topic? Ask away!

Quack This Way

It took me all of one evening to read Quack This Way from cover to cover. I had to stop myself from diving back in for a second round right away, so I could digest the ideas a bit first. It was a tough internal struggle.

If you haven’t heard of this book yet, it’s because it was only recently published. Bryan A. Garner, the legal writing guru, waited 5 years after the death of his friend David Foster Wallace to publish the transcript of their last meeting, intended for use in a webinar. The two men took over an hour to discuss language, usage, and writing in depth. For a legal translator, this book is gold.

Wallace argues that, no matter who you are writing for, no matter what their skill in writing, no matter the profession, you can bet that if you write well, your ideas will be taken seriously:

The average person you’re writing for is an acute, sensitive, attentive, sophisticated reader who will appreciate adroitness, precision, economy, and clarity (45).

Profession-specific usage books can help you dress up your writing so it blends in better, but paying attention to the meat—logical argumentation, reasonable word choice, and succinctness—matters more.

Throughout the interview, Garner and Wallace also touch on psycholinguistics (why certain professions write a certain way), officialese, and the phenomenon that was George W. Bush as orator. There’s something for everyone, in a very accessible format.

If you’re looking for a quick but informative read on the art of writing, buy a copy of Quack This Way. You won’t regret it. (I’m also going to raffle off a copy next week, because that’s how much I think you should have it. Come back then to enter the giveaway.)

Have you read this book yet? What did you think? What other books on writing can you recommend?

Good tips for a great editing process

A solid review process means the difference between an adequate translation and something your clients can get excited about. When I first started this blog (almost a full year ago!), I proposed that copyediting is a critical skill for every translator to hone. I stand by that statement still.

That said, there are other critical steps that come before and after the copyediting stage. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so I’ve pulled together some articles from around the web that can help you understand and implement the various steps of reviewing your writing. Veteran translators can still benefit from scanning these pieces—a little refresher never hurts, right?

• John McIntyre’s hierarchy of editing values

• Rachel McRoberts on the difference between editing and proofreading

• Wendy Griswold’s guidelines on editing a translation (from the March 2012 ATA Chronicle)

• Corinne McKay on how to be a better proofreader

• Kari Koonin’s tips on avoiding translation blindness

What are your go-to resources when you want to freshen up your editor eyes? What’s your top tip for reviewing your work?

Every translator should also be a copyeditor

Translation in its initial stages is an art form, but there is certainly some science in creating the final product. Your task requires writing well about someone other author’s thoughts, balancing loyalty to the source text with clarity for the foreign reader. This other author is often an expert in a field you deal with only occasionally, through translation. The task gets even more complicated as client expectations and source author writing skills vary.

With so many differences across projects, it can be difficult to know you are turning in consistently good work. Some jobs are laughably easy, while others make you want to cry in frustration. Some jobs you think are perfection, but the client thinks otherwise. Some phrases are commonplace, and others take hours of research to define. In this roller-coaster world of freelance translation, how can you maintain confidence in your product?

Know how to copyedit. Find a class that gives you hands-on practice and detailed feedback. People do nothing but copyediting for a living; it’s not a simple job. Let them teach you a thing or two! For translation, the knowledge and practice of good copyediting:

• gives structure to your creation by offering a regular set of rules to follow for consistent, cohesive, and precise writing.

• aids your analysis of the source text by honing your grammar and writing skills. Learning more about your target language reveals the delicate nuances and subtle connotations of words and phrases the non-writer misses.

• frees your creativity in the initial drafting. With a structured and impersonal copyediting process guaranteed later on, you can take more liberties with your art. You have already factored in time to review and weed out the less successful risks, before anyone else finds out.

• allows you to be impersonal when reviewing your work. The act of translating forces you to bond closely with the source text, which can make any errors impossible or painful to notice. It’s akin to admitting defeat or, worse, a mistake! Approaching a translation with your copyediting hat on gives new meaning to the task—for the moment, you are not a translator, but a copyeditor. Finding errors means you are doing your job well!

• grants humility in an otherwise isolated task that can engender the illusion of omnipotence. You know you make mistakes, because you catch them—regularly. And that’s ok, because these mistakes were part of your creative process. Accepting them as such makes you more approachable to clients and fellow translators alike.  (Nobody likes a know-it-all.)

I’ve worked in both fields, so I say this from experience. What about you? Does this fit into your translation process? What helps you create your best work?