As translators, we are also, by assumption, editors and proofreaders. Many translators get their foot in the door of the translation industry by first working as checkers or posteditors. When we progress to a translation role, we then check our own work and sometimes that of colleagues. We may be asked by clients to check and revise translations they have had done elsewhere – sometimes of questionable quality. Depending on the translation requests we receive, it’s possible for us to only do checking for many months. We take this for granted and tend not to regard this checking, which in reality is multilingual copyediting and proofreading rolled into one, as a separate skill. We just do it.
I came to see copyediting and proofreading for what it is – a skill in its own right – about three years ago when we were asked to “edit” documents for a new client. Our client sent us a wide variety of documents and asked for either “light” or “full” editing. The documents were written – for the most part very eloquently - in English by authors with a first language other than English.
That’s where we came in, as translators with English as a first language, advanced language skills and fluency in another language. As editors, we were asked to correct basic errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation, identify and correct inconsistencies, contradictions and structural errors, highlight possible errors of fact and ensure the document adhered to the organisation’s style guide. Over and above this brief, we also added both a “native speaker” polish (“as regards” is always fine, but “as concerns” rarely fits the bill) and what I would call a detective work dimension to our service. As I said, these texts were usually very well written, but occasionally they contained puzzling sections where it was hard to know what the author really meant. However, being aware that the author was, for example, German and, being a German translator, also knowing how a German speaker might craft a particular phrase according to the terminology and structure of their own language, almost always helped me to identify what they were attempting to say in English and how I could edit that attempt to help them express what they really wanted to say.
Having provided what I now recognise to be a copyediting service for our client for several years, I decided this year that it was time to get a formal qualification in the field. So in the summer I joined the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) as an entry-level member and in October I started one of the CIEP’s core copyediting courses: Copyediting 1 – Introduction. The course is entirely self-assessed, but with access to a tutor if support is needed, and structured in six units, each with study notes and an exercise. The course can be completed over a six-month period, which enables me to work alongside, and on completing the course I receive a certificate for CPD purposes and three upgrade points which will count towards my progression to intermediate and ultimately professional membership of CIEP.
I have already been working as a copyeditor/proofreader/checker for many years. So I’m going to sail through this course in a few weeks, right? Wrong! It turns out that there’s a lot more to it than that. Having completed four of the six units, I have now studied and copyedited an article in a community magazine about a local music group, a county council notice about a change to services, an extract from a work of fiction, and the introductory pages to a chapter from a history book. I have also learned about the world of publishing and its established processes, and many core principles of spelling and punctuation, conventions for lists, ways of presenting quotations in different forms of writing, capitalisation and date styles, and (always one of my bugbears) referencing systems. You might be inclined to think “I already know about all that”, which is what I thought. But in fact I didn’t, and one of the reasons for this is that all of these principles, conventions and systems adhere to rules, but are also fluid and vary across time, genres and countries. Just one example of this is the differences in the use of quotation marks and associated punctuation between UK and US editorial styles. UK editorial style usually indicates direct quotations from other published works by putting the text in single quote marks. When the quote does not form a complete sentence, the end punctuation appears after the closing quote mark. US editorial style, on the other hand, generally uses double quote marks, and commas and full points are always inside the closing quote mark, full sentence or not. And let’s not get into hyphens, en and em rules. That section made me realise the importance of having an up-to-date prescription in my glasses in order to spot that kind of error consistently.
I have two more units to complete. One unit deals with copyediting text with illustrations. The other is about humorous text, which I’m really looking forward to for several reasons. Firstly, it’s going to be amusing. (Hopefully. Will it tell me what to do if a text just isn’t funny? Diplomatic interaction with the author is a key component of the course, and rightly so!) Secondly, we all think we have a great sense of humour, but we also know that humour differs so markedly from person to person, so how does one “correct” a humorous text while preserving the author’s original style and voice? Thirdly and finally coming back to where we started, this is a subject of great interest to translators, as humour varies so greatly across different nationalities and languages, and can be very difficult to translate from one to another. Those of us who translate between German and English will understand the dilemma of the exclamation mark, the inclusion or omission of which is critical to the success or failure of an attempt at humour in those languages, usually in diametrically opposed ways! There, I’ve used one. Did it help the pithiness of that phrase? You be the judge. And I’ll let you know how I get on.