That article reminds me of a good Russian anecdote about a spherical horse in a vacuum
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Robert Forstag United States Local time: 16:59 Member (2003) Spanish to English + ...
The author's suggestions run counter to my own approach
Sep 28, 2011
I myself don't treat texts as if they were homework assignments handed in by middle-school students with shaky writing skills who are desperate for reassurance. This means that I improve anything that I see as being susceptible of improvement, including "minor issues." (Exactly how many "minor" problems are acceptable in a text? One per paragraph? One per page?)
Furthermore, given the low rates typically offered for such work, I don't feel obliged to justify every change with a separate extensive gloss. English lessons require a separate charge.
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Arianne Farah China Local time: 04:59 Member (2008) English to French
Had a "bad proofreader" once...
Sep 29, 2011
Agency got back to me about quality concerns... I look at the text - chock-full of mistakes that the final reviewer/QA corrected - certainly can't debate them but for the life of me I can't recognize my writing style and the spelling/grammar mistakes aren't ones I would typically make, my gut reaction is to send it back and tell them that's not mine (happened before, big agency, lots of projects, there are mix-ups sometimes) but I decide to check and find the project in my archives - my heart drops.
I pull out my original delivery and run a search & compare with the uncorrected text corrected by the QA sent from the agency (rejected all the changes). My translation had been mauled (for lack of a better term), taken in, chewed up, spat out to the point of being unrecognizable and.... you got it... every single mistake had been introduced by the proofreader... including serious ones affecting meaning. Not a single sentence had been spared and the result was a horrible cacophony of imperatives and infinitives and transposed adjectives with no rhyme or measure.
I didn't bother commenting anything - I just sent the search & compare document with tracked changes to the agency and told them that I couldn't comment on the corrections since they didn't apply to my translation and that they might want to find a different proofreader since they would have had a better product if they'd have left my translation untouched.
Paraphrasing Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons: Worst. Proofreader. Ever.
(I've had wonderful proofreaders too who far outweigh the less than stellar but they make for much less good stories!)
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Christine Andersen Denmark Local time: 22:59 Member (2003) Danish to English + ...
I had a similar experience to Ariane's
Sep 29, 2011
The text the end client complained about looked vaguely familar, but was certainly not mine. I suspected a wannabe whose work I had been proofreading for the agency, but even then, he must have had an extra bad day, and I must have sent the un-proofed file by mistake.
I checked against the job number with a sinking heart - and it WAS mine originally.
The source writer had produced one page of the kind of prose it is a pleasure - if sometimes a challenge - to translate, and I had made a real effort. I was more or less satisfied with the result.
The text that came back was two pages long. The neat opening line and careful structure were expanded into one long waffle, with source-language syntax and the keyword - confidence (in each other and in the future) - changed to trust with undertones of mistrust.
I was asked to send the client a mail with my comments, and of course, it was easy simply to send him my own translation. He called me a little while later and apologised! He promised to find out what had happened.
The text was for a jubilee booklet, and one of the pictures had proved unsuitable, so the DTP department decided to fill the space with text. Someone from the office with a good grade for school English was told: "This piece is only short - make it a bit longer to fill the space."
And no one - good or bad - had time to proofread the results afterwards...
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Samuel Murray Netherlands Local time: 22:59 Member (2006) English to Afrikaans + ...
My approach to comments
Sep 29, 2011
Robert Forstag wrote:
Furthermore, given the low rates typically offered for such work, I don't feel obliged to justify every change with a separate extensive gloss. English lessons require a separate charge.
Yes.
I only write explanations about my changes if the client has requested it, and then it must not take me longer to write the comments than the time that I'm paid for.
In rare cases, when I'm not asked to write comments, I might still write a comment if I make a change that I suspect the client is likely to query himself (even if the translator may not have a problem with it). I might then write a small explanation to the client right there in the text, as a comment (in such a way that the translator sees it as fair). But that rarely happens.
As for unasked comments, if I see that a translator makes certain mistakes all the time, I will write a comment to the translator in a separate file called "translator comment.txt" and attach it with the proofread file for the client to pass on to the translator, if he chooses. I write this file in a language that the client can understand, and I write it so that it won't reflect poorly on the translator if the client decides to read it. I don't write such comments for every change -- only if I think that the translator makes a certain mistake frequently and in ignorance of how it should be done.
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I've edited translated English, and I do the same as Samuel - I put in comments if the client has asked/paid for it.
With an editing job, if I suggest that improvements could be made by adding content, I will always point out what needs to be added and why. Vocabulary, grammar changes or deletions I don't bother commenting on.
But if you are going to be doing repeat work with the translator, it does seem to make sense to point out repeated mistakes.
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