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Toxic proof-readers
Thread poster: Mariusz Kuklinski
Merab Dekano
Merab Dekano  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Major problem May 21, 2016

Proofreaders are not supposed to change terminology, unless it is manifestly wrong, which it wasn't as it appeared in a piece of applicable legislation.

The major problem is that almost everybody understand what translation refers to, but not so with proofreading and editing. The former is mainly a monolingual activity and the latter implies a careful comparison of the source text with the target text. This is very simplistic definition, but I just wanted to point out that proofread
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Proofreaders are not supposed to change terminology, unless it is manifestly wrong, which it wasn't as it appeared in a piece of applicable legislation.

The major problem is that almost everybody understand what translation refers to, but not so with proofreading and editing. The former is mainly a monolingual activity and the latter implies a careful comparison of the source text with the target text. This is very simplistic definition, but I just wanted to point out that proofreading and editing are not the same thing.

Some of my customers actually include a standard text in their POs where they set a limit that an editor and proofreader should not cross. I think it's a good practice and raises awareness about these activities.
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Mariusz Kuklinski
Mariusz Kuklinski  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:24
Member
English to Polish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks, Merab May 21, 2016

Thanks, Merab. It's an excellent definition and I will quote it to my client.

 
Karine Derancy (X)
Karine Derancy (X)  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 23:24
English to French
and what do you do when the proofreader introduces an error where there wasn't ? May 24, 2016

Hi

Agree with most of what's been written. Proof-readers are usually good, they can offer constructive feedback and I gladly take any feedback... until they believe I have made a mistake, change my translation and, doing this, introduce a bad translation where there was none in the first place.

It happened to me recently and although I went back to the proofreader stating that I valued her feedback much and yet I was surprised this particular sentence had been changed
... See more
Hi

Agree with most of what's been written. Proof-readers are usually good, they can offer constructive feedback and I gladly take any feedback... until they believe I have made a mistake, change my translation and, doing this, introduce a bad translation where there was none in the first place.

It happened to me recently and although I went back to the proofreader stating that I valued her feedback much and yet I was surprised this particular sentence had been changed as I was 100% sure I had understood the concept (which was clearly explained on the end customer's site itself) - she never got back to me and I have never had anything else to translate from the agency...
Now I think I should have mentioned this directly to the project manager rather than the proofreader but I thought it was better to deal with her directly rather than "telling"...

K
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Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 23:24
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Can you provide the example here? May 24, 2016

Karine Derancy wrote:

Hi

Agree with most of what's been written. Proof-readers are usually good, they can offer constructive feedback and I gladly take any feedback... until they believe I have made a mistake, change my translation and, doing this, introduce a bad translation where there was none in the first place.

It happened to me recently and although I went back to the proofreader stating that I valued her feedback much and yet I was surprised this particular sentence had been changed as I was 100% sure I had understood the concept (which was clearly explained on the end customer's site itself) - she never got back to me and I have never had anything else to translate from the agency...
Now I think I should have mentioned this directly to the project manager rather than the proofreader but I thought it was better to deal with her directly rather than "telling"...

K



You usually take the two sentences where the problematic translation appears, and contrast and compare them providing references. It's really that easy.

Eg. if the proofreader rejects your translation choice, you provide a monolingual and relevant reference where it is being used in the same context and you elaborate why. And then you send it to the client/PM, not proofreader. I am surprised you are dealing with proofreader directly, is this a direct client?


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Puzzled..... May 24, 2016

LilianNekipelov wrote:

......
Many do not realize that the proofreader's job is to catch striking grammatical mistakes, typos, punctuation mistakes—and that's about it.


The translator is supposed to do that.

The real problem is when the original source text is badly written and the translator tries to make a translation that is not badly written. I once tried to do a translation that was as badly written as the original, and got into trouble for having done "a bad translation" !

[Edited at 2016-05-24 12:30 GMT]


 
Matthias Brombach
Matthias Brombach  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 23:24
Member (2007)
Dutch to German
+ ...
Conclusion: May 24, 2016

Tom in London wrote: I once tried to do a translation that was as badly written as the original, and got into trouble for having done "a bad translation" !


Then you should better always do a bad translation, because it seems those people get always the better jobs...


 
Gabriele Demuth
Gabriele Demuth  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:24
English to German
Puzzled! May 24, 2016

Tom in London wrote:

LilianNekipelov wrote:

......
Many do not realize that the proofreader's job is to catch striking grammatical mistakes, typos, punctuation mistakes—and that's about it.


The translator is supposed to do that.

The real problem is when the original source text is badly written and the translator tries to make a translation that is not badly written. I once tried to do a translation that was as badly written as the original, and got into trouble for having done "a bad translation" !

[Edited at 2016-05-24 12:30 GMT]


What was your rationale behind that? Who would want that bad translation and for what purpose?


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
My rationale May 24, 2016

Gabriele Demuth wrote:

Tom in London wrote:

LilianNekipelov wrote:

......
Many do not realize that the proofreader's job is to catch striking grammatical mistakes, typos, punctuation mistakes—and that's about it.


The translator is supposed to do that.

The real problem is when the original source text is badly written and the translator tries to make a translation that is not badly written. I once tried to do a translation that was as badly written as the original, and got into trouble for having done "a bad translation" !

[Edited at 2016-05-24 12:30 GMT]


What was your rationale behind that? Who would want that bad translation and for what purpose?


My rationale: this translation was for a very annoying university professor who knew that my translations were always better-written in English than his originals in Italian. Over time he became more and more lazy about his Italian - knowing that I would improve it in my translation. But his Italian eventually became so bad that I could no longer create a good English translation, so I finally did a strictly correct translation. It was horrible. I didn't care because I never wanted to work for him again.

My point: all too often I find myself not simply translating a document, but actually re-writing it to write a good English document out of a badly-written Italian document. I gather from other colleagues that not only Italian university professors cannot write, or deliberately write in a way that is intentionally and unnecessarily difficult to understand; Spanish professors do it too. Do German professors do this? I think it's their way of safeguarding their status by being obscurantist.

My question: if the original is badly written and you translate it accurately, your translation will also be badly written even though it is correct. Is that a bad translation, or a good translation?

[Edited at 2016-05-24 13:18 GMT]


 
Tuguldur Batmunkh
Tuguldur Batmunkh  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 18:24
English to Mongolian
+ ...
I've seen ELL 'proofreaders' May 24, 2016

I've noticed agencies have much better deal of well experienced and professional editors/proofreaders for universally common languages, however, like my language combination, En-Mn-En, they are really lack of proven proofreaders. At times, my work have been "edited& proofed" by potentially college, hopefully not high school, ELL students, that's where the toxic readers come from.

 
Merab Dekano
Merab Dekano  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Badly written May 24, 2016

Tom in London wrote:

I gather from other colleagues that not only Italian university professors cannot write, or deliberately write in a way that is intentionally and unnecessarily difficult to understand; Spanish professors do it too.


Spanish professors write quite decent articles, but Spanish academic writing is intrinsically more complex (as authors do it unwittingly; they are just used to it) than English academic writing (which tends to be more straightforward and to the point). However, it is fiendishly difficult to understand what Spanish judges write in court decisions, orders, etc.

Once I was approached by a client who asked me to translate a Spanish judgment from Spanish into English (my pair, but not my direction). I politely declined the project. The client insisted. I asked why on earth don't they contact a ES>EN professional. They said they did contact several into-English translators, but they couldn't make sense out of the Spanish source text. Eventually, I accepted the project subject to thorough editing and proofreading by a native English speaker.

The key I could understand and translate the text was this: I have studied that "nonsense language" (Spanish legalese produced by Spanish judges, with abusively large number of gerunds, non-existent grammatical structures and endless sentences, with no punctuation marks).

Answering to your question (and this is my personal opinion), our job is to render straightforward text even though the source is badly mutilated from the linguistic standpoint. Unless, of course, otherwise advised by a specific literary context (for example, to show how poorly a foreigner speaks a language that isn't his mother tongue, or how "incorrectly" a group of a remote village working class inhabitants deviate from the standard language, etc.).


 
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