Revising and Editing for Translators provides guidance and learning materials for translation students and professional translators learning to revise the work of others or edit original writing, and those wishing to improve their self-revision ability. Revising and editing are seen as reading skills aimed at spotting problematic passages. Changes are then made to meet some standard of quality that varies with the text and to tailor the text to its readership.
Mossop offers in-depth coverage of a wide range of topics, including copyediting, stylistic editing, checking for consistency, revising procedures and principles, and translation quality assessment—all related to the professional situations in which revisers and editors work. This revised fourth edition provides new chapters on revising machine outputs and news trans-editing, a new section on reviser competencies, and a completely new grading scheme for assignments.
The inclusion of suggested activities and exercises, numerous real-world examples, and a reference glossary make this an indispensable coursebook for professional translation programmes.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction for All Readers
Introduction for Instructors
1. Why Editing and Revising are Necessary
1.1 The difficulty of writing
1.2 Enforcing rules
1.3 Quality in translation
1.4 Limits to editing and revision
1.5 The proper role of revision
Summary
Further reading
2. The Work of an Editor
2.1 Tasks of editors
2.2 Editing, rewriting and adapting
2.3 Mental editing during translation
2.4 Editing non-native English
2.5 Crowd-sourced editing of User Generated Content
2.6 Degrees of editing
2.7 Editing procedure
Practice
Further reading
3. Copyediting
3.1 House style
3.2 Spelling and typing errors
3.3 Syntax and idiom
3.4 Punctuation
3.5 Usage
Practice
Further reading
4. Stylistic Editing
4.1 Tailoring language to readers
4.2 Smoothing
4.3 Readability versus intelligibility and logic
4.4 Stylistic editing during translation
4.5 Some traps to avoid
Practice
Further reading
5. Structural Editing
5.1 Physical structure of a text
5.2 Problems with prose
5.3 Problems with headings
5.4 Structural editing during translation
Practice
Further reading
6. Content Editing
6.1 Macro-level content editing
6.2 Factual errors
6.3 Logical errors
6.4 Mathematical errors
6.5 Content editing during translation
6.6 Content editing after translation
Practice
7. Trans-editing by Jungmin Hong
7.1 Trans-editing versus translating
7.2 Structural trans-editing
7.3 Content trans-editing
7.4 Combined structural and content trans-editing
7.5 Trans-editing with changed text-type
7.6 Trans-editing from multiple source texts
Exercises and discussion
Further reading
8. Checking for Consistency
8.1 Degrees of consistency
8.2 Pre-arranging consistency
8.3 Translation databases and consistency
8.4 Over-consistency
Practice
Further reading
9. Computer Aids to Checking
9.1 Google to the rescue?
9.2 Bilingual databases
9.3 Work on screen or on paper?
9.4 Editing functions of word processors
9.5 What kind of screen environment?
9.6 Tools specific to revision
Further reading
10. The Work of a Reviser
10.1 Revision: a reading task
10.2 Revision terminology
10.3 Reviser competencies
10.4 Revision and specialization
10.5 The revision function in translation services
10.6 Reliance on self-revision
10.7 Reducing differences among revisers
10.8 Crowd-sourced revision
10.9 Revising translations into the reviser’s second language
10.10 Quality-checking by clients
10.11 The brief
10.12 Balancing the interests of authors, clients, readers and translators
10.13 Evaluation of revisers
10.14 Time and quality
10.15 Quantity of revision
10.16 Quality assessment
10.17 Quality assurance
Practice
Further reading
11. The Revision Parameters
11.1 Accuracy
11.2 Completeness
11.3 Logic
11.4 Facts
11.5 Smoothness
11.6 Tailoring
11.7 Sub-language
11.8 Idiom
11.9 Mechanics
11.10 Layout
11.11 Typography
11.12 Organization
11.13 Client Specifications
11.14 Employer Policies
Further reading
12. Degrees of Revision
12.1 The need for revision by a second translator
12.2 Determining the degree of revision
12.2.1 Which parameters will be checked?
12.2.2 What level of accuracy and writing quality is required?
12.2.3 Full or partial check?
12.2.4 Compare or re-read?
12.3 Some consequences of less-than-full revision
12.4 The relative importance of transfer and language parameters
12.5 A "good enough" approach to revision
Practice
Further reading
13. Revision Procedure
13.1 Procedure for finding errors
13.2 Principles for correcting and improving
13.3 Order of operations
13.4 Handling unsolved problems
13.5 Inputting changes
13.6 Checking Presentation
13.7 Preventing strategic errors
13.8 Getting help from the translator
13.9 Procedures, time-saving and quality
Summary of techniques for spotting errors
and avoiding introduction of errors
Practice
Further reading
14. Self-Revision
14.1 Integration of self-revision into translation production
14.2 Self-diagnosis
14.3 The term ‘self-revision’
Practice
Further reading
15. Revising the Work of Others
15.1 Relations with revisees
15.2 Diagnosis
15.3 Advice
15.4 Research during revision
Practice
Further reading
16. Revising Computer-Mediated Translations by Carlos Teixeira
16.1 Translation Memory
16.1.1 Repairing Translation Memory suggestions
16.2 Machine Translation
16.2.1 Different ‘levels’ of post-editing
16.2.2 Types of edits required
16.2.3 Examples of post-editing
16.3 Integration of Translation Memory and Machine Translation
16.4 Interactive Machine Translation
16.5 Final considerations
Further reading
Appendix 1. Summary
Appendix 2. Quality Assessment
Appendix 3. Quantitative Grading Scheme
Appendix 4. Sample Revision
Appendix 5. Revising and Editing Vocabulary
Appendix 6. Empirical research on revision
Readings
Index
Biography
Brian Mossop was a French-to-English translator, reviser and trainer at the Canadian Government’s Translation Bureau from 1974 to 2014. He continues to lead workshops and webinars on revision in Canada and abroad. Since 1980, he has also been a part-time instructor at the York University School of Translation in Toronto, teaching revision, scientific translation, translation theory and translation into the second language.
"It breaks down and explains editing and revising practices in a simple way … making the text an easy and pleasant read. Teachers, both in academic and non-academic contexts, will avail themselves of the easy-to-follow categorization of the contents of the book, in the event that they want to design a course or module on editing and revising."
Michail Sachinis, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 4:2, 2010.
"An extremely worthwhile read and reference source for anyone involved in the processes of editing and/or revising."
Sue Lilley, City University and London Metropolitan University, in Journal of Specialised Translation 25, 2016
