If the numbering of headings within the consecuve prose differs from the numbering in the Table of Contents, or if the wording of a heading differs signifi-cantly from the Table of Contents wording, the reader may be misled or become confused. Ideally, the writer has used the word processor’s automac Table of Contents generator, but many people find this hard to use. Consequently, you as the editor must check that the secon 6.7 menoned in the Table of Contents really exists, that it does indeed start on page 94, and that it is in fact entled
‘How to Fire Employees’, not ‘The Human Aspect of Downsizing’.
5.4 Structural eding during translaon
Some people new to translaon think that the structure of the text has already been created by the source-text author, and that there is therefore no work for them to do in this respect. That is not the case. During translaon, you may somemes find that you need to make structural adjustments: change the order of sentences for example to bring out the argument; change the paragraph or sentence divisions; turn a point-form list into consecuve prose or vice versa.
The reason may be poor wring in the source text, or simply different rhetori-cal habits in the target language. For example, English tends to avoid the rather lengthy headings somemes seen in French wring, so as the editor you might replace a lengthy translated heading with a two-word or three-word heading that is appropriate for the secon that follows.
The case of paragraphing is of special interest, since many people ignore this.
Clients somemes ask to have the paragraphing of the source text imitated, but that is not always advisable. For example, there is a style of wring in French in which the last sentence of a paragraph needs to be turned into the first sen-tence of the next paragraph in English, because it introduces a new topic. Also, paragraphing habits may differ in the corresponding target-language genre. For example, if you are translang English newspaper arcles for a corporate or min-isterial clipping service, you may want to eliminate the one-sentence paragraphs which are common in English journalism. Conversely, if translang a news story from another language into English, for publicaon in a newspaper (not just for informaon), you may want to split long paragraphs, and even create some one-sentence paragraphs.
Pracce
Exercise
Your instructor will give you a text in which the paragraph divisions and any headings have been eliminated. First, divide the text into paragraphs. Then add headings and possibly subheadings.
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Compare your paragraphing with that of other members of the class. Are the differences small or large? Do there seem to be differing principles at work? Do the paragraphing differences affect meaning?
Compare the posioning and wording of the headings added by various class members. Do some heading decisions make it easier to follow the chain of thought? Do some heading decisions focus the reader’s aenon differently from others?
Further reading
(See the References list near the end of the book for details on these publicaons.) Dragga and Gong (1989: ch. 3); Van de Poel (2012: ch. 7).
6. Content Eding
Content eding is checking and amending a text for its ideas. As with structural eding, content eding takes place both on the large scale (the macro-level) and the small scale (the micro-level). Since macro-level content eding is generally not a concern for translators, this chapter will be principally concerned with those micro-level tasks which translators may be called upon to perform, namely the correcon of factual, logical and mathemacal errors. No hard and fast bound-ary can be drawn between outright errors of fact on the one hand and problems such as obscure passages or confused theorecal noons on the other; these will all be discussed together under the heading ‘factual errors’.
6.1 Macro-level content eding
Editors may suggest or require major changes in the coverage of a document’s topic. Addions or subtracons may be requested in order to make the text suit-able for the audience, in order to include the latest developments in the subject, or in order to disnguish a book from others on the same topic. Somemes subtracons will be needed in order to make the text fit the available space.
With some texts, macro-level content eding is closely ed to the social gatekeeper funcon of editors. That is, the editor may be acng on behalf of an instuon with an ideological purpose. Newspapers of parcular polical complexions come to mind in this connecon; governments too may employ editors to cover unpleasant facts with euphemism or vagueness. More insidi-ously, editors may be employed to censor wrien materials before publicaon, by removing passages that are ideologically unacceptable.
Editors have even engaged in deliberate falsificaon on behalf of their em-ployers. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell takes this to its logical extreme: the central character, Winston Smith, is a content editor at the Ministry of Truth who edits texts aer publicaon. As chapter 4 opens, we find him ‘edit-ing’ the already published Times account of a speech by Big Brother promising an increase in the chocolate raon. Aer the destrucon of all exisng copies of that issue of the newspaper, the historical record will show that the great leader in fact announced a considerable decrease in the raon. Interesngly, ficon has now become reality: with the advent of pure e-publishing (i.e. there are no paper copies of a publicaon), it is now possible to engage in post-publicaon content eding. Archives are available of earlier states of Web sites, but most people will never bother to look at these or are unaware of their existence.
The ethical content editor has a professional commitment to truth. There are two aspects to this. One is the avoidance of unintenonal falsehoods. For this purpose, many publishing organizaons employ special fact-checkers. The second aspect is the avoidance of decepon, by ensuring that the published item tells ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. Also, if there are certain well-known objecons to the author’s arguments, these are at least admied, if not answered.
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It should be borne in mind that the selecng funcon of editors (accepng or rejecng whole texts, or parts of texts) is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the editor may select in order to conceal truths (which may be deemed danger-ous or simply offensive); on the other hand, the selecon may be made in the service of quality. For example, many people prefer to join Internet discussion forums which have a moderator (i.e. a content editor) because they do not want to spend huge amounts of me wading through material of no interest. They trust the moderator to select well wrien and well thought out contribuons, represenng a diversity of views. Thus another characterisc of the ethical con-tent editor will be trustworthiness.
6.2 Factual errors
One reason specialized texts need to be content-edited by subject-maer special-ists is that others may not recognize factual errors. But factual errors may also come up in otherwise unspecialized texts, and it will not always be obvious (for example through self-contradicon) that there is an error.
Read the following passage and decide whether, if you had not read it in a chap-ter about correcng content errors, you would have recognized the problem:
In a plain-looking shop in the untouristy 19th arrondissement, a 1930 second edion of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in dust jacket recently sold for $10.
This certainly was an unusual find, since the first edion of Orwell’s novel was not published unl 1949.
Factual errors also include more mundane things such as incorrect street addresses; incorrect website addresses; not-quite-right book tles or names of organizaons (North Bumbridge Roselovers Society instead of Roselovers Associaon of North Bambridge), and incorrect references (the quoted mater-ial was on page 406, not page 306 of vol 3 no 2 of the Journal of Xology). Such fact-checking used to involve some rather tedious searches through almanacs, yearbooks, telephone directories and other reference works, but nowadays much of the informaon is available on the Internet. To check that a Web address is correct, try to go to the site using your browser. If the text is a translaon posted at a website, links should lead readers to a target-language site, if possible and appropriate.
A final and very important type of fact that has to be checked is the accu-racy of quotaons. If the source of a quotaon cannot be tracked down, then the quotaon marks should be removed, and indirect speech used instead. If the quoted material was spoken rather than wrien, the quotaon does not normally need to be a verbam transcript: hesitaons (....um...) and false starts can be cleaned up, and some publicaons replace professional jargon or dialect with more readily understandable wordings. Somemes awkward wordings are improved to spare the quoted speaker embarrassment: ‘The architecture down
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there is some of the best in the city. A greater degree of people are wanng to be down there’ might be changed to read ‘…More people want to live there’.