My last couple of sessions in the recording studio, we've been making the tapes to accompany a rather better than average textbook series. But, alas, although the general content is fairly strong (and, mostly, Chinglish-free), there is still a worrying lack of attention to the basic copy-editing: our script was full of small typos.
One of the most common was that in the 'GRAMMAR' section of each chapter, the sub-heading for the new grammar function to be covered was almost invariably labelled 'FUNCITON'. To a native speaker, this is a pretty glaring error; but for most Chinese, it seems, it is invisible.
After the 8th or 10th instance of this, I found myself picturing a sleepy hamlet in the north Midlands.....
3 comments:
I used to do an English newsletter for a middle school. We put in that article where the words all had jumbled up letters and it was about how you can still read words when the first and last letter is correct, but the middle is jumbled. When the newsletter came out every word was unjumbled and spelled perfectly. The Chinese editor had stayed up all night fixing all the mistakes those stupid foreigners had made.
Well, yes, Dan, if it's their job to pay attention, they sometimes will (though fairly rarely, I find!); but they don't seem to 'notice' this kind of thing very readily otherwise.
I'm also alarmed at how robotically people tend to approach translation and editing tasks (and this isn't by any means a uniquely Chinese vice, although I think it seems to be even worse with them), paying no conscious attention to the dialogue. I used to have a job as chief editor on an online business information service that translated media reports and press releases about the auto industry. I lost count of the times I'd be writing back to the translators saying things like, "Did you notice that these market segment percentages add up to 128?" or "This article leads by saying that the company was founded 3 months ago, but later says that it has been in business for 6 months - which is it?" Even the most glaring inconsistencies and illogicalities used to fly completely over their heads.
I obviously have 'dialogues' on the brain at the moment. I meant 'content' back there, of course.
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