I wanna be an editor

Discussion in 'Translator's Corner' started by Wobbly, Jul 26, 2017.

?

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  1. Wobbly

    Wobbly [Unstabbable][He Who Courts Death][Whimsical]

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  2. Wobbly

    Wobbly [Unstabbable][He Who Courts Death][Whimsical]

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    Not to be sexist, but no female main characters. Honestly, I can't relate with them (inexperienced me). Not too many politics, hopefully. I'm good with a lot, though. I read korean novels (EER,Dungeon Defense,LMS,SSN,MEMORIZE,Ark,Asylum, and a bunch other I can't remember). Chinese Novels (most of the stuff on wuxiaworld, Shuras wrath, half of the stuff on qidian, etc.). Ya, I'm good with lot of things.
     
  3. Viola

    Viola Studio Ghibli Fanboy Mother of Learning Fanboy

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    I really hate to be this guy, but you did ask what the standards are and whether or not you are up to snuff.

    I'll start this off by saying yes. Atleast based on your post. If you can edit novels to the same level as your above post then you are pretty good and should be able to find someone willing to take you on as an editor.

    As an editor you should pay attention to how everything flows together and of course spelling and grammatical errors. But I personally think flow is the most important since spelling and most grammatical errors are very easy to catch.

    I'm just gonna edit some things in the first part of your post.

    I'm a rising senior and has school.
    - has is the inccorect word. It should be have.
    I may even add the word 'currently' or 'have no school currently' at the end to indicate your current commitments.


    , and this is the first thing I thought.
    - You missed putting 'of' at the end of this sentence. Depending on how much your translator wants you to stick to the Original wording you could even modify the sentence a bit. An example here would be "And this is the first thing that came to mind"
    Changes like that would be up to you if your translator was okay with small changes like that.
    To me the latter change flows better.


    After all, reading novels is awesome.
    - 'is' is a singular verb. In the case of you using the plural noun 'novels' you need to use the verb 'are and not 'is'.
    This is definitely harder to catch than a basic grammatical or spelling error but is still an error.

    I do this not to be an ass (anyone feel free to pick apart my post. I'm sure I made errors too) just to give an example based on what you wrote to show you what stuff you'd have to look for. Be it a simple missed word, wrong word choice or something harder to catch like a misused verb in a specific sentence.

    There is room for improvement but I think you could help groups out there.
    The real tough part is finding a place that works with your time constraints and will still pay you fairly.

    Good luck!
     
  4. Hasutsuki

    Hasutsuki Active Member

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    Since you are a Korean.
    Rather than editors, You better work as a translator for Korean novel.

    There's a lot of awesome Korean novels out there, and I really want to read them...
    But unfortunately, I only know Japanese...OTL
     
  5. IgotKIF

    IgotKIF Manny the Manatee

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    Being an editor requires you to be better at English rather than the language the novel is being translated from. The biggest things while editing is looking at the sentence structure , and how smoothly it flows. Punctuation, spelling, pronouns, adverbs, etc. are also key things. I feel that a good editor needs to be extremely critical and have good knowledge of the grammar themselves.

    I , however, feel that you need to study a bit more. For example:

    "I'm a rising senior and has school. So I have a lot of free time."
    A good editor would have noticed the you used the word "has" wrong. You could have also made the two sentences into one using a semicolon because it is two independent clauses that could've stood alone.

    "After all, reading novels is awesome."
    Reading novels *are* awesome.
    Edit : My mistake, this is right

    "After all, reading novels is awesome. And finding mistakes in other people's work is equally awesome (to translators: I'm your slave). "
    These two sentence should've been connected with a comma. Also, avoid starting sentences with a conjunction.

    I don't want to disheartened you any further, but if you really want to be an editor - just go for it!
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2017
  6. noisypixy

    noisypixy Sacatunn que pen, que summum que tun.

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    :thinking:
     
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  7. IgotKIF

    IgotKIF Manny the Manatee

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    Are you perplexed on the correct term?
     
  8. skycat

    skycat Member

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    I think "is" is right, in this part.
     
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  9. IgotKIF

    IgotKIF Manny the Manatee

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    The word "novels" used in the sentence was a plural noun ,and using "are" to indicate that was correct. Of course, if you can prove me wrong, feel free to explain why.
     
  10. Wobbly

    Wobbly [Unstabbable][He Who Courts Death][Whimsical]

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    I really appreciate the advice. It's kind of ironic my post of wanting to be an editor is being edited, huh. *feels kind of funny right now
     
  11. noisypixy

    noisypixy Sacatunn que pen, que summum que tun.

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    I'm no native speaker to know how English parts of speech are named, but this is easy to prove by example:
     
  12. skycat

    skycat Member

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    It's true that "are" is usually used to indicate plural "objects" or "subjects", but in this case, the "is" is referring to the action of reading itself. I might be wrong, though, since I'm not really an editor myself.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2017
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  13. noisypixy

    noisypixy Sacatunn que pen, que summum que tun.

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    Yes. "Are" would be correct only if "reading novels" were the noun.
     
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  14. IgotKIF

    IgotKIF Manny the Manatee

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    I am not an expert of the language as it is also not my native language. I guess I indeed have made a mistake. Since baking cookies is being referred to as cooking. Cooking is then used as a singular form , and it would be right. "Reading novels is awesome" is also right. Thanks for fixing my mistake. :)
    Edit - I finally remembered there was a thing called mass nouns. My mistake again.
     
  15. noisypixy

    noisypixy Sacatunn que pen, que summum que tun.

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    np, you also made me realize I should properly learn the name of things. That's something I've been planning to do but procrastination is strong.
     
  16. skycat

    skycat Member

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    Yeah. "Are" can be used if the sentence is as such:
    Novels are fun to read.
     
  17. SilverJoker

    SilverJoker Well-Known Member

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  18. viridiansky

    viridiansky Active Member

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    Yeah, I got C2 too. Would've been pretty ashamed to not get it when I'm a native English speaker...

    But I think when you're editing it's important to be very fluent in the target language, even more than this one simple test. When you're translating that's one thing, but as an editor you need to be able to point out the minutae that the translator may have missed because they aren't as proficient in the target language, no?

    Or even if the translator is just as proficient in the target language, sometimes your mind just goes blank after spending too much time reading the source language.
     
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  19. Temperance

    Temperance New Member

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    In this sentence, "is" would be correct since they are saying that "reading novels is awesome". "Novels" is not the subject, but "reading". It can be confusing since "reading" is a verb and not actually a noun, but "novels" is the modifier in this case. I don't remember the exact grammatical term for an action that acts as a subject, but I'm sure you could find it if you looked it up.
    EDIT: Sorry, I just realized that this was already explained previously. I'll just leave it here in case it helps someone.
     
  20. aegis062

    aegis062 Chaotic Demon Emperor

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    this isn't a Korean novel it's a Chinese MTL novel that needs heavy editing which you can copy paste into word and try an edit it, and see if your editing skills are good. you can post a before and after to compare.

    http://www.novelupdates.com/series/very-pure-very-vague/
     
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