An interesting project I worked on recently involved copy-editing, together with my friend and trusted colleague Robin Finesilver, a translation of Skutečná cesta ven (The True Way Out), the award-winning autobiography of Czech Roma journalist, writer and musician Patrik Banga, for CEEOL Press.
Isabel Stainsby’s translation was excellent, which made our job easier. However, the subject matter was heavy, particularly regarding the police brutality the young Patrik endured, so it wasn’t always a comfortable read. Even so, it’s a somewhat hidden history that is important for the wider public to know the truth about. It was also quite challenging to make sure we kept the author’s voice in the translated work. I hope we all managed to preserve both the pathos and the wit of the original.
This is not the first Czech book translation that Robin and I have co-edited. We also collaborated on copy-editing Alexandra Büchler‘s translation of Dům o tisíci patrech (The House of a Thousand Floors) by Jan Weiss published in 2016 by CEUP. On both manuscripts, close cooperation was essential to keep everything consistent throughout. For this recent project, too, we had an efficient system for cross-checking. First, we both read the entire translation, then we edited one half each, then swapped and edited the other half. We looked at the other’s comments/changes for each part and reviewed it again to make sure everything was harmonised as far as possible, using track changes, highlights and comments/questions for Isabel, who then went through the entire manuscript again and got back to us with questions before finalizing it.
One thing we discussed at length was whether or not to convert, for instance, kilometres to miles for English-speaking readers. In the end, we agreed upon putting these conversions in brackets. We both loved Isabel’s brilliant idea of including maps of Prague and the Czech Republic for readers unfamiliar with the city or the country. The three of us also gave a great deal of thought to domestication vs. foreignization of street names, eventually electing to use, for example, Seifertova Street, in some cases to help readers distinguish between names of streets and districts.
Isabel kindly credited us in her translator’s acknowledgements:
“In no particular order, my thanks to: […] editors Linda Jayne Turner and Robin Finesilver, who turned a good translation into a great one, and were so easy and pleasant to work with.”
It was also a pleasure to work with Isabel on this fascinating and prestigious project. We look forward to the forthcoming publication of The True Way Out.
Blog post edited by Robin Finesilver