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Literature
On the Unsatisfactory Work of Certain Editors
Many editors, without the consent of authors and translators and with no regard for the original text, make arbitrary changes that sometimes distort meaning—a personal experience that reveals the boundary between formal copyediting and unwarranted interference in a writer's style within the publishing world.
I was very young and excited to have signed a contract with a major publisher for a translation. The book was a mathematics text full of formulas, and translating it was not difficult. I translated it with the utmost care I was capable of and delivered it to the renowned publisher. A year or two later, I signed another contract with the same established publisher (whose name had changed again by then) for the translation of another mathematics book—a book that, unlike the first, I already knew and loved dearly (and still love dearly).
There was no news for a few years until they called and asked me to go to the publisher to correct the first proofs of the first book. The typesetting of the formulas was good, but even during that initial leafing through on the bus on the way home, I saw phrases that were completely unfamiliar. And had I really, a few years ago, written 'وی' (and not 'او') for the third-person singular pronoun? Had my taste changed so much in those few years that I now found more than a third of the commas superfluous? I looked at the manuscript and found the text full of the "corrections" of the esteemed editor. And at home, I realized that the esteemed editor's work was not limited to such embellishments, but in places, his "corrections" had also turned true sentences into false or even meaningless ones.
The esteemed editor of that defenseless text held a mid-level position at that large publishing house. A few days later, I wrote a relatively detailed letter to a superior of that esteemed editor, explaining the editor's working methods and citing examples. I referred to a clause in the contract from years ago and said that since a certain period had passed since the work was delivered and the book had not been published, I was withdrawing the book. (Several years had passed, and I no longer had the lust for publication, and I hadn't been very fond of the text from the beginning anyway.) When I delivered the letter in person to that superior, I said that I would invoke the same contract clause for the second book if this esteemed editor tampered with my text. Whether it was the effect of the threat or not, the translation of the second book was published without the esteemed editor's interventions.
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It is not uncommon for me to see young friends who have delivered a book (often a translation) to a publisher and are astonished and angered by the sheer number of changes made by the editor—changes that typically do not even take the form of suggestions, and where the publisher’s or editor’s default assumption is that implementing them is one of the necessary conditions for the work’s publication. (And, as far as I have seen, these overly interventionist publishers are usually newcomers: my two pleasant experiences with a decades-old, reputable publisher involved the publisher’s absolutely minimal intervention in the submitted text, and even these minimal interventions either took the form of suggestions or were made with the translator’s consent.) Even if we accept that the altered text has become “more beautiful,” the serious question would be: who gave the editor the right to make the text “more beautiful”? It is also worth noting that in a considerable percentage of the cases I have seen (and these cases have not been few), the editors not only lacked any reputation for beautiful or clear writing, but had never even published anything under their own names. And it is one of the oddities that, in the case of translations, they often carry out this so-called editing process without any glance at the original text: as if it does not matter to them that a sentence from the original text has been omitted, or a sentence has been translated incorrectly, or its tone has not been preserved, but it is intensely important that words with the tanwin diacritic be written in a certain way (if they are not eliminated altogether), and that more familiar written forms be changed to ‘آشپز’ and ‘همبرگر,’ and that they follow certain dubious instructions of the late Abolhassan Najafi—and the situation would be better if they had read those instructions carefully and applied them uniformly. If the esteemed editor has a favorable opinion of their own eloquence, precision, beautiful writing, and linguistic knowledge, they can apply these in their own future works.
What is called ‘editing’ in our publishing industry is mainly in the sense of copy editing. The person whose job this is supposed to standardize orthography, deal with citation style, the format of footnotes, page layout, and the like, and, if they have the ability, inform the creator whose work they are editing in places where they suspect a phrase is ambiguous or incorrect. The presence of a few how-to and how-not-to books on the market may have played a role in the occurrence and continuation of this unpleasant situation, where individuals, who typically have no brilliant track record or ability, intervene in the writing style of others.
(At the end of the last century, under the influence of the liberalism advocated by Mir Shamseddin Adib-Soltani in his Guide to Preparing a Book, this blogger, who was at the end of his professional career as an editor, would inform the translator or author of points that occurred to him in two different forms: matters like slips of the pen that needed to be changed were marked in red, and suggestions—concerning an ambiguity in expression, a flaw in reasoning, or the overlooking of a certain source—in green. Influenced by Adib-Soltani’s book and character, I believed that an editor should treat the text before them as if they were looking at a sacred text. And what I have heard says that Adib-Soltani, whose precision and linguistic knowledge are astonishing and who has his own entirely distinctive writing style, never imposed his stylistic opinions and tastes when he was an editor at Franklin.)
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On the Unsatisfactory Work of Certain Editors
Author: Kaveh Lajevardi
Source: Publishable Version
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Discussion1 comments
با درود و ارج؛ ببینید، تفاوت هست میانِ نکوهیدنِ کسی که کاری را نادرست انجام داده با نکوهیدنِ خودِ آن کار. موردي که برایِ آقایِ کاوهِ لاجوردیِ عزیز پیش آمده، گویا، نمونهاي از ویرایشِ نادرست و ویراشگر کارنابلد بوده؛ اما این دلیلي بر نادرستیِ اصلِ ویرایشِ اینچنینی نیست. در واقع، همهیِ نمونه هایي که از دستکاری هایِ ویرایشگر آورده شد، اگر بخواهیم به تعریفِ غربیِِ ویراستار استناد کنیم، از حقوقِ اصلیِ ویراستاران است و آنان اجازهیِ این دستکاری ها را دارند. هرچند، در ایران، چنانکه از نظراتِ نویسندهیِ این نوشته هم برمیآید، کارِ ویراستار را به ویرگولگذاری و یافتنِ خطا هایِ تایپی فرو کاسته اند. همان موسسهیِ فرانکلیني هم که مثال زدید، با همهیِ خوبی هایـش، در این یک مورد بیاثر نبوده و یکي از عامللانِ ترویجِ چنین دیدگاهِ محدودي از ویراستاری در ایران شده. حتماً از دهانِ کسانِ بسیاری شنیده اید که در برخورد با کتابي پُراشتباه بگویند--و احتمالاً خودـتان هم بار ها گفته اید--«این دیگر چه کتابي است! کاش مرجعي علمی بود که اجازه نمیداد هر کارنابلدي قلم به دست بگیرد و شروع به نوشتنِ کتاب کند.» بله! ویراستارِ غربی این کار را میکند! نبودِ این مرجع در ایران باعث شده که هزارانهزار کتابِ بیهوده واردِ بازار شوند و چه کاغذ ها که حیفِ آن ها میشوند. (البته، اگر ویراستار از نوعِ کارنابلدـش باشد، هر چه بر اختیاراتِ او بیفزاییم، بر کتابـمان بیشتر ستم کرده ایم؛ اما این یک بحثِ دیگر است.) من با آن بخش از سخنانِ آقایِ لاجوردی که از کارنابلدیِ ویراستاران و سلیقهای-عمل-کردنـشان مینالند همنظر ام، اما آنجایي که این حقوقِ ویراستاران را از ریشه انکار میکنند مخالف ام. بخش هایي از کتابِ «نکته های ویرایش،» نوشتهیِ علیِ صلحجو (ویراستِ دوم). [...] در کتابِ «هنرِ ویرایش،» اثرِ لاریسا مک فارکر، ترجمهیِ مژدهِ دقیقی و احمدِ کساییپور (کارنامه، 1375، ص 28) میخوانیم که رابرت گاتلیب، ویراستارِ مشهورِ امریکایی، به کیم پاتاک، نویسندهیِ کتابِ «برگزیده» میگوید تنها در صورتی کتابش را منتشر میکند که سیصد صفحه از آخرِ آن را حذف کند. پاتاک بلافاصله این کار را میکند و کتاب منتشر میشود. همانطور که مشاهده شد، ویراستار بر نویسنده و ناشر، هر دو، تسلط دارد. (ص 6-7) [...] بدونِ شک اصلیترین نهادی که به پیدایشِ پدیده و همچنین اصطلاحِ ویرایش، به معنایِ رایجِ آن در ایران، شکل داد مؤسسهیِ انتشاراتِ فرانکلین بود. اما، در حاشیهیِ این اتفاقِ مبارک، اتفاقِ دیگری نیز رخ داد که، گرچه گریزی از آن نبود، از جنبهای دیگر خوب نبود. شرحش این است که اولین گروهی که تحتِ این عنوان در فرانکلین بهکار پرداختند، بهعلتِ نوعِ خدمتی که این مؤسسه در زمینهیِ پاکیزگیِ نشر عرضه میکرد، درست در آستانهیِ آشنایی با اصطلاحِ editing و معادِ فارسی و نوظهورِ آن «ویرایش،» متأسفانه با معنایِ بسیار محدودی از این اصطلاح رو به رو شدند: اصلاحِ زبان در سطحِ جمله. (ص 274) [...] کسی که مقالاتِ مجلهای را میخواند، آنها را رد میکند یا میپذیرد، سپس، چنانچه آنها را پدیرفته باشد، آنها را بهدقت میخواند و حک و اصلاح میکند، نزدِ غربی ها، ویراستار است. (ص 278) [...] منظورِ من از این نوشته آن است که بگویم ما در ایران تصورِ بسیار محدودی از ویرایش داشته ایم و هنوز هم داریم و عملمان نیز در جهتِ همین برداشتمان وده است. ویرایش در ایران بیشتر به معنایِ اصلاحِ زبانی مطرح بوده است که، در واقع، عرصهیِ کوچکی از کلِ این فعالیت است. (ص 278) ----------------------- در پایان بگویم که یکي دیگر از دلایلي که به توجهِ بیشترِ اصلاحاتِ «زبانمحور» در میانِ ویراستاران انجامیده شرایطِ ویژهیِ زبانِ فارسی در عصرِ کنونی است، شرایطي که بهطورِ خاص با فرهنگستانِ یکم آغاز شد و همچنان ادامه دارد. بیشک زبانِ فارسی به اصلاحاتِ زیادی نیاز دارد تا همپایِ زبان هایِ اروپایی شود و بودن در این «دورانِ گذار» چنین برخورد هایِ زبانی رو به سویِ خودـش جذب میکنه. ویراستارِ غربی نیازِ چنداني به دستکاری هایِ زبانی (بهگونهاي که در ایران میبینیم) ندارد، چون هم اغلب با نویسندهاي روبهرو ست که با اصولِ نوشتن آشنا ست و دستِکم زبانِ خود را میداند و هم با زبانِ سخته و پروردهاي سر-و-کار دارد؛ بیشترِ زبان هایِ اروپایی از مرحلهاي که اکنون زبانِ فارسی در آن است گذشته اند (گُذاری که از سدهیِ هفدهم آغازیدند). با سپاس