Translators revising translators: a fruitful alliance

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the revision process in a non-profit digital publisher led by translators and aims to fill the research gap with regard to the revision process in literary translation. ¡Hjckrrh! is a non-profit publishing initiative that has published 21 e-books translated from 7 different languages, with the collaboration of 14 translators. This article discusses the revision process in ¡Hjckrrh! by documenting the making of two e-books. We use multiple sources of data collection: 16 in-depth interviews with participants (translators, revisers, a proofreader, the cover designer); participants’ reflective diaries; fieldnotes from our participant observation in the form of reflective diaries; e-mail correspondence between the participants; translation drafts; and drafts of the paratexts. This article describes the workflow and provides an overview of the revision process in ¡Hjckrrh!. The article pays special attention to the negotiation of decisions and the interactions between the actors. The conclusions show that translators appreciate a detailed revision and are willing to take part in the final decision making. The detailed documentation of the process shows that the boundaries between the various revision stages are blurred and that the revision of style and language permeates the whole process.

KEYWORDS:

• Revision
• digital translations
• proofreading
• copy-editing
• e-books
• self-publishing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maialen Marin-Lacarta is assistant professor in the translation programme at Hong Kong Baptist University, teaching Chinese literature and translation. She holds a PhD in Chinese studies and in translation and intercultural studies from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (INALCO) in Paris and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and is interested in the complex position of Chinese and Sinophone literatures in the global literary system. Marin-Lacarta is currently the principal investigator of the project ‘Digital Translations in the Making: Hong Kong Contemporary Fiction in Spanish’. Her research areas include literary translation, modern and contemporary Chinese literature, literary reception, indirect translation, translation history and digital publishing.

Mireia Vargas-Urpi is a lecturer at the Department of Translation and Interpreting, and East Asian Studies, of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She holds a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research interests include public service interpreting with the Chinese community, court interpreting, intercultural mediation, and sociologies of translation and interpreting.

ORCID

Maialen Marin-Lacarta http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8444-217X

Mireia Vargas-Urpi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6302-581X

Notes

1. We use the term ‘self-publishing initiative’ because ¡Hjckrrh! is not legally established as a publishing company and translators translate, edit, proofread and upload their own work.

2. More information about ¡Hjckrrh! is available on their website: http://hjckrrh.org/.

3. For the sake of clarity, when referring to participants we distinguish between revisers, who read and suggest changes to a translation draft, often checking it against the original, and proofreaders, who usually read a quasi-final version already converted into an e-book format (epub, mobi).

4. Un paraíso sobre el infierno: tres cuentos de Shanghai by Liu Na’ou, Mu Shiying and Du Heng, and La cabeza by Dorothy Tse.

5. This project was submitted to and approved by the Board of Ethics of Hong Kong Baptist University.

6. We have used pseudonyms to anonymise the participants.

7. Excerpts from interviews, e-mails, Skype conversations and translation drafts have been translated from Spanish into English by the authors.

8. Julia, who is originally from Hungary, translates with her husband, a Spaniard.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the General Research Fund of the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong: [grant number GRF HKBU 12608815].