Crenshaw's Books & Decks

I bought this title recently because I need a definitive guide to style for work. I would have loved this being on Kindle, but it is not, so I made the effort and ordered this manual from the Book Depository.

> Good binding, so the book is flexible and can be fully opened without the binding resenting it. 
> The dictionary is helpful at times and has solved some of my doubts.
> The style manual is helpful at times and has solved some of my doubts.

Huge No-nos

Main No-Nos

The Contents of this Manual

1/ THE NEW HART'S RULES MANUAL (NHR onwards)

2/ NEW OXFORD DICTIONARY FOR WRITERS AND EDITORS

3/ APPENDIXES

> Proofreading marks. Useful.  Not in the COD
> Glossary of printing and publishing terms. Useful. Not in the COD. 
> Primer Ministers of UK and USA. The COD has the same listing bit it also includes the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia!
> Members of the European Union. Not in the COD. Free in the Wikipedia. The UK brexit it!  
> Greek Alphabet. Also in the COD.
> Diacritics, accents, and special sorts. Not in the COD. OK.
> Mathematical symbols. OK. Not in the COD.
> SI Units.  Included in the COD.
> Metric Prefixes. Available in the COD. 
> Chemical elements. Also in the COD.

4/ GENERAL INDEX

In Short

Have you ever watched a foreign movie with subtitles and, while watching a scene, you were a bit puzzled because there was some sort of disconnection between the action and the subtitles? 

Let's start with a personal example that links well with what this book is about. 

When Spain won the Football World Cup in 2010, one of the scorers got his shirt up to show another shirt with a text written on it. I was watching one of the most viewed morning shows in Australia at the time. The presenters and newsreader didn't know what all the fuss was about, but they wanted to know. It could have cost them nothing checking with a translator in advance or just checking foreign media in English that had bothered to do so. Two people from the audience translated the text and sent it to the program via social media. The first text was a political patriotic text, which was obviously too long for 5 Spanish words. Still, the newsreader read it and was happy to feed the masses with this crap. Another viewer sent a proper translation of the text adding the context as well. The text was a posthumous homage to a deceased friend and co-footballer not a patriotic message. The newsreader read this translation as well, and ended by saying, "now we don't know which one is right, they are so different". I was rolling my eyes in disbelief.

You might ask, who cares about football, right? Put it this way, how many times have you been or are you being mislead by the media because they rely on non-translations or bad translations of items of news on subjects that matter to you? Or on hot topics of world news we are fed by the media every single day? 

***

Found in Translation is a a very entertaining unpretentious light-hearted book written by a professional translator and a professional interpreter. The authors are passionate about what they do, and are good at what they do, and their enthusiasm and expertise shows in the book. 

The book is a well-structured collection of stories that revolve about translation and interpretation coming from professionals all over the world not just the authors. We see the role of translation in   wars, politics, diplomacy, the health system, newspapers and magazines, media analysis, online network sites (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia), History, business, multinational companies and brands, the Justice system and international courts of Justice, marketing, rescue missions overseas, International Courts and multinational institutions, sports events, stock market, Literature, the Bible and other religious texts, beauty pageants, dating sites, porn, wines descriptions. TED talks, and much more! There are many delightful bloopers and anecdotes that show the impact that a bad translation can have in our daily life and the world.

 Why we need translation or translators in the age of globalisation? Why is important having good translators? Are machines ever going to replace translators? What about Google Translate and Translating programs? Which fields require of translation and interpretation? Wouldn't it be nice if everybody spoke English so we do not need to translate? What does translators do? How do you translate Creole languages or words that do not exist in your language? Or vice versa? Does a good translator finds easy to translate everything in his language/s of expertise? The authors reply to these and other pertinent questions and offer an overall view of where translation is, whether you notice it or not, see it or not, or you think you need it or not.

The target of the book is the general public, so the language used and the approach to the subject is light and easy to understand. No jargon. Beyond the interesting anecdotes, there is the realisation that translation and interpretation are something more that a conversion of language X into language Y, and that translation pervades the world we live in. This is NOT a manual on translation or a book on translation theories, methodologies or techniques, or on the History of translation. No boring stuff!

I missed more focus on areas as translation of historical and anthropological texts, which provide the modern translator with some specific challenges. but this is just me. Yet, one of my favourite episodes, the one of the Treaty of Waitangi, which I have had the pleasure of seeing in person, is in the book.

I found this book among the list of best illustration books of 2014 chosen by Amazon's editors. Really? Unbelievable! This is an enlargement and remake of the author's blog entry, available for free on the Internet. See it here :)

I consider this one of the most appalling books I have read lately, and at rip off price of 10+ bucks for the Kindle edition. Give that money to charity! The book is not worth it.

The author is truly lost in translation, and wants you to get you lost as well. The ratings of the book seems to indicate she has succeeded.

The introduction is a clear example of pompous, vacuous well-intentioned "crappola" that says nothing and means nothing but wants to impress and fool the general public. Still, I had hopes that this would be, well, just a crappy introduction. Sadly it is not.

How did the author came across some of the non-existent words, some very translatable untranslatable words, is beyond my understanding. I came across something really similar in Tumblr a couple of years ago, and it is free and way better! (the blog is called Otherworldly). Otherwise, just google "untranslatable words into English" and you will find gazillion entries, most of them featuring the same bunch!

The Malaysian word in this book does not exist. I believe the Malaysian guy who says so in his review mostly because he/she is Malaysian and must know.

The Spanish "vacilando" (not a verb, but a verb tense, mind you) does not translate the way the author defines it. The verb "vacilar" has many different meanings, all translatable into English. You never use a gerund on its own, but within a a sentence that has another verb (or it is implicit in it), so that is always easier to translate than a noun or concept. The meaning presented in the book is not mainstream or standard Spanish. It might be slang, Spanglish or a regional/national use of the word, so, if that is the case, well, mention that instead of presenting it as a  general Spanish word. The definition is roughly translatable in English as wanderlust/ing or lurking around. A Spanish word that has no translation whatsoever is "sobremesa", for example, but that is not included in the book.

I don't know Japanese, Inuit or Norwegian, but if the Malay and Spanish words are non-existent or inaccurate, how many of the others are incorrect or understood wrongly?

Many of the words in the book can perfectly be translated into English, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, some others approximately. Just one example Commuovere in Italian is not a specific Italian word (the Spanish "conmover" has a similar meaning), and it can be easily translated into English as "being moved (by something)" as in the movie really moved me.  What makes a word untranslatable is not what it means, it is, most times, the embedded cultural meaning and use. When you use it, how you use it, who does it use it (age group, social group, racial group), the relevance of the word in the culture of a given social group or country, if it is a polite or rude word, etc. For example, you can translate the Portuguese word "Saudade" as nostalgia, longing, or as "blues", but the word has so much embedded cultural meaning in Portuguese literature and song lyrics, or even in the spirit of the Portuguese spirit, hat you cannot capture that in English. If you understand that, you also understand that the illustration in the book accompanying the word "Saudade" does not make any sense. Some words convey ways of living or thinking that are alien to the English speaking reader, so the translation has to do an U-turn to have specific words translated. The same also happens the reverse way.

The illustrations are lovely and cute, and I really enjoyed them. Very naif children's book sort of style, something that is very much my liking. However, the illustrations are there to illustrate, and they do not succeed at doing so at times because the meaning of some words is barely grasped. If this was just a stand alone book with no text, my rating would be way higher. 

I returned the book for refund. Why would I want to keep a book whose information is incorrect or wrong? Even if the book was accurate in its approach to the rest of the foreign words, it would still be a rip off and some of the definitions are questionable It takes you 10 minutes to read the 100+ "pages". What is more, there are masterpieces of illustration sold by Amazon at similar or cheaper prices!

This is a basic introduction to editing, no matter you are a beginner editor, a peer-reviewer or just want to edit your own texts.

One expects the book of a professional editor to be good, easy to understand, and well organised, and, generally speaking, this is the case.

Although many of the things Dunham recommends are a bit too obvious (especially if writing is part of your job or just your job) they should never be forgotten. At times, it is painful seeing academics doing the sort of mistakes that Dunham mentions in this book. Actually, these are some of the mistakes I do make while writing for work, or writing a review.

An editor basically reads a text at least twice, and systematically checks the relevance and precision of the content, whether the focus of the author is there or not, if the grammar and orthography of the work are correct, and if the language used is good or not. Editors follow style or criteria rules and guidelines generally imposed by the publisher, although if you are self-editing you can create yours to keep consistency while writing. Then, comes the hard task of checking things systematically, for which you create a checklist or task-list to avoid tricks and treacheries of the eye and the mind and make sure that everything you should have checked is, indeed, checked.

The structure of the book follows this sort of order.    

The book is clearly written, without any pomposity or technical jargon. A priori, I thought this would be a dry book, but I found it to be not only useful and practical, but an enjoyable light reading as well.

The chapter I find most interesting and useful is chapter 9 (The Editor's Tools), which not only provides us with a commented bibliography and a list of online resources, but also an example of check-list. I also enjoyed Dunham's comments on the relationship with editors and authors in chapter 9, which are great to level your head when correcting somebody else's work or peer-reviewing, something that I tend to forget because I get exasperated by some people's "crappola". And also his comments on the use of Wikipedia for references.

Some of his comments on common grammatical and orthographical mistakes are spot on and very easy to understand, therefore, very useful. I also like some of the explanations Dunham gives about confusing (fusing) words. I noticed that, while he explains the rule on how to use brackets, just to put an example, he says it in a way in which brackets are used and incorporated into the explanation without the need of any example. Cool, even tubular :)

The book examines and includes all types of editing. You will find similar challenges and methodical approach to editing any type of text. However, editing for a newspaper, for an academic journal or the Government are intrinsically different as they target different readers, and they do so in different ways regarding language used and length and depth of the text. You cannot expect the general reader to understand technical stuff, but you expect academics working on a given discipline to deal easily with that stuff without the need of dumbing down their writing. So, I would have liked a chapter devoted to the challenges that different publications and texts demand from the editor, and the way editors face them. 
 
Some of the explanations about punctuation were just sketched and not clear enough or not well explained, for example, the use of Em and En dashes.

Although the book is well organised and I like the structure, a few things were off, to me. I would have placed chapter 9 after chapter 10, included some of the subjects mentioned in the appendix in chapter 10 and enlarge them, and offer a separate bibliography and resources section. Besides, the bibliography mentioned is a bit old. Even though the books are classics, or manuals that any editor should have, there must be most updated improved editions, and  why not including other specialised books dealing with specific matters?  

I found odd that the some articles mentioned in the endnotes have no pages mentioned. They come from newspapers and other periodical publications, I guess. I was taught, that even when the news comes from a newspaper, you provide the reader with the page where the article is found. That is for academic writing, of course. There must be a reason why pages are not mentioned with those articles. Were they retrieved online? Is there any rule about this that professional editors follow?

Now, how much quoting is too much? Well... too many quotes is always too much. Elements of Style and Words into Type are mentioned ad nauseam, so I ended wondering, if these books are so great, why bothering writing anything else?  Dunham is a professional experienced editor, so I wanted to hear his voice loud and distinctly clear, even if he shares the same opinions and approaches his work in very similar ways other editors do. In fact, Dunham shines when he does so, when he is his own self, and speaks from his own experience without paraphrasing or quoting anybody.

Most of the grammar elements and common mistakes he discuses in his book are great, but we can find that sort of information in any basic grammar book, like Practical English Usage or a Practical English Grammar, just to mention two examples of exhaustive reliable books coming from Oxford University. However, I missed a chapter on footnoting or endnoting; too many writers and academics do not use notes properly, they do not know where to place them, or what sort of information to include in them. The same can be said of creating indexes, a bibliography, glossary or your own style sheet. Said differently, how would an editor approach endnotes, footnotes, bibliography, indexes and glossaries in a given text? How to edit those? 

IN SHORT

I found the reading good and entertaining, and, as a first good approach to editing, a great book with plenty of useful items of advice. I was expecting an ABC of editing, but for that you have to go elsewhere.

This is one of those books that everybody should have at home, whether a native English speaker or a foreign student.

Too many natives rely on their "nativeness" to write properly and, funny enough, they made many of the mistakes in orthography, spelling and word use described in this book. The book is great for foreigners, who will need to have explained many things that native speakers use by default without even thinking about or thinking why.

Practical English Usage is one of the best books in the market to help you write and speak English properly. You will find most of your doubts about the use of confusing words, orthography, sentence construction and structure, idiomatic preferences, grammar and writing etiquette, among many other things, clearly explained.

Practical English Language shows how a well-thought and structured index can make your consultation of any book and manual an enjoyable activity. Like diving. The book is structured in numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs with every entry and sub-entry in the index relating to those numbers (not the page numbers) -- the quickest easiest way to find anything. There is also a detailed table of contents at the beginning, but I rarely use that. The use of red epigraphs is just a hit with me, because it is just how things should make, red and black, black and red, so you have headings and important things popping up and saying hi to your eyes instantly.

The language terminology section is very useful if you have difficulties understanding some of the linguist and grammatical terminology used in the book. I would say that most people with a High School education would find most of those definitions unnecessary. Yet, great for primary school students.

I found the section on common mistakes in English (something that it is specially useful for foreigners), a bit disorganised, and too small to be of any use. There are specific books on this, that I would rather consult. The section has a bunch of common mistakes that primary, secondary, intermediate and advanced learners make. But the list is not structured within each group, so you have to read the whole section to find anything you are looking for. A waste of time, basically. I would rather have these pages removed and devoted to new entries, or just have them expanded and better organised.

The world of Internet and the digital era have changed the way we write, read and communicate at the speed of light. The book is, therefore, outdated regarding digital issues like writing emails, text messaging. tweeting, facebooking, tumblering, blogging or just reviewing online :O. Some of the things noted and stated in those sections sound like written for 90y.o. people who have never had access to the Internet and don't know how to write an email. I would have liked having a longer more detailed section on all Internet writing and more clear directives about email etiquette. There is not much email or online etiquette any time. We are all shrieks now.

This is an Oxford University Press book, always a sign of excellence to me. What is more, there is nothing as good online. You will find endless online forums, blogs and YouTube videos discussing and explaining English grammar and use, but many of them are not accurate, or are confusing or not clear enough, or they contradict each other. How to put it? I would not have spent my money on a hard-copy book if there was something as good online for free. 

I would love getting this book in Kindle format. I hope the OUP is working on it I am waiting. Tick tock tick tock.

Overall, I must-have manual.