Gratton on translating and editing

Here is Gratton with a LENGTHIER POST THAN MINE on the topic. He’s done a lot of editing, and I think some translating as well.

And he is right that both tasks are largely unappreciated. I’ve generally found editors to be good and helpful (unlike referees, who 15% of the time are simply jerks). Once in awhile I’ll get an editor who throws some weird pet stylistic thing onto my text (in one case every time I used “since,” that person changed it to “because,” and not for any obvious reasons of grammatical purism; and in my opinion the text sounded a bit dumb with all those “becauses” in it, but it was a tight deadline and I didn’t feel like fighting).

As mentioned, I also thought Tariq was dead-on right that the ferris wheel belonged first in Circus Philosophicus (you’ll soon see that he was right). And Open Court was helpful with editing, especially in the case of Heidegger Explained where I seemed to have the same basic thought processes as that editor. (The appendices were her idea, and they may be the highlight of the book.)

As for translations, Peter is right that you may as well put a big “kick me” sign on your back and hand out steel-toed boots. Everyone seems to enjoy nitpicking translation choices for French, German, and Greek words.

It’s a noble enterprise, making things readable for those who do not know the original language. Try to imagine how different things would be in continental philosophy if there were no English versions of Heidegger, Deleuze, and so forth. Try to imagine the history of philosophy if Aristotle had been left only in Greek! (Thomas Aquinas and Averroes are two of the important people who happened to be unable to read Greek.)

However… three book translations was enough for me, unless some “labor of love” situation arises where some incredible and previously obscure book needs to be translated and no one else will do it. The problem, I found, is that translation and original work use up the same brain space for me. That’s not true for administrative work and original work, or at least not for me… I can write administrative reports during the day and still come home and write philosophy at night. But I cannot translate and do philosophy on the same day. Perhaps that’s just a personal quirk; I don’t know.