Virtual Team Project – Week
4
Here we are, in the last week of editing. Well, maybe not. I am sure that the translation team’s work will highlight ways to improve the source text. But I will focus on editing this week. Based on discussions with other students in the programme and the blog posts of some of these students, this task has proved challenging for many teams.
The Team 2 process
Two weeks ago, our first draft served as a process for
the writing /editing team to research the product and structure in sequential
order all the content we needed to tackle. Each of the four writing team
members participated in this draft one after the other, building on the
previous writer’s input. This was the research & structure part of our
process. This first draft had ca. 1,400 words (200 words over the maximum
limit).
Then, one writing team member pared down this content to its most essential components and steps and proposed style guidelines. We were now at ca. 650 words (250 words under the minimum). This gave us a clear view of our goal: we needed to make all these steps as usable as possible, in plain language, and we could add between 250 and 550 words. 250-550 words are really not that much when they include the cover, table of contents, captions and glossary.
For the last ten days, the writing team has been adding content to this draft and editing it based on each other’s feedback. Members involved in the translation and final proofreading also offered feedback. As tracked changes piled up, every few days, we resolved feedback and created an updated version. By Tuesday of this week, we could see that the editing flow had dried up.
As a translator, I always found editing – in particular, self-editing – to be more draining than the actual writing or translating. Firstly, the brain tends to read faster than the eyes, guessing what is written instead of reading it, so you can easily miss typos and obvious errors, especially when you know the text already. So, editing requires a higher level of attention to detail. On the other hand, editing is a never-ending process because you can always improve the text. Any new pair of eyes can bring new improvements. The risk, then, is to lose sight of the big picture. Editing is about striking a balance between insufficient and excessive criticism, but also knowing when to take a step back.
A new pair of eyes
On Wednesday evening, we still had unresolved feedback
and we still had to do most of the formatting – which would require more
feedback. We needed to do all this by Friday in order to be on time for the
second test before the final proofreading. Among all team members, I realised
that I was the most likely choice to offer a new point of view.
In general, I think the project manager should avoid
taking on development tasks. The project manager leads and coordinates the team,
and he /she makes decisions. If he /she produces work as part of the
development, his /her objectivity might be called into question. During the two
weeks of writing and editing, I skimmed over the content, made suggestions to
get the feedback rounds started and then I concentrated on other members’
feedback. I avoided creating content. However, by Wednesday, it became clear
that I might be able to unlock our situation by making editing decisions, so I
resolved the feedback, did the formatting (except the cover), and inserted the
graphics we had.
My intention was not to impose arbitrary decisions – I
kept a copy of all the feedback for reference. But when you are stuck, implementing
ideas can be the solution to decide whether to discard or keep them. Only by
seeing what your ideas look like in context can you really test their adequacy.
Also, I am glad that the writing team only implemented limited formatting until Wednesday. They focussed on sequencing the content appropriately, which provided a clear template for me to propose a visual identity with MS Word styles, a glossary, navigation links, etc. Though the formatted document looks very close to the previous version, the different fonts, colours, spacing, etc., seemed to help the writing team to see the content with fresh eyes. It also moved us toward the testing phase as team members reported potential compatibility and usability issues.
Had we followed a different writing process, we could have avoided this situation or solved it differently. For example, we could have split the writing /editing team between two writers and two editors, with the editors working simultaneously or sequentially. In case of editing fatigue, the writers could have taken over again. The two writers and two editors would have worked in cycles. Instead, because of clashing schedules, the writing /editing team organically adopted a four-people collaborative configuration. This configuration worked for this small, non-technical project, but I recognise that it may be too messy for larger scope projects. Laziness is also a risk, especially in a one-person editing team: feeling relieved that you have overcome your editing inertia, you may be tempted to think that your editing work is finished.
Conclusion
When I write or translate, I tend to spend most of my time on the first draft. I want it to be as close to the final version as possible. Not that I hate editing. I don’t, and editing will happen anyway. But projects like this virtual collaboration highlight the biggest challenges of editing: getting stuck in never-ending feedback and striking a good balance between excessive corrections and missed errors. While the solution I described here is not viable for every project type and configuration, I believe that, with careful follow-up, it can be a valid option to overcome inertia after several editing loops.
The Budding Techcomm Blogger 