The Chennai Chapter of Chillibreeze held its second Writers’ Meet on May 1st. This time, it was a Meet with a real difference in that it featured two eminent Guest Speakers, Dr. Seethalakshmi Vishwanath and Ms Rajasree Ghosh .Both the speakers delivered very insightful talks, Dr. Seethalakshmi Vishwanath on “Translation and Essentials of Translation Services,” and Ms. Rajasree Ghosh on “Copy Editing and Essentials of Copy Editing Services.” The talks were a great learning experience for our participants and more so because there were long interactive discussions at the end of each session. It left the participants asking for more.In fact, at the end of it, there was a unanimous demand that the duration of CB Meets should be extended considerably, so that participants could interact even longer and benefit from the rich experience of such speakers.
Jayshree Bose, the Chennai Chapter Co ordinator, introduced the speakers before each session. Dr. Seethalakshmi, is a well-known, award-winning senior academician and also a translator par excellence, who has worked with Sahitya Akademi, Macmillan, Orient Longman and other similar prganizations.. The other speaker,young and dynamic Ms Rajasree Ghosh, now Senior Manager, Copy Editing, Quads Pre Press and earlier with TNQ Books and Periodicals, has 10 years of rich, indepth exposure to copy editing.What the participants appreciated most was that the topics of both the discussions were those that had been suggested by participants themselves at the earlier Chennai Meet. The co ordinator said that the other reason why these topics had been selected for discussion was that although both translation and copy editing were very important editorial services, they were often wrongly regarded as being of secondary importance. In this report, we have focused mainly on including some highlights from the discussions, so that writers from other Centers can also benefit to some extent from the discussions held at Chennai.
In her talk, Ms.Rajasree Ghosh explained, citing illustrative examples in each case (1)the responsibilities of a Copy Editor (2) the various levels at which copy editing is done (light, medium and heavy) and what each stage involves (3) the process and requirements of electronic editing, HTML tags, etc. (4) the need to use Track Changes (5) the importance of punctuation where the placing of a comma can change the sense of a sentence altogether, (6) consistency in use of British and American spelling,(7) placement of numbers such as in CO2 and numerous other important aspects of copy editing, replete with illustrative examples.
Dr. Seethalakshmi, who also used illustrative examples extensively during the course of her discussions, began by pointing out that (1) translation, which basically involved a transition from the original language to the target language, required the translator to have in depth knowledge of not only both languages but also of the culture of both the communities (2) in works of translation, it is necessary to go far beyond the literal and try to capture the essence of what the author has said in the book that is to be translated, through effective use of words (3) that translation has three levels such as translation, transliteration and transcreation (4) the need to understand culture-specific rituals and objects, which have to be explained by the translator through footnotes during the translation process, since many foreigners read translated works, but the original author does not provide them (5) the intricate challenges of translating a multi-dialectical book into English , which she had personally experienced when she took up the translation of a book written in three different Tamil dialects, into English while at the same time retaining the nuances of all three (6) the need to regard the second stage as the source language in a two-tiered translation as in the case of ,say, from Assamese to Hindi and again from Hindi to Tamil. In this case, the source language during the translation to Tamil should be regarded as Hindi. She also spoke of various other important aspects of translation.
During each interaction, participants had many queries, among them about possible openings in Chennai, to which both the speakers gave very specific answers—a very valuable input for our writers. The meeting ended amidst refreshments with mementos being presented to the Guest Speakers by Dr.Sunanda Ghosh, a senior academician and well-known writer who was one of our guests at the Meet, and the coordinator. At the end of it, participants were left asking for more.
Among suggestions given by our participants were (1) to have a workshop on photojournalism (2) guidance on how to write a book and get it published (3) host a workshop on creative writing, and other issues such as (4) the enormous value of these Meets in enabling networking with other like-minded people.
Related Links
Chillibreeze Workshops and events- Read all about them
Writing/Editing Certification
Writing for Chillibreeze- How to go about it?
Related posts:
- A Report of the Chillibreeze Writer Meet in Chennai
- Translation, Transliteration, Copy Editing: from the Peripheries to the Forefront
- A Report of the Writer Meet in Bangalore_April 2010
- Travel Writing Workshop Chennai Report
- A Report of the Chillibreeze Writer Meet in Delhi
Comments:
