On proofreading

There's nothing glamorous about proofreading. It's tedious, time-consuming, underpaid and absolutely essential. Nobody cares about proofreaders and yet they are indispensable.

It's rather sad that the world holds so little respect for those brave men and women, who obediently and diligently disentangle the knots and puzzles left to them by translators. And the knots and puzzles are always there becasue translators are essentially divided into two groups: those who are behind schedule and those who don't realize it yet.

And proofreading can be frustrating at times. Well, an experienced proofreader is probably immune to that but every time I get to proofread something of, shall we say, questionable quality, even my wife keeps her distance from me as I yell verbal abuse in the translator's general direction. All the more reason to respect those who do it on a daily basis.

So the next time you open a translated book, take a minute to think about the translator and then about the man or woman who actually made the translator's work readable.