The Editors' Weekly
Official blog of Canada's national editorial association
The Editors' Weekly
Navigation
  • About the Blog
  • Contact Us
  • Articles en français
  • editors.ca
  • reviseurs.ca
You are here: Home › Dwain Richardson › English Editing in Quebec: Proofreading Bilingual Documents
← Sleep Tight, Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite
On Community and Citizenship: How the Claudette Upton Scholarship Helped Bring My Career Into Focus →

English Editing in Quebec: Proofreading Bilingual Documents

July 31, 2018 | Filed under: Dwain Richardson and tagged with: bilingual documents, Dwain Richardson, English Editing in Quebec, multilingual documents, proofreading, quality assurance, style guides

For most of us, it is easy to proof documents written in one language. Copy editors and proofreaders are familiar with flow, style and grammatical rules as they pertain to their mother tongues.

Copyright: ylivdesign / 123RF Stock Photo

But what happens when working with a bilingual or multilingual document? How do you ensure consistency, especially when the standards of one language are not necessarily the same as those in others? What if the text in question involves languages that do not share the same alphabet as our western counterparts? (Think of Arabic, Chinese and Russian, for example.) This is where the proofreading process could get complicated.

Below are a few tips I have found helpful.

  1. Have a style guide or sheet at the ready. This was the one piece of advice I got from Elizabeth Macfie during a seminar I attended this spring. Fortunately for English- and French-language editors, government bodies and bookstores have a plethora of sources at our disposal. They usually dedicate several pages to formatting, capitalization, spacing and more in both official languages. Of course, no one guide is the same, and not all guides can fulfil the clients’ or organizations’ specific needs. Preparing an in-house style sheet comes in handy at this point, for you can set your own rules in accordance with stylistic preferences.
  1. Reach out to a copy editor or proofreader. Not every organization is equipped with an editorial team. To ensure quality assurance, think about seeking services from a copy editor or proofreader. If you are producing bilingual or multilingual documents, as is the norm in most federal circles, organizations across Quebec as well as international non-governmental organizations, it is advisable to contact a few copy editors or proofreaders, one in each language.
  1. Determine which editorial details are the same or different. Chances are, some elements are the same across each language. For instance, English and French agree that names of people and places should be uppercased. Both also concur that the first word of every sentence must be capitalized. But capitalization usage differs in generic versus specific contexts, organization names, book, music and visual art titles, and so on. Formatting is not the same, either. English, for example, generally sets select song titles and excerpts from large works in roman, and they are enclosed in quotation marks. In French texts I have seen, these same titles and excerpts are usually italicized. Familiarizing oneself with such differences is crucial when proofreading bilingual or multilingual documents.

I have been privileged to spearhead a production team with a Montreal-based non-profit organization for the past year and a half. These tips have proven handy for me, and the small team I manage agrees with these suggestions for ensuring that English texts have a consistent look. (Two of these colleagues oversee the French content.) Most of all, my team members believe that a style sheet is the way to go when producing press releases, promotional documents or other texts for publication.

Do you work with bilingual or multilingual documents? What tips do you have to help editors ensure quality assurance across the board?

___

Previous “English Editing in Quebec” post: All About Gender.

The Editors’ Weekly is the official blog of Editors Canada. Contact us.

Did you like this article? Share it with your friends!

Tweet

Written by Dwain Richardson

Dwain Richardson is a freelance editor, translator and writer currently based in Montreal. He’s particularly interested in the medical, arts and culture, education, and international development fields, and is also curious about language in multilingual environments.

Visit my Website Follow me on Twitter
← Sleep Tight, Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite
On Community and Citizenship: How the Claudette Upton Scholarship Helped Bring My Career Into Focus →

One Response to "English Editing in Quebec: Proofreading Bilingual Documents"

  1. Virginia St-Denis says:
    July 31, 2018 at 7:01 am

    Great tips, Dwain. I once worked for the National Aboriginal Health Organization where I produced documents in English, French, Inuktitut syllabics and Inuktituk Roman orthography. While my French is weak, I don’t know a syllabic of Inuktitut. Working with translators, I appreciated when they would proofread each others’ work when I sent them the mock-up. I could spot a missing subheading or when an old logo was used (the right one ended with an upside down J with a dot on top of it), but I relied on the translator proofreaders to do the rest. Do what you can, but acknowledge your limitations. We all have them.

Comments are closed.

What we’re talking about

Aaron Dalton author-editor relationship authors book editors book publishing communication copy editing editing editing tools editor editor's role editor advice editorial skills editors editors at work Editors Canada conference français freelance editing freelance editors freelancing French grammar interview James Harbeck language letter from the editor linguistics Linguistics Frankly Marianne Grier marketing networking plain language professional development proofreading publishing Rosemary Shipton révision style translation usage Wasted Words Wilf Popoff word choice writers writing

Email subscriptions

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,055 other subscribers

Most recent posts

  • Editing Indigenous Writing: A Nuanced Partnership
  • Encouraging Coworkers to See the Benefits of Editing
  • Meeting “In Real Life”: Conference 2023
  • The Editors’ Weekly en français
  • Editing for Authors on a Budget

Archives by month

By author

Follow Us Online

Facebook  Twitter  Flickr  RSS Feed

www.editors.ca

The Editors' Weekly is the blog of Editors Canada.

Report an error or a typo

Email us at blog [at] editors.ca

© 2023 The Editors' Weekly

Powered by One Designs