Poor quality books

A tale of caution...

I used to write the history notes for a certain Czech model company's kits. They would be sent to a friend in Prague who would then translate them into Czech.

On more than one occasion, the manufacturers then "lost" my original English text and got one of their folks to re-translate the Czech back into "English"...

I found it quite amusing - until I started to get some flak for my poor command of my own language! Fortunately, I've kept all my original texts.

They do their own stuff now... Which accounts for a lot!

In many cases, what we find in E European books is a lack of the current English vernacular and idiom, with literal translations from the native idiom, not all of which work!

However, I've also come across some howlers in books written by Brits!

In one book, on a famous Allied WW2 tank, there's a picture of an SP gun variant. The source correctly identifies it as what it is, but the writer states the source has misidentified the SP gun and calls it something else! If he'd known his subject material, he'd have realised that the source caption was, in fact, correct.

In this case, I was so annoyed at the number of errors, almost one on every page, that I contacted the publishers. They weren't at all bothered!

Ah well, I'd of done it proper, innit?

The latest FSM special issue "How to Paint & Weather Scale Models" has an article that is so poorly written that it couldn't possibly have been proofread. Spelling, punctuation & just plain wrong words are prevalent throughout the article. I could barely read it. I expect, at a minimum, basic literacy from a national magazine.

Have you expressed your concern to the publisher directly, or are you just shouting into the wind?

You have a very valid complaint, but you're not expressing it in a very useful fashion.

Bruce Melbourne, Australia

By far the best (worst?) translation appeared on the boxes used for the Nitto 1/76 scale vehicle dioramas back in the late '60s. Even at that time the treatment give to the Japanese people via WWII propoganda had become a symbol of racism.

Nitto certainly didn't help with their boxes titles "Diolamas"! I always thought that they should have done a scene containing a male goat, a baby sheep and a bell, creating a Ram a Lamb a Ding Dong Diolama!

Sorry about that.

Tom

Proof reader, not editor. But do you hire one when Johnny cain't read in the first place?..

...I had the same complaints about the IPMS/USA Journal when I discontinued my membership. Seems to have cleaned up a bit now, though I'm not an avid reader of it.

snipped-for-privacy@netscape.com wrote: : : By far the best (worst?) translation appeared on the boxes used for : the Nitto 1/76 scale vehicle dioramas back in the late '60s. : Have you read some of the "English" on the side of the Trumpeter KV series? "Quick fried tower"? "backstroke of war"? Hilarity. Of course, my Mandarin and Cantonese is likely to be worse...

Bruce

Yes, it bugs the heck out of me when I read badly spelled English. I'm one of those rare spelling snobs and in the past 20-some years I've gotten fussy about grammar and syntax too. My high school English teachers would probably not believe it. Having been in the book printing business, I'm amazed that so much does not get mangled. We used to get galley proofs that had to be corrected again and again. Sometimes it seemed like no job ever got done: it just rotated back to us every couple of days. On top of that, whatever we were doing had to be slapped together to get sent to the author for checking. If something was wrong that was not germane to the inspection we were supposed to fix it next time around. There were many signs around the paste-up room with some version of "Why Is There Never Enough Time To Do It Right The First Time But Always Enough Time To Do It Over?" Perhaps printers are feeling the pressure to eliminate some of those time- and money-consuming tasks and 'doing it over' got shown the door.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I have filled out & mailed in Schiffer's little comment cards & mailed them & Squadron doesn't seem to care to correct mistakes pointed out in their catalogs or online, so I imagine they don't care about the books either. I have one book, I don't recall the title, but IIRC, it's about aircraft at Chino, Ca. Photo captions incorerectly identify types but one of the biggest goofs is talking about the Japanese replicas used in the movie "Toro, Toro, Toro". I emailed the publisher/author/whatever & their comment was "If you aren't satisfied with the book, you may return it."

On Aug 1, 6:02 pm, Bruce Probst wrote:

Mad-Modeller wrote: : : If something was wrong that was : not germane to the inspection we were supposed to fix it next time : around. There were many signs around the paste-up room with some : version of "Why Is There Never Enough Time To Do It Right The First Time : But Always Enough Time To Do It Over?" : It is not confined to the publishing business. The software industry sees it all of the time as well.

I think the problem is due to that species that is a combo of "billy the big-mouth bass" and bobble head dolls - marketeers.

Years ago, I was called to an "all hands" meeting. The site mangler was 15 minutes late. No explaination was given for the meeting, and the first words out of his mouth were:

"Can we do it?"

The lasting impression was of the engineers looking at each other wondering "do what?" and the bobble heads all doing their thing.

Any way, it seems the words ost commonly heard for the marteting types is "market window!", like it is a holy mantra (for them, it probably is).

Bruce

Bruce Burden wrote::

I can't understand why, once they get it to that point in translation, they just don't let someone who has English as their first language look at it and polish it up. They wouldn't need to understand Mandarin or Cantonese, just plain English.

Pat

Same here; I hated grammar in high school, but graduated from college with a minor in English.

Pat

Simple:

On time, within budget, within specs: pick two of three.

Back in 1985 I got together with two friends in France and published Encyclopedia des Maquettes 1/72. There were a couple of caption errors, but the extensive listings were quite close to being free of errors. Of course the listings were out of date before the book came out, but the tons of color has kept the book in demand ever since. The listings proved to be a good historical footnote on the 1/72 scene in

In 1988 Airlife in the UK and TAB in the US picked up the title as Encyclopedia of Military Models 1/72 and published new editons (I still have a few copies of the TAB editon available). Neither felt that correcting the messed up captions were worth the effort, not a big problem. TAB, however, managed to leave out a huge section of the vehicle listings, forcing them to publish inserts at great expense, the cost of which somehow came from our meager cut. The last edition in Italy corrected the ommision.

I was quite embarassed that it took the American publisher to muck things up. The next book (covering WWI IN 1/72 scale) shall be either self-published or be monitored very closely.

Tom

Ouch! >_<

Actually, either or both. Copy editors will also look for clarity, proper word use, etc. Proofreaders should mainly be concerned with finding typos, etc. provided that the copy editor has done his/her job correctly.

Ironic, considering that it doesn't *really* take all that much time to do it right in the first place - it just takes a combination of ability and willingness. But both appear to be in short supply these days.

Or, "This sure is a lot of bull!"

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr. ;)