Notes from the Field, Carol Field

What’s the purpose of your assignment to India?

More and more of Aptara’s customers, many of them college textbook and STM publishers, are requesting off-shore services, including copy editing, but they’re concerned that copy editors who are non-native English speakers might not be prepared to deal with the nuances of American English. I came to India to figure out what our Delhi copyediting team needed to know and to determine the best way to teach it to them.

Aptara’s editors have been copyediting journal content for many years and had become expert in particular journal styles, but copyediting books was a more recent challenge. Different types of books have different editing requirements. For example, using acronyms freely in a handbook might be necessary to keep sentences short so that they fit well in the small trim size, but the use of acronyms in a medical education book might be  discouraged. And, sometimes, using acronyms can be downright counterproductive. I came across a sentence in a textbook recently that read “The TFCC is a complex of tissues that provides support for the DRUJ and the UC.” Who can read that?

What have you learned regarding training off-shore copy editors?

Interestingly, it has little to do with the fact that the copy editors are off-shore. I’ve found that the training needs to reflect client-specific processes. Some clients want very light copyediting and others expect a certain amount of rewriting. Determining the client and author expectations is key to providing good editorial services. Knowing which questions to ask before the editing begins and how to ask them are very important. I like to think that I’ve successfully put in place, over the past months, processes that facilitate better communication of requirements from clients and authors to Aptara’s copy editors.

When did you arrive? What was it like?

My husband and I arrived on November 29, 2008. Delhi was dry, dusty, and chaotic! I thought I had prepared myself for the traffic (by watching videos of Indian traffic on YouTube), but it was still a shock to actually experience it first-hand. It appears that the rules of right-of-way are based solely on the size of the vehicle: first buses, then trucks, then cars, then auto-rickshaws, then bicycle rickshaws, then bicycles, and last the pedestrians. Oh, I forgot to mention that cows have the very first right of way. We were pretty much in culture shock for the first month.

At Aptara, though, I found that everyone was very eager to help us get settled. We stayed at Aptara’s guest house for the first month and were very well taken care of by Darshan, who oversees everything to perfection and is one of the most pleasant people you’ll ever meet. Others at Aptara helped us find housing, open bank accounts (not easy in India), hire a driver, figure out the word for flour (atta) and other staples, buy movie tickets, and decide which markets to frequent.

How did you go about training the copy editors?

At first, I needed to determine the precise skill level of each copy editor, so I conducted classroom sessions on topics such as the use of definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an, some). The classroom sessions were followed by detailed testing. I have kept the original tests and will give them again before I leave Delhi, so that I can measure everyone’s progress. After a few months of classroom training, we moved to one-on-one training, which involves my reading, marking up, and reviewing each edited article or book chapter with the copy editor. Eventually, we arrived at a point where the copy editors can just highlight their questions, and we no longer need to do a word-by-word review of their work.

What are some difficulties faced by the Indian copy editors?

Well, as in other languages, understanding English is very context-dependent. The word “wound” can mean either an injury or the past tense of “wind.” The word “pulses” means lentils in India.

Sometimes, when explaining the meaning of an English word, it is not always possible to come up with an equivalent that can be understood by an Indian audience. The same is the case when attempting to explain Indian terms to an English-speaking audience: sometimes an equivalent does not exist.

My friend and colleague Meenakshi told me a story about her 4-year-old nephew who goes to school in Salt Lake City, Utah. He took his visiting grandmother, dressed in her traditional sari to school one day for show-and-tell. He explained to the class that one thing he enjoys doing with her is making rotis. The teacher said “what are rotis?” He replied “they’re like chappati.” She said, “what’s chappati?’ He said “it’s like parantha.” (For those who don’t know Indian food, they are all flat breads.)

As I mentioned before, another difficulty is with the use of definite articles. How are “take me to the hospital” and “take me to a hospital” different? And then to further complicate the question, the Brits say just “to hospital.”

You’ve been in India for nine months. Do you think that U.S. publishers can expect high-quality copy editing done there?

Yes, without any question. The key to success is to find qualified people and train them very well in the client context. We’ve had success by focusing on locating new candidates who have advanced degrees in English rather than hiring, say, someone with a science or engineering background. We’ve also found editors—Americans and Indians—who were educated in the United States and are now living in India.

Then, of course, some of Aptara’s copy editors have been with the company for 15 years or more and already know the publishing business inside and out. They will be a great asset for developing the training program going forward.

You’re leaving in September to go back to the U.S. Would you like to return to India?

Yes, I would. Even though I’ve been here for nine months, I feel like I’m just now beginning to understand how and what kind of training is needed to successfully copyedit offshore. I’ve started to see where the copy editors’ pain points are.

I’ve also learned a bit about how to live in Delhi. When we first moved into our Delhi apartment, we thought it would be fun to have a Tandoori oven, so we looked on the Internet and saw some models that cost around a thousand (dollars not rupees), so we quickly forgot about that. Just yesterday, however, I discovered that cheap Tandoori ovens are available in electrical appliance shops all over the city. I wish I’d known that nine months ago. All those great Tandoori dishes we could have had!

Seriously, I have really enjoyed my stay in India. The people are wonderful and are very welcoming. The copyediting teams are very eager and appreciative of whatever I can teach them. I hope it’s been as worthwhile for them as it has been for me.

Carol Field, an SSP member, is Director of Publishing Services for Aptara, a U.S. company that provides on-shore and off-shore editorial, production, and conversion services to many STM publishers. She is currently based in Aptara’s offices in New Delhi, India.