Certo che c'è l'umlaut

Sia come matematico che come traduttore, ho a che fare con qualcuno che revisiona il mio testo. In genere le mie esperienze sono state positive. Non mi è capitato di avere particolarmente da ridire sulle modifiche proposte: in qualche caso mi sono chiesto perché il revisore pensasse che il suo intervento fosse una miglioria, in altri ho apprezzato io stesso la modifica. Comunque ne ho visto abbastanza per rendermi conto di quanto possa essere snervante per un vero scrittore, che per giunta tratta di argomenti seri e a tratti dolorosi, vedersi modificato arbitrariamente il testo:

If I wrote that people “retreated,” why would he suggest “withdrew”? If I chose “polite,” why nudge me with “proper”? And if I described someone at a reading having asked me a question “softly,” how could he come up with “hesitantly”? I had been there and the question wasn’t hesitant, it was soft–those aren’t the same things.

And not only that, he was wrong on one point after another. Our family had always avoided German products but I have come to enjoy Jakobs Krönung coffee. His note on that was that Google said there was no umlaut over the letter “o.” Well, I knew he was wrong, but I had a bag of those beans in my freezer and double-checked. Of course there’s an umlaut; that’s the German spelling. Had he bothered to click on one of his Google links he might have seen an actual photo of a bag of Krönung beans. Is this petty? Yes. And that’s what happens too often with copy editing–you find yourself in an argument over small points with a total stranger who you’ll never meet. It's a weird mix of intimacy, hostility, and distance.


Il resto di quello che scrive in proposito Lev Raphael si può leggere in "Stet! Stet! Stet!" (Apprendo in quest'occasione che "stet" è usato in inglese come in italiano si usa "vive", per indicare che una correzione indicata in una bozza dev'essere ignorata.)