05 March 2006
More fish wrap
Every single paragraph has been rewritten. Indeed the elements in most sentences have been switched round.
Does this matter? No, but it's immensely irritating. I'm not exactly new to this business.
This is a minor publication, with a limited circulation, in a backwater (although it pays a pretty decent word rate). I write for far more major publications that change not a single word. Of course, every magazine is entitled to its house style (and this is where the pleasure of writing, or the sense of doing something resembling art if you're naive enough to believe in such a thing, is lost in the reality of the jobbing craft of fitting in with an editor's wishes). So live with it. Time tends to do the same thing. But then Time pays rather more, and although the magazine's a comic disguised as a vehicle for news, it does pay rather more and carry a great deal more prestige. On the other hand any errors introduced are seen by rather more people.
So it's time to chant 'Fish wrap! Fish wrap! Fish wrap!' Here today, the outer covering of your take-away meal tomorrow.
It's not in this case as if the juggling has produced smoother, more readable text. It's not as if errors of grammar have been corrected. The overall tone is the same, the sentence lengths the same, the readibility just slightly lowered as some of the sentences have been made rather clumsy, and muddied by pointless paraphrasing. Someone clearly just has too much time on her hands.
But what I dislike most is the random introduction of factual errors.
I refer to a dish with wasabi as being Hong Kong-style, which is precisely what it is. Wasabi is one of those fashionable ingredients some Hong Kong chefs have adopted, and wasabi with prawns seems to crop up fairly frequently there. The new version says Cantonese-style. Cantonese is a cooking school which knows nothing of the Japanese ingredient, and there are no Cantonese dishes that use it. You may think this a small matter, but it's a pointless change, born of ignorance, and if you know anything about the matter, then it makes me look silly and ignorant, too.
The name of one restaurant has been misspelled during the rewrite, which adds to the feeling of ignorance, and makes my attitude to what is a first-class establishment seem rather casual. I'll have to make a little apology next time I'm talking to the PR manager, although she'll fully appreciate it's not my fault. The interior description has been rewritten to include an element I didn't mention and I'm fairly sure isn't even there.
Then there's a mangling of a description of Beijing's hutong:
The city's intricate grid of boulevards has changed over the centuries. It used to be filled in by siheyuan--cozy dwelling for Chinese nobility built around central courtyards--threaded by narrow, winding alleys, called hutong.
I certainly didn't write that the houses were all for the nobility (which they most certain were not), and this mangled version now suggests that the hutong ran straight through the houses, which is plain daft.
Here, just for reference, is the original:
Beijing once filled the space between a grid of boulevards with cosy courtyard houses called siheyuan that lined thread-like alleys called hutong, traditionally ‘as numberless as the hairs on an ox’.
I'm not claiming this is great art, but it is at least an accurate description.
The lesson here is not only what a miserable business this is, but that when, as is usual when you read a newspaper or magazine story on a topic you know something about you find it full of errors and misunderstandings, it isn't always right to curse or mock the author. You should often be cursing the editor or the subs.
In this case the editor, who clearly knows nothing about China at all, could simply have sent me the text for a quick read-through. This would have taken moments, and saved the magazine looking silly, too.
So here's a multiple choice question. What to do about it?
a) Send a scathing note to the editor.
b) Refuse to work for the magazine ever again.
c) Get on with life (and say 'fish wrap').
Answer:
a) is always tempting for a few minutes at least, but what separates the professionals from those wet behind the ears is just letting it go. You can do this when you're a famous name whose appearance in a magazine helps sell copies; otherwise, forget it. And who knows what this editor might go on to edit next? Lack of talent is no barrier to progress in this business, and anyway the complete circumstances of this mess are unknown. The mess wasn't made out of ill-will, for sure.
b) is called 'cutting off the nose to spite the face'. I've taken Murdoch's money enough times, I'll take these people's. (Where is the cheque, by the way?)
c) You guessed right. It's that or find something else to do.
But I do object to being made to look like an idiot. If I want to look like an idiot I can easily arrange it myself, and often do it involuntarily, so I'm in no need of further assistance.
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