The Scobie Roadshow Slithers on...
There are better writers than I am who have already covered a lot of this week's Scobie Doo-Doo, but there is an area where I am well qualified to comment. I worked for many years as a multilingual researcher and translator. I worked with authors, TV shows, even a couple of movie producers. Oh and I translated medical reports for holiday-makers who'd had emergency treatment in Spain, which sometimes got a bit weird and once involved a bunch of daffodils.
When you're translating, the golden rule is: you are not allowed to change, add or omit anything, ANYTHING, that isn't in the original manuscript. Under pain of being sued for thousands of dollars. Changes, additions and omissions lie solely with the author, his editors and his publishers.
So why isn't Scobie suing his Dutch translators if the doo-doo is all their fault?
Answer: It's not their fault, they translated what they were given. No changes, no additions, no omissions.
Why isn't he suing his editors and publishers? Erm... I think money might come into that one. Massive, and possibly carefully calculated, publicity to enrich the Scobie by spreading the doo-doo.
As a translator, you receive the manuscript. You read it through in its entirety, several times, to get the feel for the author, his style, his grammar, his idio- idiopsycho- idiopsychosyncracies- wait, I'm good at my job - his pet peeves! And you make notes on how to replicate all this and reproduce his doo-doo in a different language. You print off a working draft of the original doo-doo, with additional spacing to allow for your careful thoughts (I'm old-fashioned, I like to do this bit with a pencil; the young ones probably do it all on computer these days) and you translate all the easy stuff you can do off the top of your head. Then you go through it again, filling in the worrying bits, usually with an assistant, editor or other colleague, and working on the style, grammar, punctuation, cliches, idioms and colloquialisms etc etc etc, always aiming to reproduce the author's authentic voice without getting too hung up on what a nasty piece of work you're dealing with.
You type up your final draft and submit it to the publisher. The whole process takes months of careful work, checking and double-checking and triple-checking.
There's no way the two names are there by accident.
On the positive side, Scobie's doo-doo has hit the fan and splattered right back in his face. He may think his face is so plastic and cleanable with a wet-wipe that the doo-doo will just slide off, but I don't see that happening. He's annoyed too many people.
Meanwhile the Montecito Twosome remain as Gruesome as ever. Shall we have a good pray for their well-being? Three, two, one...