Sarah Terry

Thanks!

I've been asked to check over some new endmatter for a book I've proofread, and the Acks hadn't been added previously. Now they give a thanks 'to proofreader extraordinaire Sarah Terry' :-) I think I should get a badge made reading 'Proofreader Extraordinaire'. What do you reckon?

I'm sure it is. First time I've seen one in the wild though!

Screenshot of a Facebook Marketplace advert for a chaise longue, headed 'She is long', with the wording 'She is long for sell'

"She is long"

Like a snake?

Or eternal teenagers?

professional teenagers?

Advert for Suri electric toothbrushes with the caption 'Want a dentist-level clean but don't want to put trousers on?' To the right of the caption is a hand holding the toothbrush in question. The person holding the toothbrush is obviously wearing traditional-style long-sleeved striped cotton pyjamas.

Have I been brushing the wrong part of me all these years?

'I sniff with my nose'

What else would I be sniffing with?! Snippity snip!

#AmEditing

#Authors, why is a proofread/final review post-copyedit important?

Today I'm reviewing a client's revisions following my copyedit, and while I'm mostly just accepting her tracked revisions, I have found one spot where an edit removed the space between words and one where an edit left an extra "e".

Potayto, potahto

Erm...

😂 Yorkshire AI?

These are absolutely breathtaking! You're so talented!

You're doing the right thing in being open and honest about your reality. Disability and chronic illness shouldn't be things people feel to hide, and in opening up publicly, you're showing others that they're not alone. (It still sucks that things are extra difficult at the moment for you, though x)

I love this video so much!

My eldest (15) is a metalhead, and also has ASD and severe ADHD, which means he doesn't always behave how you'd expect him to, particularly at evening events when his meds have worn off. At metal gigs he's been always made to feel really welcome and people love his enthusiasm for the music 🥰

Imagine doing a side-by-side comparison of a classic work in translation, one version by a professional translator and the other by a bot. One Hundred Years of Solitude wouldn't have the same impact on readers if it had been AI-translated. You cut corners, you lose nuance - and respect.

And it's fucking terrifying. So many people basically sticking their fingers in their ears and saying 'la la la, I can't hear you' as the world breaks down around them

I'm concerned that a poorly AI-translated novel may not be well edited either and then considered 'good enough' bc it's saved the publisher money. I don't want a flood of mediocre translated literature; I want prose that sings, that's been translated by someone who truly understands the source text.

Oh no 😞 That's such a shame for her. It must be difficult to judge the quality of an AI translation if your knowledge as an author of the target language is limited.

Oof. At least I knew what I was getting into from the beginning! I can't believe they'd not tell you in advance about the use of AI 🙄

I imagine pay levels depend on the company or publisher. In my experience, the amount different publishers expect to pay for similar jobs varies surprisingly much.

I'm being paid reasonably well, but my main reason for taking the job was out of curiosity. It's not an area of editing I want to explore more, that's for sure.

It's incredibly intensive work, and the finished product will be nowhere near as good as it would have been with an actual human translator, because I am not a professional translator and am having to partially translate and partially edit as I go along.

I'm currently editing something that was AI-translated, and it can't cope with non-English proper nouns and sometimes it'll try to translate them into their literal meaning, it'll translate the same word in several different ways that don't fit the context, no one talks like actual humans, etc.

AI translation service launched for fiction writers and publishers prompts dismay among translators UK-based GlobeScribe is charging $100 per book, per language for use of its services, but translators say that nuanced work can only be produced by humans

Whole book “translated” for $100? You get what you pay for, and if you don’t understand what makes human translators valuable, maybe you don’t value the creative work that goes into the writing process either.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Sometimes #editing is about spotting timeline inconsistencies and fixing grammar, and sometimes it's about explaining why a YA novel translated from another language can't contain the sentence 'J is fingering her ring' when it's talking about an actual ring. On a person's finger.

The radical 1960s schools experiment that created a whole new alphabet – and left thousands of children unable to spell Decades ago, a generation of UK schoolchildren unwittingly took part in an initiative aimed at boosting reading skills – with lasting consequences

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Such an interesting read 📖

A gravy-covered pie on a plate of food. The pie has a wedge cut out of it that looks a bit like an open mouth, and a pea has been dropped near the mouth so the pie resembles the video game character Pac-Man

Accidental Pac-Man. Husband thinks I should call him Magnum, because he has a pea eye

It's a brand of luxury car... Koenigsegg 😁