ABSTRACT

Revision and post-editing are two tasks, both prone to subjectivity, that need clear guidelines in order to be performed efficiently. In both cases, some translators still feel the urge to improve all linguistic aspects because they want to achieve perfect quality, even though the guidelines state differently. This chapter discusses such over-editing behaviour. It is based on the data of three English-German studies and focuses on the qualitative analysis of keylogging data. In the first study, we asked 21 students to post-edit field-specific texts according to different PE guidelines. In the second study, 24 participants post-edited general language texts. In the third study, 38 translators were asked to revise translated texts. We manipulated the translations by inserting errors. The focus here is on similarities and differences in the behavioural data, considering different text types, instructions and participants, and differences between revision and post-editing. We highlight the characteristics and challenges of the analysed tasks and formulate some recommendations for time-efficient work. The results show that participants in all studies had problems suppressing their own quality standards and stylistic preferences: 30%–50% of the changes were characterised as over-editing in the post-editing tasks, as compared to 69% in the revision task.