ABSTRACT
Any form of textual editing, stylistic or otherwise, is intrinsically an operation carried out in writing on a pre-existent written text. (Even editing spoken dialogue is normally performed on a written transcript.) That is, the editor already has at least an approximate draft form of a text. Basic editing, of course, is concerned with eliminating gross errors - anything from incorrect spelling or punctuation, through ungrammatical constructions to obscure, ambiguous or misleading sentential configurations; all the linguistic levels of textual variables require checking for mistakes. When the object of editing is a 'IT, this process has to include checking back to the ST to make sure that its basic literal meaning has not been misrepresented in the TT. Nevertheless, a lot of this stage of textual editing is done on the 'IT as a TL object in its own right, without reference to the ST. In a sense, therefore, the transitional process of stylistic editing is a post-translational operation used for tidying up an almost complete TT, and is done with as little reference as possible to the ST.
