The editing of non-native texts and translation: evidence from the EUROCOM corpus

The present paper investigates the editing of texts written by non-native authors on the part of native editors. The aim is to verify whether edited non-native texts display “universal” patterns similar to those observed in translations. After outlining the cognitive and socio-cultural basis of this hypothesis, universal patterns of translation are tested on a corpus of English texts produced within the European Commission by non-native writers and subsequently revised by native editors. The analysis of the edited versions, which are compared both to their source texts and to texts originally written in English, reveals numerous implicitating / explicitating shifts, the use of a more standard and simpler language, as well as traces of interference from the source texts.