Editing Specialized Texts in English: A corpus-assisted analysis

This volume examines the editing of specialised texts as practised by the Editing Unit at the Directorate-General for Translation at the European Commission. Following a corpus-assisted approach, it compares two versions of the same texts, in their non-edited and edited versions. Using quantitative techniques from corpus linguistics, together with manual text analysis, the book examines the types of revisions made of a formal, grammatical and lexical nature, and on phraseological aspects of the texts. The conclusions drawn are that the written English representing supranational organisations such as the European Union Institutions continues to be norm-bound, adhering to standard British English. However, traces of influences from other European languages, in terms of false friends, and certain grammatical structures, characterise the corpus of edited texts more than reference corpora of British English. Similarly to translated language, edited language is also found to be characterised by explicitation and simplification.