The Translation E-Buzz

Employee Profile
Ashley Benning

When I went to college, like many people, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and was jealous of the people who had a major set from the start. I chose a major based on the short-term goal of wanting to travel in Europe again. The first time I went to Europe was when I graduated from high school in Augusta, Georgia. My grandmother had set aside money for each of her three grandkids to go on a tour organized by one of our high school teachers. I was the youngest and the last to go. That year the U.S. sent bombers to Libya. Long story short: the tour was canceled, but I went abroad anyway—to meet and travel with my sister who was studying in Paris at the time. I majored in German and spent a year studying in Austria. What an experience! Not only did it nurture an appreciation of languages and other cultures, but studying German has gotten my foot in the door for every interesting job I’ve had since college. My German language foundation produced a string of other interesting opportunities.

What do you do with a degree in a European language? Go to Japan, of course. My first job out of school was teaching English on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. The application process favored candidates who had studied a language and who had lived outside the U.S. When I returned to the U.S., I answered an ad for data entry with knowledge of French, Italian, or German. This led to my first job in publishing at the Schwann music catalogs in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and indirectly to later publishing jobs with art house publishers in New York and an Asian interest publisher in Boston.

Now I work at McElroy Translation part-time as a proofreader, where I can use my language major, my experience in Japan, and my publishing background. At McElroy the subject matter is constantly changing. When I am not at McElroy, I run my own freelance copy editing and proofreading service, make my own prints, play with my cat, and fight ivy in my backyard in hopes of someday having a garden. I still like to travel; so far I have been to 20 different countries and 28 U.S. states. I intend to increase those numbers.

This month’s employee profile features Ashley Benning, who serves in the vital role of proofreader at McElroy Translation. Proofreading is one of the 9-stage Quality Assurance processes that we use to optimize quality and accuracy. This AP article about Bible proofreaders mentions that “Bible readers are less forgiving of errors because they expect perfection in the Bible text.” McElroy Translation has cultivated a client base that also expects rigorous attention to detail.

Bible Proofreaders Sweat the Small Stuff

Peachtree City, GA, May 19, 2004—Thank the Lord and the proofreaders at Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading that the Bible refers to “our ancestors” instead of “sour ancestors,” and calls for an end to “factions” not “fractions.” The proofreading service caught those typos and others before the latest edition of the Holy Book went to press. At Peachtree, attention to detail is more than a job description. It’s a calling. “Bible readers are less forgiving of errors because they expect perfection in the Bible text,” said June Gunden, who founded the business along with her husband, Doug. Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading Service is believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation and one of only a few in the world to specialize in proofreading Bibles. “As many words as there are in the Bible, you can imagine all the kinds of things that could go wrong,” said David R. Shepherd, publisher of the Holman Christian Standard Bible. “It would be devastating to have a typo in the wrong place or a word left out.”

A list hangs in the Gundens’ office as a reminder of just how much rides on their work. The list, a collection of notorious typos found in the Bible, features one prominent error from a 1631 King James edition: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” “Obviously, you try to make sure anything that says, ‘You shall not,’ you make sure you have the ‘not,’” Doug Gunden said. While such long-ago errors are good for a chuckle, the Gundens, who have been in the proofreading business for more than 25 years, realize that proofreading a Bible is serious stuff. With an ordinary book, “you can put up with more because it’s not something you’re basing your whole life on,” June Gunden said. “It’s information, but it’s not really life-changing information. It’s not something you believe to be infallible.”

The best-selling book of all time has reached even greater heights in recent years, with Bible sales accounting for almost $140 million last year, an 8 percent increase over 2002, according to the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, which tracks sales at Christian stores.

Publishers have been producing new, annotated editions with study notes and graphics all of which require the Gundens’ services. “In the last three months, we’ve had more calls for new Bibles that people want us to get on our schedule than I can remember,” June Gunden said.

Wall-to-wall bookshelves at the Peachtree office display the hundreds of Bibles that have passed under the eyes of the 17-person staff. The staff recently finished one of its largest projects, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the latest of only a dozen English translations produced since the 15th century. The 20-year, $10 million project employed about 100 biblical scholars, linguists and editors to translate the Bible from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic into modern English. For the last two years, the project was in the hands of the Peachtree staff, which combed each page repeatedly, looking for such things as typos and punctuation errors.