Editorial Process

Will, Bibliotheca's copy chief—the one who keeps this enormous editorial process a well-oiled machine.

Editorial Overview

“What we’re doing,” as our copy chief put it, “is like taking an old print of a great 1930s film and refining it, to bring out all its richness, which requires going frame by frame—not imposing our opinions about how it should look, but only helping it shine as the great artwork it is.”

The copy team will have laid a careful eye on every sentence, word, letter, and punctuation mark. Two other enhancements we’ve been able to make are the addition of quotation marks to speech (where the ASV has none) and the incorporation of line breaks to books of poetry that are typeset as prose in the ASV (e.g., the Book of Isaiah).

Editorial Process

The entire editorial process has several levels of checks and balances due to the fact that editorial is so important in order to give this body of text the attention it deserves. Each stage of Editorial reviews the entire body of text of 1,034,829 words (all 5 volumes of Bibliotheca). Here is the list of steps involved with Editorial: 

Pre-Copy Editing (~1 millions words)

• Chief Editor selection
• Stylesheet creation (ongoing) 
• Find and Replace word list creation (ongoing)
• Supplied word analysis
• Hebrew/Greek Marginal Incorporations begins (ongoing)

Copy Editing (~1 millions words)

• Team of 10+ professionals assembled and trained by chief copy editor
• Edit entire text against stylesheet (ongoing) 
• Edit entire text against increasing word list and supplied words analysis
• Add words in question to words review list 

Editorial Review (~1 millions words)

• Review all edits from Copy Editing of entire text for accuracy
• Compare all edits made from entire text with research that includes but is not limited to the KJV, Young’s Literal Translation, the Douay-Rheims, several modern translations, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon, N. T. Wright, Richmond Lattimore, Rotherham, Brenton’s Septuagint and Apocrypha, et multa cetera.
• Research and reconcile all words from word review list
• Except changes and update all documents for team to review
• Approach and research all parallels

Final Editorial Review (~1 millions words)

• Review all edits from Editorial Review of entire text for accuracy - submit for initial typesetting
• Compare all edits made from entire text with research that includes but is not limited to the KJV, Young’s Literal Translation, the Douay-Rheims, several modern translations, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon, N. T. Wright, Richmond Lattimore, Rotherham, Brenton’s Septuagint and Apocrypha, et multa cetera.
• Research and reconcile all words from word review list
• Review all edits from first round of proofreading - submit to typesetting
• Review all edits from second round of proofreading - submit to typesetting
• Final review of all text - submit for final typesetting

Typesetting (~1 millions words each step)

• First round of typesetting - then sent for Proofreading round
• Second round of typesetting - then sent for 2nd Proofreading round
• Final round of typesetting - then sent for final review

Proofreading (~1 millions words each step)

• All resource books digitized
• Special review team assembled through Peach Tree Editorial
• First round of proofreading of entire text - then edits sent for review
• Second round of proofreading of entire text - then edits sent for review

At times the English of the ASV can be overly flowery/convoluted where the original Hebrew or Greek is comparatively terse/concise. So, as a supplemental text, I will occasionally incorporate the syntax (word-order) of Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) of 1862 (though I am using the revised edition of 1898), which was even more committed to formal literalism than the ASV. Although it is at many points overly technical and even unintelligible, sometimes Young’s translation is profoundly closer to the economy of means of the original Hebrew and Greek than the ASV. (This is probably owing to the fact that, unlike the committee of the ASV, Young was not concerned with preserving the style of the King James Version.) My basic rule is that I use Young’s translation only if it is closer to the syntax of the original languages, and is at least as intelligible as the ASV.

More Information about Editing the ASV with the YLT:

Since the launch and funding of this project, I've discovered there are quite a few out there who are understandably concerned about the amalgamation of the ASV and Young's Literal Translation.

Before I get into this I would like to state that I did anticipate, for this campaign at least, that I would not, and could not, please everyone in this regard. Although, I hope the success of this project will allow me to make this set available in other translations and even languages in the future.

One's preference of translation is ultimately a matter of personal taste and theological bent. I chose the ASV because it is my favorite complete translation; the one among all I would change the least (besides, obviously, the redundant archaisms). And Young's would be on the same plane if it weren't for his strange, yet defensible, choices with grammatical tense.

I appreciate, and view as unsurpassed, many aspects of both translations I've chosen to utilize. The ASV was aiming for a formal literalism beyond that of the King James, but was also concerned with preserving the excellent literary character of the English. To that end, it even reintroduced phrases and vocabulary from earlier translations, as far back as Tyndale, the father of the English Bible (whose excellent but incomplete translations I considered incorporating as well). Young strove to remain true, more than any other English translator before him, to the syntax, idiom, and grammatical tense of the Hebrew and Greek.

In short, I regard both of these translations as authoritative and excellent as any contemporary translation—and I am not alone in that opinion. I have chosen them because I believe they suit the aim of this project: to provide a rich, engaging literary experience of the biblical literature in English.

One very important note: I would like to be clear that the use of the YLT will be extremely minimal. I am estimating less than 1%. Also, the changes will be mainly to syntax, not vocabulary.

For example:

The ASV has, "[ . . . ] male and female created he them."

Young has, "[ . . . ] a male and a female He prepared them."

Let's say I decide that the use of two consecutive pronouns, "he them," in the ASV is too strange. I would not then change the ASV to Young's,

"[ . . . ] male and female He prepared them."

but to,

"[ . . . ] male and female he created them."

It's only the syntax, under Young's authority, that I've adopted; the only change being the placement of the words "he" and "created." I will not be making choices on a whim, but only in places such as this, where intelligibility and readability are in question.

Perhaps the above example is not the best, since I am not sure I would actually change the ASV here, but it does illustrate my approach. Sometimes this approach will result in the rearrangement of an entire sentence in which Young has been more frugal with his words, but again, only if clarity in the ASV is an issue.

I will be faithful to the meaning and the sense of the ASV. Even in places where I disagree, I will not change the meaning or the sense.