The Editor’s Decisions in Editing Translation of Novel By The Time You Read This I’ll Be Dead

A published translation is not a translator’s original work. Many studies that have investigated the published translation give their suggestions only to the translator. In fact, there is an editor who handles the translator’s work and be the last decision maker of the work. The study of editor’s decision becomes crucial considering a few studies have investigated this topic. Hence, this article reveals the editor’s decision in editing the translator’s work (draft). The study was done by identifying the clauses edited by the editor, including the source text, draft (translator) version, and edited (editor) version; then classifying them into the terms of the editor’s decisions. The data were collected through purposive sampling from Julie Anne Peters’ novel entitled By The Time You Read This I’ll Be Dead. Meanwhile, the classification of editor’s decisions was done along with raters in focus group discussion. The results show that the editor changes the language style from informal to formal and conversely; changes the dictions; implies, explicates, and paraphrases the clauses; reduces and deletes the information; changes the target language into source language; adds, deletes, and changes the punctuation; and changes the word order. The editor’s decision that is significant is change the informal language style into the formal one. Furthermore, the editor is not consistent in editing the language style.