WORKSHOP 4

Practical tools for improving text flow: focus on information ordering

‘Flow’ is a feature readers name as a hallmark of good writing but rarely define. This workshop introduces an easy-to-grasp analytical tool that takes the mystery out of English cohesion and helps manuscript editors and revisers of translations to manage flow in a reasoned, efficient way.

The concept that helps deconstruct how cohesion works in English goes by the name of theme–rheme analysis and it comes to us from the functional grammarians led by M.A.K. Halliday. It simply refers to the patterning of information content at the beginnings of sentences (theme, or what the sentence is about) and at the ends (rheme, or what is said about the theme). Looking at ties from rheme to theme, or along a parallel series of themes, gives editors, revisers and professional writing teachers a lens to focus on the flow of information across sentence boundaries and find solutions for confusing paragraphs quickly.

This workshop is an expanded version of the first 'flow' session piloted by MET in 2006. In this session we’ll focus only on information ordering and have more time to talk about how the concept applies to our real-life editing and revision problems. As in many MET workshops, we’ll close with an open discussion of some holistic editing problems.

Purpose | Description | Structure | Who should attend? | Outcome skills
Pre-meeting information | About the facilitator

Purpose

To learn a new approach to improving cohesion in complex texts. To gain insight into the variety of editing solutions that can fix unevenly drafted translations or problematic prose by inexpert writers, whether they are native or nonnative English speakers.

Description

1) We’ll first look at real examples of theme-rheme patterns in smoothly flowing prose in technical texts and some examples of choppy prose with erratic patterns.

2) Through a series of short editing tasks, participants will gain confidence in their ability to recognize patterns and see how shifting information order improves flow.

3) We’ll then apply theme–rheme analysis to more holistic editing of texts with mixed problems of confusing flow, surface errors and content inconsistencies—the sort of combination of textual difficulties we see when working with the prose of inexpert nonnative English speakers or revising our own or others’ translation drafts that still contain language interference or areas of unclear focus.

Structure

As described above.

Who should attend?

Authors’ or publishers’ editors and translators at any level of experience can benefit from the exchange of knowledge in this session. Translation revisers and quality assessors will learn about a systematic way to detect a text feature that makes reading difficult.

Outcome skills

Participants will have learned how to analyze and explain why a text doesn’t flow in terms of information ordering across sentences and how to improve theme–rheme flow.

Pre-meeting information

Reflect on the role and scope of editing in the electronic age.

Can language doctors be dispensed with? Russ Sprague, author of the “Proofreading” chapter in the AMWA’s second volume of Essays for Biomedical Communicators* says, “It depends on the tolerance level ... for embarrassing, misleading, confusing, and indecipherable written language.” Sprague is talking about editors as well as proofreaders and he makes a strong case for taking care to publish more readable prose.

Click the link to read the start of Sprague’s plea for companies and institutions to use professionals: http://www.amwa.org/default/publications/biovoltwo23.htm

Want to learn more about systemic-functional grammar?

Developed by M.A.K. Halliday and based on work by J.R. Firth and the Prague School, systemic-functional grammar is a bridge between syntactic analysis as we learned it in school—through which we examined word functions and rule-governed structures—and the communicative function of texts.

Googling will find as much information as you can take in, but to save time, try starting with this link from the University of Oslo. There are definitions, famous names, and quotations: http://folk.uio.no/hhasselg/systemic/

Want to come knowing a bit about theme–rheme in particular?

Again, the University of Oslo is a great source of information. Below are links to two brief sets of lecture notes from a course by Hilde Hasselgård and Stig Johansson. The examples are easy to assimilate and succinct. The first set is on theme: http://folk.uio.no/hhasselg/systemic/Textual.htm
And in the next set you’ll see why theme isn’t simply the subject of a clause: http://folk.uio.no/hhasselg/systemic/Textual2.htm
While reading about theme, you’ll grasp what rheme is from the examples.

*ESSAYS FOR BIOMEDICAL COMMUNICATORS:
Volume 2 of SELECTED AMWA WORKSHOPS
edited by Florence M. Witte and Nancy Dew Taylor, PhD.

About the facilitator

Mary Ellen Kerans, a biomedical translator and author’s editor, received her MA in TESOL from Teachers College, Columbia University and her background includes specific-purposes English and writing instruction as well as educational materials writing. She is presently the MET Council Chair.