The Year: 1995
The Place: A leading publishing firm in Bombay
The copyeditor let out a sigh of frustration. She had been copyediting an English translation of an autobiography originally written in Marathi, for the past two weeks. Progress was slow, painfully slow, largely due to the poor translation, and the list of queries for the translator and/or author was growing by the hour.
“This is not translation, this is torture!” grumbled the copyeditor for what was probably the millionth time.
Then, the copyeditor came across a sentence that stumped her completely and she knew that she could go no further till this had been understood. The sentence in the manuscript read:
It was the full moon of the teacher.
“Full moon of the teacher? Full moon of the teacher? What on earth is that? asked the copy-editor aloud.
The copyeditor felt a headache coming on. She decided to walk around the office and see if her colleagues could help her figure out what “full moon of the teacher” was.
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