Paula is the colleague we got to know in the August 2014 issue of PEGboard as a writer of fiction as well as an editor. She now lives in Portugal, is an ATE and specialises in engineering.

What life changes have affected your editing since August 2014?

Changing jobs

In the past 10 years, I’ve changed jobs twice.

After working at the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) for over 12 years, editing and preparing standards and technical documents for publication, I started working for an engineering company under the title of Technical Writer.

However, I didn’t have to produce the technical content as would be expected of a technical writer. It was generated by in-house engineers and external consultants. My job was to format the documents using MS Word styles and then to edit them to produce a cohesive report. Because I was used to editing national standards, specifically in the mechanical engineering discipline, I was able to adapt more easily to the new environment. But my not being an engineer was also useful. I could read the content ‘cold’ and check if it made sense as it stood on the page. Unlike the authors, I wouldn’t automatically know what was meant.

After moving to Portugal, I started working as a freelance editor. I am now exploring additional work opportunities, teaching English online.

Moving to a new country

Just before Covid-19 struck, my husband and I decided to move to Portugal. There were many reasons for the move. One of the main ones was to help my mom, who was 83 at the time and living alone in Lisbon. The move itself (us, our dachshunds, our possessions) was tough, and trying to sell a house during Covid with intermittent lockdowns was a challenge for want of a better word.

Moving to another country at any stage of your life can’t be easy, but I suspect the later you do it, the harder it is. We had to change everything. It wasn’t only about living in a different country; we had to learn to live in a different language! A friend of mine said, ‘No wonder you’re always tired, you spend the whole day translating in your head!’

Self-publishing more books

In the past 10 years, I’ve also self-published three more romance thrillers:

Cupcakes and Murder, about a novelty cake baker who unwittingly becomes entangled in an undercover federal agent’s case and finds herself thrown out of her comfort zone into life and death situations that make her find her inner strength.

The Queen’s Warrior, a sci-fi romantic fantasy adventure set in another galaxy, proving that all the things that count – loyalty, justice, love – transcend worlds.

The Woman in the Blue Scarf, about an English teacher who is chaperoning a school trip to Paris and ends up crossing paths with a daring Interpol agent and sparking a case of mistaken identity because of a blue scarf.

Becoming an accredited text editor

I remember receiving the reminder of the PEG test last year and deciding in August to give it a try. I told myself that it didn’t matter if I didn’t make it the first time around. It would be a learning experience – and the best part was that nobody would know. That month, I did a crash course of webinars – I reviewed past recordings and attended the last-minute ones that PEG kindly made available. I honestly don’t think anyone can pass the test without attending the webinars on the accreditation test questions. They show you how to answer the questions and what is expected in an examination setting. I know they were invaluable to me. As it is, I think I barely slept for the 48 hours of the test. Open book is actually a curse because it makes you think, ‘I should check everything.’

But it was a worthwhile exercise, and I was very pleased to have passed. I feel it is important to have the accreditation. It adds weight to my CV and is something that inspires confidence in prospective clients.


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The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of PEG.

About Anne Denniston (interviewer)

Anne trained as a librarian but then started editing agricultural reports, loved it, and so became a freelance editor of all sorts of documents. For three years, she edited for students who attended Exactica’s dissertation courses. For more than 11 years, she edited audit reports (among other tasks) for the Gauteng Provincial Government.

About Paula de Carvalho (interviewee)

Paula has been an Associate Member of PEG since 2011 and an ATE since 2024. She taught English as a foreign language at a language institute where she was also involved in developing the course material. It was there that she discovered she enjoyed checking documents for grammar mistakes and typos. Her next job at the SABS gave her in-house editing experience, working with senior editors in the editing department. She then moved to a corporate environment, focusing on editing engineering reports and feasibility studies. Now, with over 20 years of editing experience, she works as a freelance editor. In her spare time, she loves to write and has self-published six novels.

 

 

About PEG

The Professional Editors’ Guild (PEG) is a non-profit company (NPC) in South Africa. Since moving to online activities in March 2020, PEG has been able to offer members across South Africa, and internationally, access to an extensive online webinar programme. Continuing professional development remains a key offering and the first PEG Accreditation Test was administered in August 2020 to benchmark excellence in the field of editing.