In any committec undertaking it is essential that the principles to be employed in the work be carefully and fully worked out. Of course, many of the principles must of necessity be broad in their implications, e.g. avoidance of obsolete grammatical forms, elimination of meaningless figures of speech, indentation of poetic lines, and contemporaгy spelling of proper names. However, it is also important that the principles be as extensive and explicit as practicable, for they perform a very important function in any committee undertaking. 

First, such principles provide a basis for consistency in the work of different members of the Editorial Committee; they also guide the range and type of suggestions made by members of the Review and Consultative Committees. Moreover, such principles tend to avoid needless discussion, for problems can then be treated in terms of principles agreed upon, rather than as new and unique difficulties. Such principles also serve to prevent personal antagonism, for the members of the committees can argue against or for the principles, rather than against one another. Furthermore, if and when principles are changed during the course of a project. the committee will know exactly what portions must be redone in order to conform to the altered or expanded principles.

The development of principles to govern a committee translation or revision can best be done in five stages: (1) by careful consultation with the constituency for which the translation is being prepared (i.e. by wide solicitation of suggestions from all those willing to respond); (2) by thorough study of such suggestions in the light of expert opinion; (3) by tentative formulation of the most essential principles and application of them to a series of representative passages; (4) by the modification and elaboration of principles in the light of such "test cases"; and (5) by careful revision during the entire process of translation.

An important element in any statement of principles and procedures must be the assigning of ultimate responsibility for the work. In general, the tendency is to claim that the ultimate responsibility rests with the Consultative Committee, which presumably has the greatest "political power," while in actuality, except for certain limited issues, the real responsibility rests with the Editorial Committee. In many instances there seems to be good reason to make the real and the ideal lines of authority agree, and thus to give to the Editorial Committee the final authority, provided of course that the members of this committee have been carefully selected and are both competent and sensitive to the criticisms and suggestions of others. Such a procedure produces results that are much more rapid, and usually more consistent and аcceptable.

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