Actually, I'm running into another problem. My name can look Chinese,
especially my middle name: Lin. When my Taiwanese colleagues and I
co-author a paper and send it off for review, it's almost as though the
default comment of reviewers is that, since the authors are all
Taiwanese, the English must need improving or 'the manuscript ... is
extremely rough.'
Like James Roper, I've spent much of my time over the past 20 years
revising and editing my colleagues' papers. This can include a lot of
rewriting, even second-guessing the authors' intended meaning. In many
cases, I have to discuss things with the authors (usually via email).
I, too, have noticed that revisions by non-biologists or non-native
English speakers tend to be poor. To my students, I routinely have to
emphasize that computer generated translations are garbage--sometimes,
however, this is because of fuzzy thinking in the original Chinese.
CL
who routinely gets email notices from Chinese (PROC) translation
companies offering to help translate her papers into English:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cara Lin Bridgman [email protected]
P.O. Box 013 Shinjhuang http://megaview.com.tw/~caralin
Longjing Township http://www.BugDorm.com
Taichung County 43499
Taiwan Phone: 886-4-2632-5484
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