Scientific article proofreading by a native English speaker: what is the point?
- January 23, 2023
- Posted by: Yury Subachev, PhD
- Category: Scientific translation
Proofreading of an article by a native speaker is an essential procedure for all academics, researchers and teachers publishing their scientific essays in international journals.
Independent attempts to translate an article into English often lead to a situation when the text does not meet the high standards of reputable journals. To prevent this, academics use the services of a professional English proofreader.
This article will tell you about the peculiarities and the need for proofreading, the advantages of proofreading by a native speaker and about 5 common mistakes faced by a native speaker in this process.
Proofreading of a research paper by a native speaker is a process of checking for errors, inaccuracies and editing a material after its translation into a foreign language – this is done by a native speaker in order to bring the text to perfection. Proofreading is less about the content and more about the form, style and narrative logic.
If an article is translated into English without professional proofreading the result will not meet the high criteria of Web of Science and Scopus international databases (especially this is true for journals with a Q1-Q2 quartile) and will not be rated by the reviewers as properly prepared. Proofreading ensures that the article is presented in good academic English, with no errors and misconception that may take place in self-translation. Ideally, it is advisable to write an article directly in the English language rather than translate the Russian version; otherwise the Russian version will be traceable anyway.
The article is proofread by a professional translator or other specialist with native language skills. The native speaker proofreads the article, validates the translation for correctness and corrects inaccuracies and typos.
Main objectives of qualified proofreading:
- to check the text for compliance with the norms and rules of the language;
- to assess correctness of the translation;
- to find and correct misprints;
- to check for lexical, syntactical and spelling errors;
- to check for correct hyphenation, due arrangement of headings and lists;
- to check for uniformity of text formatting.
Editing and proofreading is used to analyse, evaluate and improve the submitted material according to the existing linguistic norms. It is used to check the consistency of presentation, structure and meaning of the text, to verify the correctness of abbreviations, the presence of due references and footnotes, the overall consistency of the work with the original.
Among the additional proofreading services are the following types of editing:
- Technical – compliance of all charts, tables, formulas and other elements with the established requirements.
- Meaningful – checking for due logical sequence and arrangement of the semantic load.
- Stylistic – adjusting the author’s text to form a consistent style.
- Artistic – formatting the appearance of the text in order to make it more user-friendly and easier to read.
The more accurately an article is proofread and edited, the more chances it has for successful reviewing and acceptance for publication in a reputable edition.
2. Five typical mistakes corrected by the native speaker.
Most mistakes encountered by proofreading specialists are due to the peculiarities of the Russian and English languages, or rather, their essential differences:
- The academic English language is more barren, it does not have so many synonyms as our language (Russian). Non-English authors are used to substituting words with others of similar meaning in order to avoid repetition. This is not acceptable in the English language since using synonyms in academic articles will cause confusion – the readers will not understand what the author wanted to convey.
- The English language is more categorical. Non-English authors describe their research results as realisation of intentions (“we wanted…”, “we tried…”), while in English it is acceptable to talk about the accomplished result (“we found…”, “we established…”). The native speaker takes these peculiarities into account when proofreading.
- The next important difference is the length of sentences. Many European languages often use compound and complex structures, which makes sentences long. This is not the case in English – sentences are simple and short. The native speaker also removes parenthetical structures, cohesive words which are abundant in Russian texts and do not bear any informative value.
- In addition to stylistic mistakes, native speakers have to deal with a number of other mistakes, such as inappropriate use of articles and prepositions. Prepositions, which are often inserted in texts in the native language, look illogical and incomprehensible in the English language.
- Another expression often misused by non-English authors is “as well as”. Many researchers like to use it instead of the conjunction “and”, and it is not clear why they do it. It is easier to use one word instead of three. It is only appropriate to use it when the author wants to highlight some difference, some contrast in enumeration. For example, “Rats, mice, hamsters and monkeys took part in the experiment”.
3. In what way is proofreading by a native English speaker different from that by a non-native speaker?
A native English speaker is a person for whom English is the native language. It means that this person has grown up in a certain culture, has absorbed local traditions and peculiarities, owing to which he/she feels and understands the style and the priorities embedded in the text. The native speaker absorbs the material he/she reads with no problems since he/she is immersed in a natural environment known to him/her very well. These conditions ensure easy and competent editing of an article with regard for the rules and speech standards of the region where the scholarly work will be published and read.
A specialist native speaker can easily combine complex technical terms and colloquial language to produce a material accessible for perception by the final audience. It is only a person with thorough knowledge of the language that will be able to competently apply due language patterns, winged expressions and metaphors and integrate them harmoniously into a research paper.
As an alternative to having an article proofread by a native speaker, academics sometimes turn to local translators and editors in an attempt to save on professional services. The text proofread by a local linguist and a native speaker will not be the same; the produced versions cannot be called equal. Equality is possible only if the text is purely technical. In all other situations, proofreading by a native speaker will always be of higher quality. If a native English speaker is requested to proofread an article after it has been translated by a good linguist, he/she will still find something to correct. Just try to read texts in your native language translated by foreign translators who are not Russian native speakers – and you will see the difference, as you are a native speaker and feel all the facets of your language.
4. When is it necessary to have an article proofread by a native English speaker?
Having a text proofread by a native English speaker is useful and necessary in many situations. The main reason is making the text more natural, effective and comprehensible to the readers. This is because, in case of self-translation, many phrases will be incoherent, will look incomprehensible and incorrect in a foreign language.
Proofreading is also useful for detecting typos and viewing the material from the outside. When an author works on an article for a long time, he/she perceives the text as a whole, seeing rather what he/she wanted to say than what is factually written. Because of this, many errors and misprints are overlooked. A native speaker, on the contrary, will have a fresh look of the text and notice immediately all inaccuracies and points needing correction.
Even if one has adequate knowledge and skills in English this is not enough since a scholarly paper involves the use of specific terminology and turns of speech. The dictionary will not as well help one to formulate thoughts correctly; many phrases may just lose their meaning. Finally, a researcher will spend a lot of time and effort to achieve a result that no one will appreciate. In most cases, such material is returned to the author for improvement, marked as “poor English” by the reviewers. To avoid such problems, researchers turn to professional proofreading by a native speaker.
When preparing a scholarly work for publication in an English-language edition, the author should not forget that there exist British English and American English. Despite the similarities in these sub-languages they have many differences, both in translation of words and their spelling and pronunciation. It is important to respect the dialect of the country for which the material is prepared. It is unacceptable to mix several language variations; otherwise the audience will not understand the true content of the publication.
Conclusion
It is difficult for a non-English scholar to achieve publication in a reputable journal included in the Scopus or Web of Science database without professional proofreading of the article by an English native speaker. It is only a native English speaker who can correctly convey the author’s message so that it is understood by a foreign audience. For this purpose, the proofreader uses not only his/her thorough knowledge of the language, but also the specific speech patterns of the region for which the material is being prepared.
The national and foreign journals have different requirements to presentation and layout of the text; the languages have many differences in practical application known only to a professional. Only a professional native speaker is able to bring the work to perfection; a local linguist will never be able to present the material in the same form as a native English speaker.
There are many companies offering proofreading services by a native speaker; however, there are few professional companies engaged in proofreading of scientific texts. Only by working with due scientific-profile specialists, one can hope that a paper will be successfully peer reviewed at the first try instead of being returned for revision. This will help the researcher to save valuable time and concentrate on achieving new results.
