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If I've got the attribution right (didn't see the original message),
Yevgen Borodkin remarked: <<On a totally irrelevant note - "ESL
authors" and "poor writing" aren't necessarily synonyms, are they? I am
wondering if that's a common (mis)perception or just an example to make
a point?>>
The two are certainly ***not*** synonymous. In fact, many of my Chinese
and Japanese authors (my main clientele) are better writers than many
of my English clients because they recognize that they're writing in a
second language and work very hard to compensate. In contrast, many
English authors are so blasé about their writing that they simply don't
care. Both groups also get lazy and come to rely on editors such as me
to fix any problems, but the English authors tend to be far less
embarrassed by their poor writing and thus are more willing to create
lots of work for me than my ESL authors.
The unfortunate reality is that many publishers and journals are
outright racist about this: Several of the big names have a standard
policy (check their Web sites) that they won't even look at a
manuscript by someone with a foreign name or mailing address until the
manuscript has been edited by an English pro. Japanese authors come in
for particular prejudice for some reason. I've even seen reviewers
return review comments about the quality of the English in well-written
manuscripts: the comments themselves are often barely decipherable, and
the language of the manuscript is fine, but they somehow feel obliged
to "put the foreigners in their place". Stupid, but there you have it.
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