Whether an editor needs to be a native speaker
Authors who write in English as an additional language are often told to have a native speaker check their manuscript, and editors are often hired on the same test. Native-speaker status says little about how well someone writes or edits English, and a team that mixes native and non-native English speakers can divide the work by what each brings.
What native-speaker status says about an editor
The belief that only a native English speaker can edit a paper written in English well is both unjustified and unethical. It is unjustified because being a native speaker offers no guarantee of good writing, and unethical because it assumes a level of excellence in English that a non-native editor cannot acquire and that only those born in English-speaking countries may claim. In Brazil, for example, researchers were at first reluctant to accept that non-native English speakers could teach them how to build and write a research paper in English.
Not being born and brought up speaking English does not mean that someone's writing is inferior to that of native English speakers. Some native English speakers are great experts in their field and still cannot write clear and logical English, and some experts present well-structured text but cannot spell; one whose job title was Principal Statistician often signed off as Principle Statistician, an error a spell checker would not catch. It is a widely held misconception that all native English speakers speak English well by traditional definitions, and one editor selling his language skills always points out that he is not only a native speaker but an able one, though perhaps the very concept of an able native speaker is a fallacy. G. Nolst Trenité's English Pronunciation poem claims that anyone who can pronounce every word in it correctly speaks English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.
As English has spread, most of the English now spoken and written comes from people who do not speak it natively, so native English speakers are a minority. Much of the English in scientific publications by scientists whose native language is not English is almost impenetrable to native non-scientists, so non-native speakers can write good scientific English that many native-speaking non-scientists cannot understand. A native language is that of the region a person was born in, not necessarily of the region they have lived in all their life, so speaking of a native command of a language is as approximate, and to a degree as misleading, as speaking of a mother tongue.
One linguist calls the concept of the native speaker flawed and misleading, citing another's account of what people perceive as distinguishing native from non-native speakers: country of origin, names, ethnicity, skin colour and accent, all of them non-linguistic factors. In one editor's experience, country of origin counts most: a potential client gave it as the reason for rejecting a Swedish applicant for freelance editing assignments, although she speaks perfect English without a hint of a Swedish accent. One guide to preparing manuscripts for publication advises authors that knowing the country where an editing service's editors work gives a better idea of their language level, and a reviewer of the guide calls this strange advice, because there are plenty of substandard writers and editors in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom and plenty of good ones working where English is not the official language.
Writers who train Chinese authors should ideally be professional medical writers with many years of international medical writing experience who are native speakers of English and have a track record of working successfully with Chinese authors, especially given China's desire to contribute at an international level and the pressure to publish in English-language journals.
Native and non-native writers' strengths and weaknesses
Many medical and scientific writers are of non-native English origin and are nonetheless expected to deliver high-quality work in both science and language, which is not always easy. Someone who plays an instrument well produces pleasant music, and the same holds for language: writers who do not have a good command of English will find it harder to write with virtuosity. Writers whose language origin is not English are at a disadvantage in using terms correctly, because correct usage comes from experience, and unfamiliarity with the proper use of terms can predispose them to exotic translations with fancy words and uncommon formulations.
On the other hand, many non-native English speakers are careful writers because they are far more conscious of possible mistakes than their native English colleagues, and many have learned English systematically and thoroughly and may be able to name its underlying rules and principles far better than those whose mother tongue it is. Non-native speakers often know some of the real rules better than native speakers, the use of the apostrophe among them, while those with English as a first language are often unaware that the way they express something naturally follows a rule. The drawbacks non-native writers may have seem to be compensated by their vigilance and awareness of potential pitfalls, and good writing comes from fully understanding the subject, coupled with the willingness and ability to apply the principles of clear writing.
A Nature editor who is a primary English speaker and was never formally taught English grammar says that non-primary English speakers sometimes write the best manuscripts precisely because they were taught the old-fashioned way, and calls those manuscripts bright buttons from a larger pile of lexical sludge. For all authors, writing requires constant practice to come close to perfection and continued practice to keep the skill at that level.
A common misconception about authors who use science editors is that they are all non-primary English speakers, yet in 2011 approximately 66% (41) of the 62 authors employed at one college with whom its science editor had worked were primary English speakers. In that editor's experience, the authors who seek writing assistance are primary and non-primary English speakers; assistant, associate and full professors; clinicians and bench researchers; residents, interns and postdoctoral associates; graduate and professional students; laboratory and veterinary technicians; and men and women.
What editing a non-native speaker's text involves
Every manuscript written by non-native speakers of English should be scrutinised for spelling and grammar mistakes, and an experienced writer or editor with a sound knowledge of English should edit it before it is submitted for publication.
Such a text can show tell-tale signs, such as extremely long sentences with the verb near the end, often written by someone from mainland Europe, and colloquial terms from the writer's native language that do not translate well into English. Whatever is being edited, text or images, and whoever prepared it, the key messages of editing apply:
- Consider the reader: what message to get across to them and what they need.
- Be consistent unless there is a good reason not to be.
- Keep the text short and simple.
- Try to retain the voice of the author or authors.
Good editing of a scientific paper written by a non-native English speaker requires the editor to recognise the author's original voice in order to grasp all the subtlety the author intended.
How a mixed team divides the work
Medical writing teams often span countries and continents, and their members can be native or non-native English speakers. Native and non-native speakers bring different skills that help a team serve its clients more efficiently and effectively, and such teamwork can also improve client satisfaction and the overall productivity of the business. Teams of native and non-native medical writers are highly efficient and effective in meeting their clients' needs. A substantial proportion of one multinational team's clients are non-native English speakers, so working with non-native writers can make the medical writing process more efficient, and working closely with them will become even more important as the share of clients from non-native English-speaking countries grows.
A writer with the same native language as the client can often translate the article into English and edit the text at the same time, which saves time. In one native English writer's experience, editing a translated paper often takes much longer than it takes non-native colleagues to translate and edit in one pass, and one native Portuguese speaker came to prefer translating a whole manuscript to revising a translated one, because revisions took her twice as long and most of the time went on fixing the same mistakes over and over again, which online translators may be partly to blame for. Non-native writers editing such manuscripts understand the authors' intended meaning more easily than native writers, which helps them retain the authors' voice in the translated text.
Native writers are skilled in simplifying the writing and making the manuscript more concise and readable. Lengthy sentences and paragraphs may remain in writing by non-native speakers because that style is usually more typical of their native language; Indian and French, for example, have a much more formal language structure, and writers from India or France may not realise that a more informal style is perfectly acceptable in English. Working in a team with non-native writers, one native writer often finds their role is to shorten lengthy paragraphs, remove duplication between the introduction and the discussion, and make sure the scientific arguments are clear to the reader.
Non-native writers are often better able to explain grammatical changes to the client when the text is translated into English, and as they explain these rules, the client's own writing improves and the client is more satisfied with the service. Polish medical writers can communicate much more effectively and efficiently with Polish clients, and one native writer finds that Asian colleagues are more attuned to the cultural sensitivities that come into play when interacting with Asian cultures, so that working closely with them helps the writer avoid unintentionally offending a client through cultural differences.
Medical research articles are usually published only in English but are read by native and non-native speakers alike, so having the viewpoints of both on a text can improve the paper's overall readability, and working with writers from different backgrounds improves creativity in the writing. In one non-native writer's view, having the support of a native-speaking medical writer in the team makes non-native writers feel more secure and comfortable in their professional role, and when a client asked her whether a phrase was correct English, she could reassure the client that the manuscript would be checked by a native-speaking medical writer once its content was confirmed.
In one company with a small in-house translation team, where an English translation is required, a Spanish-speaking translator may translate a document into English instead of outsourcing it and a native speaker then revises it, as a way to speed up the translation process. For translation into English, a well-prepared non-native speaker is clearly preferable to a poorly prepared native. One in-house pharma translation team of non-native speakers translates into English only in certain cases, not always, and under robust procedures in which native experts revise the documentation, because in pharma this documentation is critical and the quality of products and the safety of patients matter greatly.
While science is communicated in English, translation of research into some of the world's more common languages, such as Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese or French, may become increasingly common, and teams of native and non-native medical writers will then only become more in demand.