I'm scribbling away and writing a conference paper in English.
(For more information on my writing style, please click here.)
This is possible because of the translation engine.
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Once I pitched a paper to a conference after going through an outsourced English language check, from a reviewer at the conference, I was given the following message.
"Your English sentence is not good enough"
When I reported the matter to the subcontractor as a complaint, they rushed to replace the person in charge.
This subcontractor, who always comes back with the lowest rating on the quality of my English (even though they don't have to do that (maybe my company is asking them to do it)). Anyway I had felt happy for long time.
After that, however, I stopped asking for outsourced checks.
I was getting angry at the conference.
"If you don't like my English, that's fine, and you can reject it for that reason."
I felt that.
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It is true that the English we non-native English speakers write may be unnatural from the perspective of native speakers.
Of course, if it 'doesn't make sense', then I guess I can't help but be criticized, but I don't agree with the comment that it is 'unnatural'.
As I wrote here, I believe that there are as many varieties of English as there are countries in the world, or as many people in the world.
「英語に愛されないエンジニア」のための新行動論 ―番外編―:
— EE Times Japan編集部 (@eetimes_jp) November 26, 2013
“Japanese English”という発想(前編)
⇒http://t.co/3NLGENTQ74 http://t.co/31ghHG50rb
I think, 'Tolerance and acceptance of English texts that you cannot read with ease is what makes us international and diverse'.
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I thought about it from another direction.
Recently, "otherworldly fantasy" has become popular (it is so).
So, here we assume an alternate world where 'the universal language is Japanese, and in the world of academia, Japanese is the common language of research fields' -- although there does not seem to be an element of fantasy.
If a sentence was submitted that was full of kanji errors, "te ni wo ha" was a mess, and the relative pronoun "that" was translated as "that",
'As expected, this will be hard to read'
And I, as the reviewer, might responce the following,
"Your Japanese sentence is not good enough."
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Huh? Does that mean that the English sentence of my paper was 'that kind of English sentence'?
And now I am suddenly feeling vulnerable.