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You are here: Articles --> 2020 --> Finding, working with, and retaining (ESL) clients, Part 3
Vous êtes ici : Essais --> 2020 --> Finding, working with, and retaining (ESL) clients, Part 3
by Geoff Hart
In Part 1 of this discussion, I discussed how to find and work with authors who have English as a second language (ESL authors). In Part 2, I discussed cultural considerations, related rhetorical issues, and editing tips. Here, I'll provide some insights into ethical issues you might encounter in working with ESL authors.
Sometimes ethical issues arise because of different standards in different countries. These can pose dilemmas for editors. For example, the teaching of statistical analysis in China is of widely uneven quality, and many of the manuscripts I edit don’t meet the standard of proof expected by western scientific journals. As a result, I spend a lot of time teaching my authors basic statistics so they can revise their analyses or do a better job in their future research.
In China, as in the west, graduate students often aren’t taught best practices for experimental design, so their first few studies are often poorly designed. Editing to improve a manuscript’s clarity can have the unfortunate side effect of revealing flaws in the design and statistical analysis more clearly. Rather than trying to hide these deficiencies, I often find myself suggesting justifications for problems with the research (e.g., clearly emphasizing that it is preliminary or constrained by budget considerations) or suggesting additional work or analysis the author can do to fill holes in their research.
A particularly common problem relates to what appears to be plagiarism. This arises most often because authors have been taught (incorrectly) that as long as they cite the source of a quotation, they can simply copy someone else’s words. This is increasingly causing problems for authors because publishers are increasingly using software to check for such plagiarism. You can often spot problem sentences because they require no editing, unlike the rest of the manuscript, or they use a distinctively different writing style. Copying the text into Google is one way to quickly reveal such copying, and you can then suggest a way to legitimately paraphrase the copied text. Because paraphrasing takes practice, I periodically remind my ESL authors that if they can’t figure out how to paraphrase, they can copy the original text and highlight it to tell me that it’s copied and that I should help them come up with a different wording.
Confidentiality of information is another issue to keep in mind. This is particularly important when personal information is involved (e.g., in medical research), but is also important when an author is working in a competitive field where industrial espionage or academic precedence is an issue. Being able to prevent information from being leaked is essential for patent applications, and in academia, being the first to publish specific research results is important for the author’s career.
If there’s a risk of harming a client’s interests because their information was seen by someone inappropriate, look for a secure way to transfer information. E-mail is not secure. Encrypted e-mail exists and is one option; for example, consider using the ProtonMail software. Using confidential file transfer sites is another option, but it can be hard to send the password to your author in a way that prevents interception.
Note: It should be obvious that using a secure file transfer site, but then sending the site’s password in unencrypted e-mail, is a bad idea. Yet people do this so often that I’ve stopped counting the times. Find another way to transfer the password, such as by voicemail or a text message to the client’s cellphone, or sending two parts of the password separately from two e-mail accounts.
One issue that comes up sometimes is that mainland China (the People’s Republic) considers Taiwan to be a province of China; the Taiwanese disagree. On the one hand, changing this so Taiwan is described as an independent nation can cause problems for the author if they’re a government employee and their employer notices this. On the other hand, pretending that Taiwan is a Chinese province can encourage a hostile review from a Taiwanese peer reviewer. There’s no really good solution to this problem, other than to raise the issue and let the author decide how they feel most comfortable dealing with it. They usually know how to handle the problem better than we do.
Note: Antivirus and anti-malware software is not optional, even if you use a Mac for your work. The ethical cost of passing along a virus or other malware to a client is too high to be cavalier about this problem. I use Bitdefender because it’s been consistently reliable and shown to be effective in rigorous testing. Many other options exist. One of them will meet your needs.
In my experience, my ESL authors are eager to do the right thing and pay me for my work. However, they may face many constraints on transmitting a payment. For example, Chinese university Accounts Payable departments often close during the summer, so invoices submitted from June through August may not get paid before September. Italian universities are infamously slow at payments, and can take months — despite sometimes heroic efforts by an author to prod the bureaucracy into motion.
Rather than getting angry about this, I’ve learned to accept that authors sometimes have little or no say in when I get paid. Thus, I recommend that you be flexible but firm about payments. For routinely tardy clients, automatically add your standard late fee into your invoice either explicitly or included in the total price. Sending a second invoice with this fee added to the total may get you the additional money you’ve requested; more often, it only further delays your payment because the invoice re-enters the payment process at the beginning rather than holding its place in line.
Particularly for the benefit of new authors who haven’t yet learned how western editors do business, create a “standard terms” document that describes the nature of your work. I’ve provided examples of this document that you can download from my Web site. Feel free to modify these documents to meet your own needs. Alternatively, point your authors to my Web site. I'm not looking for new clients, so I won't steal yours.
The goal of such a document is to ensure that the author understands their responsibilities and yours, not to provide a legal bludgeon to wield against recalcitrant authors. Ask each new client to read this document and confirm that they have done so and understand all of the terms, and offer to discuss and explain anything that isn’t clear. For example, specify that you own the work you’ve done until you’ve been paid. You can send a copy of the edited manuscript to a journal editor or publisher and tell them that they cannot legally publish your work until the author pays (I’ve done this successfully a couple times), but this creates bad blood. Ensuring that the author understands their relationship with you avoids a great many potential misunderstandings.
To the extent that this is possible, ask authors to pay you in your own currency. This is because converting money between currencies incurs conversion fees that the bank will subtract from your payment. These deductions can add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars annually, so you should eliminate them wherever possible and mitigate them where you can’t avoid them. If you’re not American, some authors will find it difficult to pay you in your native currency; in that case, it may end up being cheaper and faster if you accept payment in U.S. dollars and ask your bank to perform the conversion. In addition, each payment method incurs different fees, and you need to know what those fees are so you can add them to your invoices. (Just like charging sales tax in jurisdictions where this is required, authors — not editors — should pay these fees.)
Many payment options are available, and they’re changing rapidly. As a result, any list I provide will be out of date by the time you read this article. For that reason, I haven’t provided the fees charged by each service. Research these fees in advance so you can set up an account with each of these services (usually free or inexpensive) and offer them to your authors as a payment method. You’ll also need to talk to your bank to learn whether they charge any fees. That being said, here are several methods that I’ve used successfully for several years.
SWIFT: The standard method for transferring money internationally, directly between two bank accounts. This currently costs a fixed fee, and for large invoices (more than about US$800), it may be the least-expensive payment method. For smaller invoices, the following methods are typically less expensive.
PayPal: The standard method of exchanging money in the West, and increasingly available in China, too.
Western Union: This service has the advantage of operating in most countries around the world, and offices are usually easy to find; if you have a bank ATM card that’s compatible with their system, you can often get your payment transferred directly into your account. Walmart’s Western Union office can usually do this; the Western Union outlet at your local grocery store probably can’t.
Moneygram: This is a significant competitor for Western Union that often has an outlet at the client’s local post office and at your post office.
In Canada, Interac e-transfers between bank accounts are free for many banks and inexpensive for others. However, that’s only an option within Canada.
Credit cards: PayPal currently offers the easiest and least-expensive way to receive payments from a client’s credit card. There’s no ongoing fee, unlike with most credit card processors, and the fee per transaction is reasonable.
AliPay or WeChat: These two services are China’s equivalent to Amazon and Facebook (or Twitter), respectively. They have highly refined systems for payment using a smartphone, and their fees are quite low. When your account is established, they’ll send you a QR code that you can send to clients along with your invoice. When the client scans that image, they can transfer payment directly into your bank account. If you’re not working in China, you may need to sign up with a third party. In Canada, I use SnapPay; in the U.S., you may need to create an account for the international versions of those services: for AliPay, visit the AliPay international site; for WeChat, download the correct app for your smartphone’s operating system.
Transferwise: This option deposits money directly into your bank account once you’ve registered your bank account with them.
Arrange payment via a client’s friends, family, or colleagues who live in your country. Some of my Chinese clients ask their colleagues in the U.S. or Canada to send me the payment. They then repay their colleague using the Chinese banking system.
I offer all of these alternatives to my clients because my goal is to make payment as easy as possible. They greatly appreciate the flexibility of being able to choose the least-expensive method for a given invoice or the most-convenient option based on their location or available technology.
My experience has been that if your only relationship with a client centers on how they will pay you, the relationship is weak, and there are enough editors who do comparable work that you’re going to be easy to replace. That’s why I prefer to frame my relationship with authors as one in which my primary goal is to help them publish their work, and I’ll go out of my way to help them with that goal.
I don’t pretend in any way that my work isn’t valuable or that it’s not important to pay me for that work. As a freelancer, I occasionally have to remind authors that I don’t earn a salary, since many assume that I’m a university professor or work at a research institute; to correct that false assumption, I occasionally have to remind an author that my only income comes from my freelance editing work. But that’s never the priority in my relationship with them.
Remember that any commitment you make (e.g., to finish work by a certain date) is a promise, and you must honor your promises if you want authors to trust you. You can’t avoid being struck by lightning, but you can build a network of colleagues who can replace you if “life happens” (e.g., an illness, a death in the family). This became particularly clear to me when I received a positive COVID-19 test result in late 2020 (which turned out to be a false positive). Since there was suddenly a real risk I would become seriously ill with little warning, I immediately contacted the colleagues who’d agreed to take referrals from me to warn them they might receive inquiries from my regular clients. I then sent their contact information to my clients, with the warning that “if you write to me and don’t receive a reply within 1 day, here’s why and here’s what to do about it.” This took me perhaps half an hour, greatly eased my conscience, and reassured everyone that I had their best interests in mind.
Another good way to build trust and loyalty is to underpromise and overdeliver. For example, if a manuscript must be returned to the author by a certain date, try to plan your schedule so you can finish your work a few days earlier. That way, if anything happens to you before that earlier date, you have a chance to ask a colleague to take over and finish it by the actual due date. If you finish early, the author gains extra time to review your work. If you “only” finish on the proposed date, then at least you’re still on time.
I always try to go the extra mile for my clients. I occasionally deal with publishers on their behalf when an author runs into trouble they can’t resolve, whether from lack of experience or simple language difficulties. I encourage my authors to include my name and contact information in their letters to publishers so I can speak directly to the publisher to clarify any misunderstandings. (When I was getting started, publishers often referred authors to me, resulting in long-term relationships with those authors.) A couple times, an author has sent their original manuscript to a publisher instead of the edited manuscript, and incorrectly claimed that I edited it; when the publisher contacted me to ask whether the author was lying, I explained what had probably happened, sent them a copy of the edited manuscript as proof, and thereby solved the problem. I also maintain easily accessible backups of the manuscripts I’ve edited in perpetuity. Every year or two, an author needs to retrieve a copy of some ancient manuscript, and is very pleased when I’m able to provide it.
If, like me, your goal is to build a relationship with your authors, remember that successful relationships are all about communication. One of the promises I’ve made to my authors is that our relationship is between equals: we are both experts in our respective fields, and must respect each other’s expertise. As a result, I emphasize that we work by consensus, not by editorial “diktat.”
Where possible and appropriate, I communicate about more than just work. For example, I keep track of major national holidays, such as China’s national holiday in the first week of October, as well as the Chinese new year in the spring. If I’m going to do something special, like going for a dim sum breakfast, I’ll mention that and send along my hope that they will also have time to celebrate by dining with friends or family. Where appropriate, I try to learn a bit about them as people. For example, one of my clients is a classically trained violinist, and has sent me samples of his music. Another enjoys teaching me occasional phrases in his language, but particularly enjoys the opportunity to “edit the editor” when I try to use what I’ve learned.
Although cultures do tend to have certain overall characteristics, be careful about making assumptions about behavior based on those characteristics. People differ within a culture, and there are no “universal” approaches that work for everyone within a culture. For example, I know that Europeans are as crazy about soccer (“football”) as Americans are about baseball and Canadians are about hockey, so when Spain won the FIFA World Cup in 2010, I wrote to all my Spanish authors to congratulate them. One wrote back (rather sheepishly) to note that he actually didn’t care much for the sport and had no idea that his team had won.
Being culturally sensitive is important, particularly if you’re an English westerner. Most non-westerners have learned to deal with western conventions, and expect a certain amount of cultural ignorance from us. I try to learn enough about their culture to surprise them. Most of them greatly appreciate my efforts to understand and accommodate their culture rather than insisting they adapt to my culture.
Exerting this extra effort has resulted in strong relationships with most of my authors, and stronger loyalty. It also makes the work far more rewarding because I have a personal connection with these people that enriches me far beyond the money I earn. I’ve been invited to stay in one client’s home when I visited their country — in a country where this is rarely done — and another asked me to spend a few days teaching his graduate students how to write better. These opportunities are priceless.
Much though I enjoy my work, there are occasional frustrations I need to deal with. One of the biggest is authors who don’t learn from my editing and keep making the same mistakes again and again. Sometimes this is just the nature of the game: not everyone is a born writer, and the vast majority of the scientists I’ve worked with would rather do research than write. This can also be “attitude”: A couple of my authors have made it clear that they don’t believe they should need to learn how to write better; “That’s why I pay you.” Fair enough.
Payment delays can be frustrating, particularly if you’re living on a low income. Once you develop a large-enough clientele that you have invoices going out steadily, you’ll start receiving a steady inflow of payments. The degree of “steady” varies over time, but if you pay attention, you’ll start to notice slow periods and you can budget accordingly (i.e., save some extra money during busy periods to tide you over during slow periods). For example, many of my authors are hard at work doing field research during the summer, when the weather is more suitable and their students are on holiday. This means that I have a three-month slow period every year when they’re not writing and I’m editing less often.
Scheduling is an issue, particularly once you have a large clientele. Many authors simply refuse to learn to reserve my time in advance, and write (disingenuously or otherwise) to request that I drop everything and edit their manuscript immediately. I’ve learned to be tough about this. I remind authors at least twice per year that they have to contact me 3 weeks before they will need me to start work so I can reserve time for a manuscript; that’s just how busy I am during most of the year. The ones who refuse to learn that lesson have alternatives; they can check whether one of my colleagues might be available on short notice, or they can (surprisingly often) ask their publisher for an extension.
Of course, writing doesn’t always go according to plan, so I always contact authors a week before their reservation to confirm whether it’s still valid, or whether they’ll need more time. This gives me much more flexibility in managing my schedule, and the authors also appreciate my reminders.
Since working with ESL authors means, by definition, working in different languages, miscommunication is a constant risk. Most often, this results in incomprehension rather than hurt feelings, but I always keep in mind the need to be exceptionally careful in how I communicate. I review all my e-mail communication at least once (twice for tricky diplomatic situations) to ensure that I’ve made my assumptions explicit, and haven’t misspoken. I hunt down typos, since nothing undermines trust in an editor quite like an e-mail full of preventable errors. Wherever possible, I practice redundant communication — if I don’t understand what an author wrote, I will use a comment such as: “If you mean [meaning 1], change this to [revision 1]; if you mean [meaning 2], change this to [revision 2]. If neither meaning is correct, please send me an explanation and I will help you choose clearer wording.”
The last part of that comment is a subliminal reminder that my goal is to work together with the author, as partners, and that I’m not going to leave them helpless if there’s any way I can prevent that from happening.
Despite the occasional frustrations, I wouldn’t trade my work for any other job. For some clients, our relationship is nothing more than business, but it’s as amicable as possible and thus efficient, pleasant, and mostly free of frustrations. For others, it’s more of a personal relationship, which I find more satisfying. Keep that in mind whether, like me, you choose to specialize in working with ESL authors, or just add a few of them to your clientele to make your work more interesting and diverse, not to mention more lucrative.
Even if editing is your primary work, think outside that box to find ways to expand your relationship. If you can edit, maybe you can write, too? Currently, in response to a Japanese client’s request, I’m writing a twice-monthly series of articles that provides tips and tricks about writing for peer-reviewed science journals. It’s a nice change from editing, and just as satisfying, since I know I’m making life easier for many authors who never learned the things I’m teaching.
(These references apply to all three parts of this article.)
Hart, G. 2003. Technical communication in China: a personal perspective.
Hart, G. 2006. Finding work in tough times. Intercom December 2006:8–11.
Hart, G. 2007. Successful cross-cultural communication requires us to test our assumptions. The Write Stuff, newsletter of the European Medical Writers Association 16(3):111–113.
Hart, G. 2013. Working with authors who speak English as a second language. Copyediting August/September 2013: 3–5.
Hart, G. 2014. Writing for Science Journals: Tips, Tricks, and a Learning Plan. Diaskeuasis Publishing, Pointe-Claire, Quebec.
Hart, G. 2019. Effective Onscreen Editing: New Tools for an Old Profession. 4th ed. Diaskeuasis Publishing, Pointe-Claire, Quebec.
Notes from lectures I presented at the Beijing Forestry University, October 2010:
My standard contract terms:
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