Services available at SHEVCHUK EDITING

EDITING OR TRANSLATION?

This is a relevant question when you are planning the writing of your manuscript. You definitely should not attempt to write your manuscript in English or translate the manuscript from your native language into English in the following cases:

your English level is beginner, elementary, or pre-intermediate or
you are not sure what your level of English proficiency is or
you think that you are at the intermediate level but you have never produced an intelligible English translation of a research manuscript.

Unfortunately, this kind of English text is unsuitable for editing, that is, the meaning of many sentences is lost or inaccurate and cannot be recovered by editing (more details in this article). Your time and effort will be wasted. Authors at these levels of English need to either i) assign the translation (or writing in English) to a coauthor who knows English well or ii) hire an interpreter who understands your field of research (e.g., Drosophila polytene chromosomes) or at least your general specialty (e.g., chemistry). For example, you can hire Shevchuk Editing for Russian-to-English translation.

Your English text is suitable for editing in the following situations:

You are at the advanced level of English proficiency or
your command of English is intermediate and you have produced intelligible English translations of research manuscripts in the past.

In these cases, small and few distortions of meaning and a small number of unclear sentences can be corrected by editing or clarified through questions/comments of the editor. The editing and translation services offered by Shevchuk Editing are described below.

CONSULTING SERVICES

Scientific comments (advice). These are provided for free with language editing and are the editor’s comments on organization, logic, and validity of results and conclusions of an academic text. Because the editor has a lot of experience in biomedical research, this service is most suitable for texts related to life sciences or medicine. For a research article or grant proposal, this consulting service will reduce problems with reviewers and improve the chances of success. The advice does not imply that the editor is “smarter” than the client. Rather, this service gives the author/client a fresh perspective on his or her ideas and helps to identify blind spots in thinking and writing. The blind spots are inevitable because researchers often work in a narrow field for extended periods and start to assume that what is obvious to them must be obvious to other people.

Advanced editing of a response letter. Authors often make the following mistakes: incorrectly understand a reviewer's question, refuse to fulfill easy requests, fail to address all comments of a reviewer, do not provide page and line numbers when describing revisions, insert long quotations from the manuscript (instead of simply citing page and line numbers), or start to talk back. It is necessary to respond politely and to apologize profusely, especially when authors refuse to grant a reviewer's wish. In addition to language editing of the responses to peer reviewers, advanced editing of the response letter helps an author of a research article to address the questions and suggestions of peer reviewers. This consulting service also helps the author to avoid pitfalls and misunderstandings when dealing with peer reviewers. This service is most suitable for texts related to life sciences or medicine because the editor’s background is in biomedical sciences. The editor reads the reviewers’ comments and verifies the validity of the authors' responses as well as helps with difficult comments or suggestions. This service requires a significant effort on the editor’s part (good understanding of the manuscript as well as some research and problem-solving). For authors, many months and perhaps years of work are at stake during peer-review; therefore, the correctness of responses is important.

EDITING SERVICES

Copyediting. Sometimes called proofreading, this service is light editing intended to find typos in galley proofs. Copyediting is appropriate for good-quality texts, such as those written by people with advanced proficiency in a language, and these texts must have gone through at least one round of editing (a second or third draft). Copyediting includes correcting punctuation, misspelled words, inconsistent terminology, grammar (small and rare changes), and word choice (seldom). Structure of the majority of sentences does not change after copyediting.

Language editing. This type of editing is appropriate for a raw text (the first draft). Depending on English proficiency of the author of a text, language editing involves moderate-to-big changes in grammar, sentence structure, word choice, and the order of sentences within a paragraph. Clients whose mother tongue is English benefit too because language editing makes a text clearer and easier to read. Although copyediting serves to correct small errors and inaccuracies, language editing is designed for improving the language (grammar, clarity, and flow) and style (tone, brevity, word choice, and paragraph structure). This type of editing modifies structure of many sentences. Language editing consists of two rounds of editing.

After both types of editing service, the client receives a Word document with tracked changes and an identical document where all changes are accepted (invisible). If a journal has asked you to provide a version of the manuscript where revisions are marked with a color, please note that all journals accept the standard tracking of changes in Microsoft Word. You do not need to highlight changes manually.

CAN I USE CHATGPT TO EDIT MY SCIENTIFIC MANUSCRIPT?

Bad idea, except for computer science manuscripts. ChatGPT is a resource for programmers, sysadmins, networking specialists, cybersecurity professionals, and other "computer people." On the other hand, you can edit your English-language scientific manuscript by means of Google Translate (use translation settings "from your native language to English" and my guidelines from "Translation Services" below). Google Translate employs an excellent database of scientific articles called Google Scholar, and at least terminology will be mostly correct. Alternatively, you can ask Google Gemini to edit your scientific manuscript considering that it was written by a speaker of your native language. Google Translate, Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grammarly are better than nothing, but you need to know limitations of this approach. (You can access Grammarly from Russia using a VPN or proxy, and have a colleague who has a bank account abroad pay for the service 1 year in advance.) These websites at present "are not familiar with" typical logical fallacies, cannot correct logical errors, and cannot recognize unclear and ambiguous sentences. Their translation capabilities are limited (cannot compare to a bilingual person), and they cannot detect all instances of literal translation, which are unintelligible to native speakers of English. These software tools currently do not use widely known conventions and guidelines on scientific writing, and some of them (Google Translate and ChatGPT) output a mixture of British and American English. The websites in question are based on official propaganda and cannot detect fake science, not to mention that they sometimes hallucinate and distort the meaning of sentences. There will be problems with article use, word choice, and tenses (for example, the present perfect tense is used incorrectly instead of the simple past tense and vice versa). This is because these websites do not really understand your field of research (although it seems that they do), and neither do the software developers who have created and maintain them. Google Translate's and Google Gemini's machine learning is based on all kinds of research articles, both those written by native speakers of English and articles written by English-as-a-second-language authors. For these reasons, you need a human editor for a scientific manuscript. Suppose you have a manuscript written at the beginner level of English and containing many unclear sentences and sentences with incorrect meaning. You shouldn't expect miracles from the aforementioned software tools; they will not make your text easier to understand, despite improvements in grammar and word choice. You need to redo the translation from your native language into English, i.e., find a more experienced human translator who understands your field of research and has produced intelligible scientific manuscripts in English before.

TRANSLATION SERVICES

Manual translation from Russian to English or vice versa: The text is translated and then edited once before delivery to the client. All document formatting is preserved.

Translation from Russian to English with the help of Google Translate: Quality is the same as that of manual translation, but there is no privacy because Google will get access to the text, and accordingly the price is lower. All document formatting is preserved, for example, tables are still translated manually or by copying and pasting each cell individually if the cells contain a lot of text; the formatting of literary references (by bibliography software) and of equations is preserved too. All Microsoft Word styles of headings and sections of the text stay intact as well (for instance, if you are using a Word template from some journal). At Shevchuk Editing, after manual translation, the text is edited once, whereas after Google translation, the text is edited twice: first, very slowly by comparing individual sentences to correct the meaning, and the second time, to correct typos. Manual translation and translation with the help of Google have roughly the same speed for Shevchuk Editing. For authors who have not mastered the English keyboard (cannot type with all fingers without looking at the keyboard), Google translation with corrections will be much faster than manual translation if you decide to do it yourself; see the next paragraph. With Google Translate, there is less manual work and more "comparison work," i.e., the input and output texts have to be compared slowly, sentence by sentence. Google Translate started to generate fairly good translations in the year 2020, but meaning is distorted approximately in every third sentence, and terminology is not always correct: thorough editing is required. Machine translation became fairly good in 2020 owing to huge advances in machine learning technologies.

It is important to eliminate all abbreviations (gene and protein symbols are not abbreviations) and to copy and paste the maximal allowed amount of text into Google Translate (portions of less than 5000 characters), so that Google Translate has sufficient context for each sentence. It is not a good idea to translate the whole document at once—that is, to upload your document to Google Translate—because translation quality will be much worse. All English words and symbols should be surrounded by correct English prepositions; otherwise, Google will not understand such sentences. For example, you need to replace "ингибирование APE1 нуклеотидом" with "ингибирование of APE1 by нуклеотидом". Long sentences need to be split into two or three because Google Translate cannot handle long sentences with complicated logic. As already mentioned, two editing passes are needed: the first one to correct the meaning and the second one to correct typos. It goes without saying that machine translation should go through both editing passes before you submit the text for editing at Shevchuk Editing or at some other company. It is best to correct errors too (the second editing pass) because otherwise some sentences will be unclear or the meaning will be inaccurate. For a fully corrected machine translation, the regular price of editing is applicable.

In some situations, correct meaning does not matter to authors because a Russian journal forces them to provide an English translation of a manuscript that is published in Russian. This is understandable, and Shevchuk Editing can make corrections of grammar and word choice in this kind of low-quality text, but please keep in mind that the editing of a machine translation will not correct meaning and will not improve unclear sentences (the "garbage in garbage out" principle). A language certificate cannot be issued in this case, unfortunately.

If authors decide to use Google Translate with corrections themselves, then the person doing the translation should have good English proficiency, namely, it is preferable that he or she has produced intelligible translations of scientific articles before. If English proficiency is low or the person has never successfully translated a research article into readable English, then Google Translate will not help. You will produce an unintelligible text unsuitable for editing by a third party, and the translation will have to be redone from scratch. Deepl is not recommended because it is much worse than Google in terms of translation of scientific texts. It is best to assign English translation to the coauthor who has the best command of English. Please be advised that Google translation requires a lot of corrections before it will look like a real translation; divide your typical duration of manual translation by 2 or 3: this is how much time is needed to rework the Google translation of your research article if you do it yourself. This company does not provide the service of translation verification.

Common errors made by Google Translate during translation from scientific Russian to scientific English:

"Так, ..." (Например, ...) → "Thus, ..." (incorrect)
The correct translation is "For example, ..."
"Ряд исследований ..." → "A number of studies ..." (incorrect)
The correct translation is "Several studies ..."
"Здесь рассмотрены несколько моделей ..." → "Several models are considered here ..." (incorrect)
The correct translation is "Several models are analyzed (or examined) here ..."
"В то же время ..." (противопоставление) → "At the same time, ..." (incorrect)
The correct translation is "On the other hand, ..."
"воздействие" (на систему) → "exposure" or "external influence" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "external factor" or "applied stimulus"
"показатели" → "indicators" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "parameters"
"на фоне" → "against the background of" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "during" or "concurrently with"
"цепочка ДНК" → "DNA chain" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "DNA strand"
"Плотность была пересчитана на г/см³" → "density was re-calculated in g/cm³" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "density values were converted into g/cm³"
"объекты исследования" → "research objects" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "materials" or "research subjects"
"новообразования" → "neoplasms" (almost always incorrect, unless an early benign stage is meant)
The correct translation is "tumors" or "cancers"
"метод лечения" → "treatment method" (unusual)
The correct translation is "treatment"
"наши исследования" (the present manuscript) → "our studies" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "our study"
"Можно предположить, что" → "It can be assumed that" (usually incorrect)
The correct translation is "It can be hypothesized that" or "It can be theorized that" or "It is possible that"
"поликлональные антитела к p53" → "polyclonal antibodies to p53" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "a polyclonal antibody to p53"
"препарат антител" → "a preparation of the antibodies" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "the obtained antibody" or "an antibody sample"
"препарат вакцины" → "a vaccine preparation" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "the vaccine"
"бюджетное учреждение" → "budgetary institution" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "government-funded institution"
"линия мышей" → "mouse line" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "mouse strain"
"эксперимент на культуре клеток DAOY" → "an experiment on DAOY cell culture" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "an experiment on DAOY cells"
"Если ..., то ..." (противопоставление) → "If ..., then ..." (incorrect)
The correct translation is "Although ..., ..." or "..., but ..."
"Этот вид распространён в Сибири" → "This species is distributed in Siberia" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "This species occurs in Siberia"
"значительный" → "significant" (incorrect; to avoid ambiguity, the word "significant" should be used only when statistical significance is meant)
The correct translation is "substantial" or "considerable"
"можно видеть, что" → "it can be seen that" (unusual)
The correct translation is "one can see that" or "the figure/table shows that"
"группы ABC и XYZ" → "the ABC and XYZ groups" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "groups ABC and XYZ"
"Наше исследование показало, что" → "Our study has shown that" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "Our study showed that"
"Некоторые исследования показали, что" → "Some studies showed that" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "Some studies have shown that"
"...волки, зайцы и олени, а также медведи" → "wolves, hares, and deer as well as bears" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "wolves, hares, deer, and bears"
"Уровень кортизола отличался у белых мышей и чёрных мышей" (unclear description of a comparison) → "The cortisol level differed in white mice and black mice" (unclear description of a comparison)
The correct sentence is either "The cortisol level differed between white mice and black mice" or "The cortisol level differed among white mice and among black mice" (use the word "between" or "among" to specify two or more groups/items being compared)
"В структуре соединения 5 присутствует нитроксильная группа" → "A nitroxyl group is present in the structure of compound 5" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "A nitroxyl group is present in compound 5"
"В составе наноматериала FO-ABC присутствует графеновая фаза" → "A graphene phase is present in the composition of nanomaterial FO-ABC" (incorrect)
The correct translation is "A graphene phase is present in nanomaterial FO-ABC"
Федеральное государственное бюджетное научное учреждение «Федеральный исследовательский центр Институт цитологии и генетики» (in the Affiliations section) → Federal government-funded scientific institution federal research center Institute of Cytology and Genetics (correct but highly unusual in English)
The correct translation is Institute of Cytology and Genetics (note that quotation signs are never used in names of organizations in English)
"Данный метод лечения исцеляет депрессию, что понижает уровень кортизола в крови" → (depending on the context) "This treatment method cures depression by lowering the level of cortisol in the blood" (incorrect meaning) or "This treatment method cures depression, which lowers the level of cortisol in the blood" (ambiguous; it is unclear to what "which" refers: "depression" or "this treatment method cures depression")
The correct translation is "This treatment cures depression, and this medical advancement lowers the level of cortisol in the blood" or "This treatment cures depression, thereby lowering the level of cortisol in the blood"
"Это касается молекулы воды которая атакует галогеновый заместитель, создавая щёлочь" → "This involves a water molecule that attacks the halogen substituent, creating an alkali" (ambiguous; note that in the English sentence, it is not obvious that "creating" refers to "water molecule" not "halogen substituent"; adjectives/participles such as "creating" do not have a gender and plural/singular forms in English, and therefore a good Russian sentence often becomes diffucult to understand after this kind of literal translation)
The correct translation is "This concerns the water molecule that attacks a halogen substituent, thus creating an alkali"
"Длинное предложение, которое наверняка содержит вышеописанные подводные камни" → "A long sentence that has incorrect meaning or is ambiguous"
Unfortunately, Google Translate cannot handle long sentences with complicated logic. Split your sentence into two or three.
and other, less common errors.

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