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  • 1.  What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted 2 days ago
    Edited by Ariela Marks yesterday

    Before getting to my main question in this thread, I want to say re Friday's Zoom meeting, the part about what other editors who work in non-English-speaking countries use for their site and marketing language, has prompted me to dive into bilingual sites again. I forgot that way back in the beginning I had started to set up my site for that (I built it using Wix) but quickly saw I wasn't nearly ready to take that on. And I don't even mean the intimidating aspects of the reversed language directions for Hebrew, as I have it now, and English. I've already talked to one professional here, who seems to have a lot of experience with that.

    What I'm interested in finding out now is if other editors in non-English-speaking countries can tell me roughly how many of their clients are non-native speakers?

    And, could the editor in Germany who was in the Zoom meeting write me offlist to tell me her name? I'm sorry, I wasn't quick enough to get it on Friday during the meeting.

    Thank you very much, everyone.



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    Ariela Marks
    Academic copyeditor and line editor
    Haifa, Israel
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  • 2.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted 2 days ago

    It was great to meet you on Friday!

    As I was mentioning during the meeting, I currently live in Italy, and right before I moved here, I also lived in Germany for several years.

    Ever since leaving the United States and moving to Europe, I would say the vast majority of my local clients are non-native English speakers. When I was in Germany, non-natives were nearly 100% of my local clients; here in Italy, it's probably closer to 75%, but that's because I work with a couple of local organizations that employ a sizeable amount of native speakers.

    However, my online marketing is still primarily focused on clients based in English-native countries. Many, but not all, of these clients are English natives; I'd say around 50%.

    I should probably also mention that the proportion of my native to non-native clients shifted massively after I left the US. Before, I'd say I had about roughly 80% native-speaker clients and colleagues (when I worked in-house); now, I'd say the proportion is more like 50-50.

    I also want to note here that I specialize in helping non-native authors write English nonfiction (and I market myself as such), so that may be skewing my numbers somewhat.



    ------------------------------
    Jill Mazzetta
    Writer, Editor, Proofreader
    US & Canada: +1 978 326 9272
    EU & International: +39 06 93570 747
    jill@jillmazzetta.com
    https://www.jillmazzetta.com
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted yesterday

    Good morning all

    I generally have a conflicting appointment at 10 on Fridays, so sadly I'll be able to attend this meeting only sporadically. (The last weeks of July and August and first weeks of September, for example.) 

    I'm one of the attendees that lives in Germany (northern Germany, in vicinity of Hamburg).

    My first clients (around 8 years ago) were local academics whose first language was not English. I soon found this not to be a promising market (for me, and for various reasons, including low hourly pay levels for the work that was required). 

    A conscious language reminder: It's generally considered offensive in international English circles to refer to "native" and "nonnative" speakers and writers. 

    Best wishes,



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    Deborah A. Cecere
    www.deborahcecere.com
    deborah.cecere@online.de
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  • 4.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted yesterday

    Thank you, Jill and Deborah. I hope others find these comparisons as valuable as I do, revealing what we have in common and what is unique to the country we live and work in and each of us as editors.

    I use the terms EFL and ESL, which I think are the most precise for the sense I was using and are, of course, the most economical. In the last couple of years, some have adopted "multilingual authors," which in my opinion is not a substitute for the precise meaning we're using here.

    I hope this thread keeps going for a while:)



    ------------------------------
    Ariela Marks
    Academic copyeditor and line editor
    Haifa, Israel
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted yesterday
    Edited by Jesse Couyere yesterday
    Hi everyone,
    Thanks Ariela for bringing up this topic. I wanted to jump in during the meeting, but we ran out of time πŸ˜… I think the decision to have a bilingual / multilingual website and whether you want to target the local market will depend on a lot of factors. I would imagine that the kind of texts you edit will influence that as well (if your market is academic writers, companies, or fiction writers, for example).
    I'm in France, and I'm a fiction editor. My website is in English. I always assumed my clients would be international. I've never really targeted a specific country, either local or otherwise, in my marketing. I want to work with fiction writers who write in English. It doesn't matter where they live or if English is their first language. If I made my website available in French, I'd be concerned about attracting writers who write in French even though I edit in English. 
    It's literally happened to me on Fiverr, when I started out as a beta reader. Their website shows where the freelancer is from, and I guess they must auto-translate their pages. The language of my services was listed as "English", and my profile and gig descriptions were in English. And yet, multiple writers reached out to me in French for manuscripts that were also in French. I've yet to have a local client with an English manuscript.
    Since I'm technically capable of doing a beta read or developmental evaluation in French and there's less competition on Fiverr in the French-speaking market, I ended up adding a French version of some of my services on Fiverr. It was a good way to gain experience, ratings, and visibility. But it takes me longer to do those jobs, and a lot more energy, so it's not something I'm interested in developing. I'm bilingual, but my French muscle is a little atrophied from underuse. And I definitely wouldn't have enough expertise to do anything beyond a beta read or developmental evaluation. I barely ever read in French anymore and I don't know the local publishing market. Basic story structure and character development are pretty easily translatable, but I wouldn't dare look into line editing or copy editing. My French isn't good enough for that to begin with, and I don't have any French-specific editing training.
    I've only had one client so far for a line edit who specified English wasn't their first language (from Europe, but not France). They wanted a little extra help smoothing their prose because of that. It's not information I ask for, so I don't have it unless a client volunteers it. I don't consider "native" a language level anyway since both "native" and "non-native" encompass such a wide variety of proficiency, on top of being offensive terms (but replacing them by a less offensive equivalent still doesn't mean anything in terms of English proficiency). For my rates and scope, I look at the work and determine if it requires more time and effort than usual, no matter the reason. The client who specified they needed extra help with English was within my usual scope.
    I've only been an editor for about a year and a half, though, so we'll see how my client base develops.
    Happy editing,

    (I sent via email for the first time and my signature didn't appear. No idea how to add it by editing the message, so here's a homemade version πŸ˜‚)
    Jesse Couyere – Rainbow Pen Editing
    rainbowpenediting.com






  • 6.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted 12 hours ago

    Regarding non-native speaker, EFL, ESL etc, it's definitely a bit of an alphabet soup and the terminology is always changing. When I did my MA in teaching (keep in mind this was 10 years ago), the term in use was ESOL--teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. EFL (English as Foreign Language) was considered problematic because, for example, there are cultures where the administrative language and language of higher education is English, but what people speak on the street and at home may be something else. In other words, not really a foreign language. ESL (English as Second Language) was also problematic because English might be the speaker's 3rd, 4th, 5th language.

    Native and non-native are definitely not considered appropriate, especially in academic circles, but they seem to be hard to get rid off. A few years ago, I attended a translation workshop with participants from all over the world, and native/non-native was being freely used, even by people from marginalized countries who were living in English-speaking countries. And I see them all the time in job postings for teachers.



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    ElizabethSalmore
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  • 7.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted 12 hours ago

    Deborah, I'm sorry to hear you won't be able to make the meetings!

    You bring up an interesting point about the use of "native" and "non-native." I've been in the field of international Englishes for about a decade at this point, and the academic department where I did my master's degree was entirely dedicated to the study of international and postcolonial Englishes, and I've never heard the notion that the terms "native" and "non-native" are in any way offensive. They can absolutely be problematic, and the problems surrounding them were a frequent topic of our coursework and discussions. But I've got to say the idea of anyone taking offense to them is new to me, and I suspect it would be new to many of the experts I spent time around, virtually all of whom are L2 or higher speakers of English. 😊

    While I support the use of conscious language to ensure we're not furthering biases, even inadvertently, I think it's important to keep in mind that in this context, the conscious-language terminology is out of step with everyday pragmatic usage, even among people who are in these circles. I've encountered plenty of self-described "native speakers" who've never set foot in an English L1 country, plenty of self-described "non-native speakers" who can talk and write circles around me, and everyone in between. The idea that I would correct someone who spontaneously self-identifies as a "non-native speaker" and tell them that they're not using the "right" terminology seems more offensive to me than the use of the term in the first place.

    If we as a group want to make an effort to use the conscious language terminology for this topic going forward, I of course support that.



    ------------------------------
    Jill Mazzetta
    Writer, Editor, Proofreader
    US & Canada: +1 978 326 9272
    EU & International: +39 06 93570 747
    jill@jillmazzetta.com
    https://www.jillmazzetta.com
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted 11 hours ago

    Jill, I completely agree with you that there's a lot of debate around how "native"/"non-native speaker" can be problematic, and it's still perfectly common and acceptable in everyday usage in many contexts. 

    It becomes a much more heated issue where people do take offense in certain contexts, such as language teaching and translation. There's been a long-standing bias in favor of "native-speaker" teachers, especially in countries where English is considered a foreign language, even when the local teachers are better trained and more knowledgeable. The same often goes for translators. Even in editing it can be controversial. For example, the CIEP made an official decision to retire the terms (https://www.ciep.uk/resource/ciep-terms.html).

    Just to be clear, I don't mean to dismiss or negate any of what you described--quite the contrary! I just would keep in mind that there may be certain situations where it might indeed cause offense.



    ------------------------------
    Elizabeth Salmore
    Academic and non-fiction copy and line editing
    Translation (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian-->English)
    Zagreb, Croatia
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted 10 hours ago

    Morning to all,

    This is a great discussion! I see the sense of many of the points that have been shared. I see now that my first comment was too general. My apologies for that.

    I'd like to add one very important group of professionals that in my experience (with the CIEP, in particular) do indeed take offense to the dichotomy of the terms native and nonnative: professional editors working in the English languages(s) whose first language is not English.  (Boy is that a mouthful!) So please let's consider those individuals in this discussion as well.

    Yes, the conflicting appointment is a real inconvenience and I only wish I could change it to accommodate the EFA international meetings. 

    Best, Deborah



    ------------------------------
    Deborah A. Cecere
    www.deborahcecere.com
    deborah.cecere@online.de
    ------------------------------



  • 10.  RE: What's your clients' native tongue

    Posted 7 hours ago

    Yes, the main problem is not just the terms themselves, but the fact that they're used to discriminate. The idea that a "native" / "EFL" speaker is superior to a "non-native" / "ESL" speaker is still extremely widespread. Like Elizabeth mentioned, "native speaker" is still found in a lot of job requirements.

    I've seen it beyond editing, translating, and teaching, although it wasn't for English but Japanese. When I was looking for a job in Japan, there were very few ads that didn't specify that being a native speaker was a requirement. And those jobs were on websites for people living outside of Japan (with an English version literally saying "native"). And again, there was no language level requirement beyond that, which means the problem wasn't the proficiency but discrimination. If memory serves, the few jobs that didn't require a "native" Japanese speaker required an EFL speaker instead.

    Technically, English is my second language, but I'm much more proficient in it than in my first language (French) at this point in my life. It's mind-boggling to me that I could be favoured for a French teacher or editor position over someone with a much better handle on the language just because I'm native and they're not. I don't have the language skills to do those jobs in French.



    ------------------------------
    Jesse Couyere
    Fiction Editor
    Rainbow Pen Editing
    http://rainbowpenediting.com
    ------------------------------