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07.04.08
Proof-reading is easier and cheaper than you think
A walk in the park can lead to more than just fresh air!
During a birthday party, a fellow guest and myself stepped out for a breath of fresh air, and he mentioned a problem he was having at work regarding their English texts.
My new friend worked at the Institute for Mathematical Modelling at DTU, the Technical University of Denmark. The Institute writes about 80-100 English language papers each year as PhD theses or for publication in scientific journals. Their problem was that they could never be sure that their papers were written in perfect English and they were concerned that publishers may reject papers because of poor English.
When I explained that we could read through a paper of about 16 pages for about DKK 1500, my mathematician was delighted. He could now be sure that there were no linguistic errors in the Institute's papers, and authors could concentrate on content and style.
An IT hitch
At the initial formal meeting it became clear that an obstacle could be the LaTex word-processing program favoured by mathematicians. At Global we had no experience of this program, but with the help of our IT consultant we developed our own conversion program so that we could edit the LaTex texts in normal Word format and convert them back to LaTex. A document comparison by the author would reveal where we had suggested a change in the text.
Easy administration
The project has been in operation for more than one year now, and things more or less run themselves. Professors and PhD students mail their texts direct to us with a cc to an administrator at DTU. Global sends the corrected text back to the student, usually within 24 hours, again with a cc to the administrator. Invoicing is every quarter with a break down of the cost of checking each paper.
If a paper looks as if it is going to take longer than a pre-arranged number of hours to check, we phone the administrator and the paper is either returned to the author unchecked or a longer proofing time is authorised.
From little acorns ...
We have just completed proof-reading our second book, this time for a mathematician from RUC - and word about the service is spreading. Why don't you contact me and together I'm sure we can get your research published!
Simon Palmer
Head of Translations
Tel.:33 86 29 33
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