Thursday, 19 September 2019 10:22

UniSIG report: season kick-off

Written by Joy Burrough-Boenisch

Canva People Having Wine In A Restaurant

On 6 September, 11 SENSE members attended the freestyle UniSIG meeting at which attendees introduced the topics. The wide range of topics included those listed below.

WOinActie (https://woinactie.blogspot.com)
Mention of this movement defending the interests of university education led into a broader discussion about the cuts to university funding that fuelled the ‘red felt squares’ protests by academics at the start of the academic year.

University language centres and their influence on our work
Language centres are also providers of work but do not always pay good rates. Since they are now often independent services rather than part of a university, we wondered how they manage to avoid charging BTW for their internal (university) clients. Here the point was also raised about the need for the editor/translator to have direct contact with the client/author and how third parties and agencies discourage or do not permit this.

Indemnity insurance
Most attendees did not have such insurance, but one said it gave her peace of mind; several said that clients required them to have it. An indicative price of about €600 per annum was mentioned.

Expected rates for someone embarking on a career as a translator but working mainly for agencies
These are generally rather low, but it takes time to find your way and acquire independent clients.

The editor’s role as a teacher
Most editors of academic texts consider at least part of their role to include acting as a writing coach, pointing out mistakes made in style, terminology and grammar, and even content for those who are also subject experts.

The pros and cons of taking on pro bono assignments
These can sometimes lead to a fee-paying client, but it is often a case of being caught in the moment and just saying yes to such work! We agreed you often do not know what you’re getting into at the start of such projects, so the advice is to clarify as much as possible.

Using academia.eu and researchgate.net (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academia.edu and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResearchGate) to keep abreast of relevant research (eg on editing student texts)
Once you’ve registered and indicated your interests, you can search for papers and chapters and upload any of your own work to share with the community. Both sites will also suggest literature on topics that could be relevant to you. The documents can be downloaded from links on their websites, or the author(s) can be contacted via the form the website provides. For ResearchGate, you need to register with an institutional email address.

Whether students benefit more from courses that are based on writing across the curriculum or from courses focusing on writing within a discipline
Over half of the attendees also teach academic or science writing. There was no consensus as to what type of course is more effective, as much depends on factors such as group size and students’ linguistic, cultural and disciplinary backgrounds. A biomedical editor suggested consulting the guidelines on science publishing practice and writing available on the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (CORR) websites. See https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors and http://tools.clinorthop.org/author-guidelines

SENSE Guidelines for Proofreading Student Texts
Are they being circulated and referred to? Why is the ethics of editing student texts not a hot topic in Dutch academia? We concluded, regretfully, that there is little interest among academics here.

Plans to revamp language teaching in Dutch schools, so that pupils are made more aware of the power of language for expressing ideas and are better equipped to express themselves in writing when they reach university
Dutch schools have so far not placed much emphasis on learning to write well. New approaches are on the horizon.

Our meeting was held in a room on the first floor of Restaurant Se7en in Utrecht. The facilities were not as modern as those of Park Plaza, but the general opinion was that this is a convenient and pleasant venue for meetings and serves good and reasonably priced food. Unfortunately, it does not have a lift.

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