A new low

I have complained before, more than once, about the vexation I endure in some of my technical editing jobs here. The Chinese seem to be extremely lax not only in matters of spelling and punctuation but also in attention to details of even the most fundamental importance - getting names, dates, and facts correct; giving citations accurately.

The foreign policy thinktank I work for is the worst. Most of the stuff they send me to edit is about the level of a mediocre high school essay. They've usually read no more than a dozen or so articles on their chosen subject, often in translation only; and much of the time they have clearly achieved no more than a partial understanding of this material. They simply churn out muddled and superficial summaries of other people's work, completely devoid of any original research or analysis.

It's so intellectually feeble that it can be pretty hilarious to read. Well, it would be hilarious, but for the fact that these guys report directly to the government and their facile waffling might actually be helping to shape policy. That reflection tends to make it seem less hilarious and more downright scary. (Although it is also foremost amongst the reasons why I am sceptical that China can become a truly great power any time soon.)

After two years of doing this work, I was beginning to think I'd seen everything, that no new species of ineptitude could now be contrived to amuse or depress me.

Of course, I was wrong. In the most recent piece I've dealt with, the author included a number of extended quotations from American academics. But he hadn't sourced these quotations from the original articles. No. He'd quoted them from the Chinese translations he'd been working from. And then his assistant/translator had rendered them into Chinglish.

I had to explain to my Chinese chief editor that this was not a problem I could fix.