Foreword: do you believe that there is such as a thing as a “professional linguist” – any kind
of person who, for their profession, should always have the label attributed to them? Either
way, I dare say that it’s hard to be any more of a “professional linguist” than to be a
professional translator, speaking as one myself.
I have written about some irregular jobs that I personally have done in my capacity as a
professional translator before https://www.georgetrailtranslator.co.uk/professional-
translation-irregular-jobs/ but recently I got an uncommon request from a regular client in
Lithuania: it was described as an editing project in which I was simply supposed to rewrite a
translated text (already in English, my mother tongue) while keeping the meaning of the
sentence. At the start, I would have called it just another multilingual editing job but for the
fact that I was specifically told that the text was “to be rewritten by 90%, which means that it
has to be essentially the same, but in a different form” – whatever that actually meant (or
rather, required). And so imagined that this English text would be one pretty poorly written,
by a non-native speaker. But at the end of the day: what better than to hire a proven
“professional linguist” for something like this?
In any case, I agreed to take on this project – at the time I specifically mentioned to the
project manager for it that I regarded it as a “creative writing challenge”, to which she
clarified the request was from the client to “rewrite the text in different words”… right. Well,
like I said I am a native English speaker, anyway.
So what was my actual experience with this work? Well, it didn’t take me long to realise that,
at the start, it was a very clumsy English translation, just as I thought it would be. I imagine
that the project manager knowingly expected me to identify it as such as well. That said, I
wasn’t provided with the original; not that it mattered, because I know that the original was in
fact Lithuanian, which I don’t speak (surprise surprise). I can say that definitively because,
even though the original was never made available to me (no doubt for that very reason) out
of human error part of the last sentence was still in Lithuanian (I verified as such with the
help of Google Translate).
The feedback I got for my work the first time round included this mention: “The client
reported that [I] did a pretty good job, 37% overlap.” Eventually I realised that “overlap”
meant that the text in question was “copyhit” (I have done some copywriting before),
meaning that it matched exactly (or almost exactly) text of other sources online. I was asked
to “reduce this overlap” for a small additional fee in a second round, although I have to say
that even though the project manager stated the sources, I was mostly not given a link by
which I could verify it.
And my work in the second round seemed to do the trick perfectly. For the record, here’s a
few examples of the changes I made, to give you an idea of my actual work here:
“which is related to a ‘natural’ variety of institutional conditions, networks, actor strategies
and situations”
changed to

“which is related to a ‘natural’ range of institutional conditions, networks, strategies for
involved actors and situations”
“Governments in low-income countries tend to prioritise economic development over
environmental protection; something which gives rise to a range of serious environmental
problems.”
changed to
“One common agenda for governments in low-income countries is to put economic
development first and protection of the environment second; something which gives rise to a
true array of significant environmental problems.”
“consumption of a large amount of energy resources, and one result of this is increasingly
significant air pollution problems”
changed to
“mass consumption of energy resources, and one result of this is ever-exacerbated air
pollution problems”
“the primary task involves the transformation of extensive economic growth models into
intensive economic growth models, with a staunch priority on cleaner production.”
changed to
“the primary task involves the transformation of extensive economic growth paradigms into
intensive ones, with a staunch priority on production infrastructure which pollutes less.”
“along with the development of a sound environmental supervision system,”
changed to
“along with the development of a robust system in place for monitoring the environment,”
“This means that policy-makers need to appeal to these residents to develop more
environmentally friendly, and more low-consumption, living habits if air quality is to be
enhanced”
changed to
“This means that policy-makers are required to encourage these residents to develop living
habits that are better for the environment, and marked by lower consumption levels, if air
quality is to be enhanced”
Here’s a few examples of just a few words changed to better get at the intended meaning
rather than rewriting a bigger part of a sentence:
“quality of life”
changed to
“living standards”
“various stakeholder groups”
changed to
“stakeholder groups within various sectors”
“the functioning of ecological environments”
changed to
“the functionality factors of ecological environments”

“the role of eco-city development”
changed to
“the concept of developing eco-cities”
“voluntarily ‘give’”
changed to
“willingly cede”
Finally, one sentence I wasn’t afraid to admit I really couldn’t make any sense of: “Seven
countries success and nine countries sustainability experts determined own weights of 17
country success indicators”.
End of article.