Mark:
It’s difficult for me to generalize because Uni-edit customers come from a range of backgrounds and motivations. Perhaps living in a country where English is not the native language, you feel a strong social pressure to improve your English, hearing that it’s the global language. Surely learning any foreign language opens new views on the world, with English perhaps opening the most doors. From working in ESL education, I think Westerners are often biased to think that everyone wants to connect with people from around the world, because we mostly talk in English with those who are making the effort to connect.
But, I completely disagree that this applies to all of Uni-edit’s customers: some customers just want the English of their manuscript in publishable quality. They studied medicine, or engineering, or chemistry, and they can perform excellent research regardless of the language used to describe it. I believe these customers want to focus on their research; they don’t want the added time and effort of learning a second language as well. They might see the merit of your work in the technology or patents it supports, and want to leave the communication part to language experts.
Speaking personally, my interest in the Japanese language as a career started out as a hobby; I changed it into a career because I understood the incredible amount of time I needed to invest to achieve the fluency I wanted. At the same time, I had to make a sacrifice, to stop doing primary research to study the language full time. Not every scientist in Asia has the freedom to do that; indeed, I imagine few even want to! So I guess I want to emphasise to authors that it’s okay to not want to improve your English ability to the level of a native speaker, if that’s not one of your priorities.
Sally:
I think the rest of the team would agree with me when I say accurate, polished editing that retains the author’s intended meaning and results in a well-written, easy-to-read paper.
Catherine:
I’d also add good quality with the best price and the process of communications being simple, clear, and easy to follow.
Yuki:
I believe most Uni-edit customers from Japan want perfect English editing quality, even if it costs a lot and takes some time.
Leigh:
To be honest, I provide services for Chinese-speaking customers. I could only share my experiences of what Chinese speaking customers want the most in the English editing service. Uni-edit’s English editing service focus on language fixing and making the original meaning clear by two native speakers with subject expertise. We are glad some of them understand what we do and appreciate how we find the right experts for their papers.