282. Editing for EFL Writers with Mekiya Outini

Award-winning author and editor Mekiya Outini discusses the differences in editing for EFL writers, why editing should be a collaborative effort, and also gives advice on how to improve your language across all facets of life.
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https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/mekiya-outinis-newsletter-7151240633465065472/

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/mekiya-outini-1157b9184/

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https://www.thedatekeepers.com/

Transcript

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Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the podcast that takes a whole person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Award-winning author and editor Makaya Otini has many writing- and editing-related passions, including how to best support EFL writers. And this is one of those topics that really doesn't come up enough, but it really should. He's going to be talking about editing practices that are considered standard and how they might not serve these writers, but also he'll be telling us about what approaches we should take instead. This is "Editing for EFL Writers."

Jennia: So thankful to have you here!

Mekiya Outini: Hi, Jennia! Thanks so much for having me.

Jennia: Would you like to get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Mekiya Outini: Sure, yeah. Yeah. My name is Mekiya Outini. I'm a fiction writer by training, and I have an MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. That's where I met my wife, my collaborator in many things, and also where I met many of my clients. I do book editing, I'm a freelancer, I do academic tutoring. But—and that all kind of came together by chance because I got started working in university writing centers and realized that I really enjoyed doing that work and sort of freelancing on the side, and that grew into a business. But while I was in the university system, I met a lot of international students—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —Noticed that the support that they were getting from other tutors and just from freelance editors in general was not serving their needs. And of course, those are very diverse needs because you've got all different levels of English fluency. You've got all different native languages from different countries, which is going to affect how they process English because their home language, and then whatever other languages they may learn, all of those are going to interfere with and interact with English in different ways. So and I don't think there is a standardized approach to dealing with the language itself—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —but I've had to develop—through experience in working with clients, I've developed some best practices that can help navigate those challenges that can be imposed by working across different languages. I myself am monolingual. I really, really admire people who are multilingual. I'm trying to learn Spanish. So I have a great deal of admiration for my clients, and I also get to learn a lot from them about their disciplines because I work mainly with academics, so I get to learn a lot of things through my clients. So I see that as a collaborative relationship, not just a one way street.

Jennia: That's a great way to look at it too. And I think that's important, really, for any editor, no matter who you're working with or what you're working with, that it's not some sort of dictatorship where we're filtering down these rules for language and telling them, "You must abide by these in order to have a publishable document."

Mekiya Outini: Of course. Yeah. And it is a different dynamic because, especially when we're working with EFL writers, we really are the experts in the language.

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: There are a lot of things that we don't know that they do. Like, there's more overlap when you're working with, like, other native speaking writers. They may be specialists in a field that we're not specialists in, but there's still more overlap because we grew up speaking similar—I would say the same, but, I mean, it could be similar languages if it's a different dialect of English. But when we're working with EFL writers, it's easy to get trapped either in feeling like we're the ones who don't know anything because they have such a broad knowledge base that we don't have, or alternately feeling that we are the experts and don't need to defer to them in anything, because we understand how our language should work. And it's very important to keep that relationship balanced and to oscillate between being the teacher and being the student, because there really is a teacher-student relationship, but it goes in both directions at the same time.

Jennia: Yeah, that just also sounds like just having this expected level of respect that you would expect with working with any professional.

Mekiya Outini: Yes, absolutely. One of the biggest challenges that I've noticed EFL students encountering—and I say students because I've mostly worked with, like, students, international scholars. But—so this is mostly in the context of the university system. But a lot of them come to me after trying to hire tutors on upwork, and they get referred to me by mutual acquaintances. They often hire people who bill themselves as proofreaders. So, personally, I think the distinction that we make between proofreading on the one hand, and then either line editing or copy editing—whatever term you prefer—on the other, is very useful in processes like book editing, magazine editing, where you have a document that's going to go through multiple drafts, and be reviewed by different people to prepare it for publication and to polish it. But that distinction does not serve international students at all. And I think we really ought to scrap that distinction in that context because—there's a couple reasons for that. First, these terms, "proofreading," "copy editing," "line editing," they're industry-specific, technical terms. So even a lot of native speakers don't know the distinction between those things—

Jennia: Oh, exactly! Yeah.

Mekiya Outini: —And even within the editorial community, there's differences of opinion. Like, we all draw that line in a slightly different place, or the organizations we work for do. So they're not terms that are precise and well-defined. And to the extent that they are, those definitions may not be known. And when a person who is working in English with a foreign language is coming to an editor, most likely they probably know what they want to say. I'm going to generalize—there are some people who, you know, just, like with working with native speakers, might have no idea what they want to say and just need help figuring out what they want to say. But most of the time, international students are very high achievers. They've made it a university in a foreign country. They are pretty well-versed in their discipline at that point. They know what they want to communicate, but they don't have the mastery of the language to do it, and they are looking for someone who will collaborate with them and say, okay, "You wrote this here. I have no idea what this means. What did you mean?" Or, "You wrote this. It makes no sense in context. Like, it's a coherent sentence, but it does not seem to mean what I think it should mean based on what you've said before and after. Can you talk to me a little bit about what you want to say here? Like, what argument you're making? And then we can figure out the best way to instantiate that in English."—

Jennia: Mmm.

Mekiya Outini: —And it's a learning process for both of us, because as the editor, we really should never be making assumptions about what our clients need. But that's doubly true when we're working with someone who works in English as a foreign language, because they have all sorts of interferences coming in from other languages. They might have idiomatic expressions that make perfect sense in their language, but don't translate into English. They might have words whose definition is the same as an English word, but whose connotation is utterly different—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —And so all of those things can create points of possible confusion. And those are the things that we need to be helping our clients with. And I had a lot of clients come to me and say, "Hey, the last six editors I worked with all charged me, like, $500." And when I asked them why we made this change, they said, "Oh, well, that's the right way to do it." And all they were doing was just putting a comma here, a semicolon there, deleting an em dash here. And yes, proofreading is typically constrained to punctuation, spelling, grammatical errors, and formatting—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —But that's usually not what EFL clients need. So if we continue to observe that distinction, we should at least explain what we're offering before we take anyone's money. But I think—

Jennia: I'm so glad you brought that up, yeah. Because I think that's something that we see almost across the board with people, and not just EFL writers, but almost all writers Because, like you were saying earlier, that even different editors will have a different definition for what they might apply to one type of editing versus another, and that it's really on us to always make sure that we're meeting that client's needs before we sign a contract with them and then perhaps tie them into something that isn't really what they were expecting or what they wanted.

Mekiya Outini: Absolutely. Yeah. And especially when English is not the first language of the person you're working with, it's really important to communicate that in advance and be like, "Hey, this is what I offer. Is this what you need? Is this all you need? Is this the first thing you need? What else might you need? If I don't offer this, maybe I know someone who does. Maybe you should go to that person first." You know, if you need a developmental editor, and I'm just offering proofreading, let me hook you up with my buddy who does developmental edits before I take your money. And you guys can still do business there, but make sure that the client knows exactly what they're paying for and that it's what they want and need.

Jennia: What types of onboarding questions, then, do you have to make sure that they are aware of these differences and to make sure that you are going to be the right person to help them?

Mekiya Outini: I don't have a formal set of questions. It's always just pretty conversational. Usually I get clients through referrals. And usually my former clients are familiar with what I offer, so if they know that someone they know needs that same service, they'll refer me. But usually what I ask is—I ask them to send the document or documents that they need reviewed, and I look over those, and I kind of assess what level of editing I think it needs. And then I'll have a conversation with them and say, "Hey, here's what I think this needs. I'm not understanding this whole section here. Do you know what you mean to say? Can you tell me?" Because sometimes people will have very strong spoken English but their written English is weak, or vice versa—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —Because those are separate skills, so they might be able to communicate very clearly what they want to say verbally, and then I can say, "Okay, so we don't need developmental editing here, we just need, like, a whole lot of copy editing. And I'm going to walk you through, like, why we're making each of these changes. So you can understand why this communicates what you want to say better than that." It can be challenging when you're working with someone purely through a written medium.

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: I often do just because that's more feasible. Sometimes my clients are in different time zones. Sometimes they are not comfortable with their spoken English and they're working in written English. So I often do work just in written format, but it's not ideal. It's preferable if you can actually have a conversation face to face. So, yeah, I don't have a specific, standardized set of questions. I tailor it to the situation and kind of work within whatever constraints that situation imposes.

Jennia: Are clients usually fairly open to having that video-style communication or even talking on the phone?

Mekiya Outini: It varies depending on the client. I don't usually actually do video calls. I usually, when I have face-to-face conversations, it's with clients who are physically present—

Jennia: Ahh, okay.

Mekiya Outini: —in the area. Like, I do have some clients who I've worked with here, and then they went back to their countries, and sometimes we'll do video calls, but it's honestly hard to schedule if their nighttime is our daytime. So that's why and I don't always do that, even though I do think it's a best practice when it's an option. But in terms of openness, another thing that I've noticed is a lot of editors... I mean, it's hard for all of us not to jump to one extreme or the other. So the two extremes are either, "I need to be the authority here and determine what this is going to say and how it's going to say it," or, alternately, "I'm really scared to make any changes because I don't want to—you know, you have your own distinctive voice and and I don't want to violate that." And I've noticed, especially with EFL writers who are working in the academic fields—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —we'll generalize as much to people working in the creative arts. But especially in the academic fields, they don't care (Jennia laughs). They don't care about their distinctive voice. They want to know how to master English and communicate the way a native speaker would and be respected and earn that respect using, like, elegant, eloquent, well-put-together, coherent prose. They don't care about, like, preserving their distinctive voice. That is a concern, definitely when you're working with, like, fiction writers. Like, if someone says, "No, I mean x, you don't want to say no, you mean y."—

Jennia: Right.

Mekiya Outini: —But I think sometimes we get hung up on the language politics around correcting someone's expression in their second language when actually they want that. And they get frustrated if we don't offer that.

Jennia: What about cultural sensitivity? Do you think that also needs to be something that editors take into consideration? And not just that they're aware of it, but that they're thinking about it also?

Mekiya Outini: Yes. I don't love the word sensitivity because that suggests that we actually know the other culture and can be sensitive to it. I prefer curiosity. The cultural curiosity—

Jennia: Oo, I like that!

Mekiya Outini: —Yeah, because I work with people from all over the world. I don't know that much about Indonesian culture. I don't know that much about Saudi culture. And I knew that there were going to be questions I didn't even think to ask. So one thing I'll always tell my clients is if I'm giving you feedback, and it seems like and I don't understand what you're trying to say, tell me. Because I might have one cultural concept in my mind that I don't even realize is a Western or an American cultural concept or is embedded in English. And I'm just kind of processing that as, like, part of the base reality. But it's not. It's part of the conceptual layer of reality. And you've got a different conceptual layer of reality. And if you notice that these clashes are happening, and and I don't, you call it out too. Like, either one of us can be the one to point that out, and then together we figure out, "Okay, I've got this cultural concept I'm invoking. You've got that cultural concept. How do we fit them together? How do we engage in cultural translation?" So it's a very messy process. There's not a precise science to it. So, generally speaking, you really got to be aware that cultures differ and that cultures are embedded in languages and that linguistic expression is determined largely by culture—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —but it's really hard to know exactly how until you actually get in there and start asking questions and communicating with your client, and working through the problems that come up.

Jennia: I'm glad you brought that up. I'm going to be changing what phrase I use from now on because that wasn't something that I'd heard before. And, yeah, especially the way you explained it, it just makes so much more sense. And you'd think that as writers and editors, we're so aware of word choice and what they mean, not just the definition of that word, but how we use it. And maybe those implications that the word has so—

Mekiya Outini: Well, it's funny too, because I think sometimes we overdo that. And this is another thing I've realized from working with people who come to English and might not get any of the connotations that we think a word has.

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: So I do think words are really interesting. I love to play with them. I love to think about which word would be most appropriate. But I think sometimes those of us in the writing and editing world put that on a pedestal (Jennia laughs), and we think the word has to be exactly right. And if it's not exactly right, we change that word. We put a new word. And I don't mean just in a document, I mean in the discourse. And that doesn't always work because language is not static like that. It's fluid, dynamic. It's great to use the wrong word, especially in a verbal context, because then you can be like, "Well, wait, why is that the wrong word? Let's figure it out."

Jennia: One of the articles that I read beforehand about the same topic was that they said they don't think of it so much as just editing or like we would maybe with someone where English is their first language, but that they think of it also as teaching. And that does seem to be lining up with what you've said so far too. So it's almost like there's this extra layer added onto the editing. We're not just going to be saying it's this rule or that rule, or we use a comma when we have these kinds of clauses and not this kind of clause, and that we really are explaining.

Mekiya Outini: Yes, explaining and, also, always explaining that the rules all have exceptions. I'd say this is going to be true most of the time, but also English sucks—

Jennia: (laughs) Yeah! It does.

Mekiya Outini: —Good luck. But no, I always want my clients to have more tools when they stop working with me than they had when they started. And that's going to vary depending on what tools they had when they came in, right? And—

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: —sometimes my advice is just, like, read a lot. Read a lot of English. Immerse yourself in English reading. You'll start to pick up how English prose works on the page. It's different than verbal. So whatever media—because there's reading, writing, speaking, and listening—whatever you're weakest at, you want to practice that medium. Because, like, reading written prose is great. It's a great way to teach you how to read and write written prose. It's not going to help with speaking and listening as much. That's, for example, that's like my spanish writing and reading is actually—it's, like, it's pretty good. I can read and write Spanish pretty well. I am not good at speaking and listening because I get way more practice with reading and writing. And you can tell that there's a differential there. I can barely communicate in spoken Spanish at all, so just be mindful. Those are—those differentials are normal. They probably reflect different levels of exposure. One really good tool you can give to your client is just whatever you're weakest on, focus on that and don't think that this other skill is going to make up for it. They're separate skills. They don't—I mean, there's a little overlap, but not that much.

Jennia: Is that something that you usually have to explain when you are talking to clients or after you've read their work and communicated with them directly?

Mekiya Outini: It depends. I usually—I only really know whether they got it in their education system or not after working with them for a while—

Jennia: Right.

Mekiya Outini: —I always make it as a recommendation. Even talking to native speakers, I'm like, "Just read more." Like, read a lot more and read in your genre too. Like if you read a lot of sociology papers, it's not going to make you good at writing poetry. It might inform your poetry, but it's not going to make you stylistically better at writing poetry. It's not going to make you know how to write a math paper. Like, the only way to do that is read math papers. So read the thing that you need to learn how to write, listen to the thing that you need to learn how to speak. It's pretty good general advice. And—

Jennia: Mhm! I think that's good advice too. Really, just for anyone who wants to write or wants to better their writing.

Mekiya Outini: Yeah. And I mean, there's, once you really master the discipline you need to work in, then you—then have fun. Read it widely, because the more widely you read, the more inputs you're going to have. But while you're focusing on mastering that one discipline, focus on that. Focus on reading that.

Jennia: We've talked about this a little bit already, but do you think there are some common editorial approaches that maybe don't work as well or could even be harmful when working with EFL writers that might work with another population?

Mekiya Outini: I think the biggest one I've noticed is that it's drawing that hard line between copy editing and proofreading and then not offering clear explanations upfront. But I think also it's tricky when you're navigating different languages and different cultures. And I think it's really easy to go in either with too much or not enough awareness of that. And like I said earlier, if you go in with too much, it can paralyze you with fear and you forget to ask the right questions. But it's, I think, more common to go in with too little awareness of just how much culture influences language use. So I would say ask more questions upfront and ask more questions as you go. And that's generally a good practice across the board, but when you're working with native speakers, you might hit a point of diminishing return where you're not getting as much out of asking the questions as you are wasting your time and theirs. But I think there's sort of an infinite number of questions you can ask when you're working with an EFL client, and you will always get a new answer that's interesting and somehow useful and informative. So just keep asking those questions as you go along. And it's really easy for EFL clients to think that we're the authorities—

Jennia: Ooh.

Mekiya Outini: —and we know everything and, like, to defer to us even when they shouldn't. So it should be a collaborative relationship, and we should be very clear that we're fallible and we're going to make mistakes and get things wrong too. And they'll still want to get our expertise and respect us.

Jennia: I would think that the risk might be even higher when you're working with someone who's writing a scholarly paper or something of that nature, just because we might not be as aware of all the terms and the jargon and the way that things are phrased. Because some of those can sound wrong if you just look at it. But if you are—yeah, if you're part of that discipline and you're aware of it, you understand that that's just what it's called. That's just the phrasing they use. So I could see someone who maybe doesn't have that knowledge going in, and accidentally introducing an error just because they made the assumption that they didn't mean to put an article there, for instance.

Mekiya Outini: Yes, I've done that before. And I also have managed to catch myself before doing it, fortunately, sometimes. And I always ask—whenever something sounds odd to me and it's a discipline I'm not familiar with, I'll say, "Is this how you see it in the textbooks?" Or, "Is this how you see it in the other academic papers?" Or, "Is this how your professor says it?' Now, sometimes the professor and/or the authors of the other academic papers are also going to be EFL speakers. So they might have—there might be like an error that sort of becomes standardized in the field because of that. It's still, it's, like, okay, they got their stuff published, so it's clearly, even if it's an error, it's clearly not that big a deal. So maybe that is actually the convention now or an emerging convention.

Jennia: Yeah.

Mekiya Outini: —It's always better to defer to the client's field. And, like I said, I've made that mistake too. And sometimes I'll go back to a client and I'll email them a week later and I'll be like, "Hey, remember how I told you to do this? Well, actually, it seems like in your field, it's fine to do it the way you were doing it, so good for you. Go ahead and just Control F it all back." (Jennia laughs). So, yeah, no, that's definitely a concern and something that we should pay attention

Jennia: Do you think that the editor's personality plays a part at all in how equipped they are to work with EFL writers?

Mekiya Outini: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think personality always plays a role. I don't know if there's a linear relationship there. It might also interact with the field. Like, someone who doesn't have super strong social skills might actually be okay working with EFL writers and computer sciences, because (Jennia laughs) there's a chance that that might not be their strength either. And as long as you're asking questions that you need to be asking, it's okay.

Jennia: Mhm.

Mekiya Outini: You always want a good relationship with your client. Like, you always—

Jennia: Yeah.

Mekiya Outini: —Especially given that there is that tendency to defer to us as the authorities. You always want to be—like, to present yourself as someone who is open to being told, "No you're actually wrong." Like, I don't want to say it that way. And so if you present yourself as being too authoritative, you might not be—you might not appear to be receptive to that feedback. And that can shut down an avenue of collaboration.

Jennia: Based on what you've said, though, too, I think editing style also plays a part. Those people who tend to be a little more judicious in their comments or their feedback even, may not be as strong of a fit as those people who are happy to elaborate and tend to just naturally do that.

Mekiya Outini: I would say in general, yes, elaborating is good. Explaining is good. In general, yeah. You want to be conversational, curious, willing to ask questions. Sometimes if you just notice something that is interesting and you don't perceive it as being relevant to the editing process, you might comment on it because it might turn out that it is and you just don't know why.

Jennia: Oh yeah. Well do you have any recommended resources where people can learn more about this, or if they would like to go more in depth on this topic?

Mekiya Outini: Not really. I've mostly taught myself through experience and through asking my clients what works for them and what doesn't. So I don't have a whole lot of, like, scholarly resources. In terms of resources that EFL writers and readers can use in case any are listening; it just—any format that mirrors the thing you're trying to do. So if you're trying to get stronger with reading and writing, again, like, read and write more, and find free resources that are in your discipline. If you're trying to get better with listening and speaking, "Hooray! You're listening to a podcast. You're on the right track."

Jennia: (Jennia laughs) Thanks for that.

Mekiya Outini: Podcasts are great because they're conversational and you can kind of get a sense of how language is used in these semi-formal, but still natural form, context.

Jennia: Mhm!

Mekiya Outini: Audiobooks are great for more formal spoken English. But, yeah, and there's a lot of places you can get free audiobooks or free podcasts. Ohh, LibriVox is one. They're not coming to the top of my head at the moment, but there are databases where you can find that material. And of course, there's so much free stuff on the internet. Quality is a concern there, but there's a lot of free text on the internet.

Jennia: Well, thank you so much! This has been excellent.

Mekiya Outini: Thanks, Jennia! I've had a great time. I really hope that this episode reaches some people who find it useful.

Jennia: Oh I do, too. And I really hope that a lot of editors listen to this as well, just so they broaden their own understanding of how to employ some of these practices and even maybe think about how they edit a little bit differently than they already do.

Jennia: Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information. And please join me next week when author and podcast host Paul Brooks joins us. And we're going to be talking about whether or not formal writing training is necessary to be an author. Thanks again!