Editing a machine-translated abstract for an English-language submission (foreign language: English)
A master's student in ecology has to submit a 250-word English abstract to a Scopus-indexed journal by Friday. Her Kazakh draft was machine-translated, and the editor's pre-check flagged four sentences: (1) 'The actuality of the research is conditioned by the increasing of pastures degradation.' (2) 'The object of research is the pastures of the Sarysu district, the square of which is 3,200 hectares.' (3) 'We have conducted the experiment during three years and got the following results.' (4) 'The received data can be used by the farmers.' The student has an English B1 certificate, no native-speaker colleague available, and a 48-hour deadline. The journal's guide requires formal academic register, past tense for completed methods, and avoidance of 'actuality' in the sense of 'current relevance'. A professional editing service costs more than her monthly stipend.
1. Classify each of the four problems as grammatical, lexical (false friend/calque), or register, and explain the intended meaning. Which one is most likely to mislead a reviewer?
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(1) 'actuality ... conditioned by the increasing of pastures degradation' - lexical false friend and calque from 'актуальность', plus a grammatical nominalization. Intended: 'The study is relevant because pasture degradation is increasing.' In English 'actuality' means reality, not current relevance. This is the most misleading item because it changes the claim. (2) 'object of research ... the square of which is 3,200 hectares' - lexical false friend ('square' for 'area') and awkward grammar. 'Object of research' is understandable but stilted; natural academic English is 'The study focuses on...'. Intended: 'The study focuses on pastures in Sarysu district, an area of 3,200 ha.' (3) 'We have conducted ... during three years and got' - tense and register. Use past simple for a completed period ('conducted'), 'over three years' or 'a three-year experiment', and 'obtained' rather than the informal 'got'. (4) 'The received data can be used by the farmers' - lexical/grammatical calque: 'received data' should be 'the data obtained'; generic 'farmers' normally takes no article. Intended: 'The data obtained can be used by farmers.'
Most misleading: sentence 1, because 'actuality' signals a non-native calque at the very start and misstates relevance as reality.
2. Rewrite the four sentences in formal academic English, and state two things you cannot certify as an editor and must ask the author to confirm.
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Revised: (1) 'The study is relevant because pasture degradation is increasing.' (2) 'The study focuses on the pastures of Sarysu district, which cover 3,200 hectares.' (3) 'We conducted a three-year experiment and obtained the following results.' (4) 'The data obtained can be used by farmers.'
These revisions remove the false friends, use past simple for completed methods, and replace informal vocabulary. They also make the subject of each sentence explicit, which is important for a reviewer skimming an abstract.
Cannot certify: (a) whether 'pasture degradation' is measured by the indicators the author actually used, and whether 3,200 ha is the study area or the whole district; (b) whether the three-year period, the results, and the claim of practical use match the underlying data. I also cannot guarantee discipline-specific terminology or journal acceptance. The author must check the final version against the data and the journal's style; with B1 English and 48 hours, she should prioritise these four corrections and then have the whole text checked for terminology, not only grammar.