For authors
The planning stages
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What to ask yourself
There are three key things to ask yourself when entering the planning stages of writing an article in a second language:
Be honest with yourself, how confident are you in your language ability?
You may have written multiple essays and dissertations in other languages prior to this research article. You may have never produced academic writing in a second language before. Because of this, the process of researching, planning and writing an article will be different depending on how much of it you are willing to carry out in the second language and how much time and energy you want to dedicate to improving in the language (for example, revising grammar rules, researching key phrases to include etc.).
So, before beginning, ask yourself: how much of the process would you feel comfortable writing in the target language? How strong is your knowledge of the subject area that you’re writing about, and so how much time and effort should you dedicate to researching new material or practicing your writing skills?
Conducting your planning and research in the target language can make the writing stage much easier in the end. However, pushing yourself to do everything in the language when you are not as confident in it can lead to producing a poor plan and, as such, a poorer article. Therefore, it is important to understand your current language level and base your decisions on that.
How confident are you in your argument and knowledge of the topic?
Is your article covering a particular niche that you have studied for years, or is it a little different from your particular specialism? The planning stage is a balancing act of devoting your time between the content and the language, so it is crucial to determine how best to split your time between them in your particular circumstances.
What resources do you have available to you?
To be accepted into a journal, the article needs to not only display your ability in the target language; it needs to be well argued, well researched and, most importantly, original. Many articles are excellently written; however, they remain unpublished because their content has been written before. With this in mind, try to look into what research on your chosen topic is available and what others have already said – both in your first language and your target language. It can be helpful to contact staff at your institution for research recommendations or ask your library for additional resources.
Beyond academic resources, it is also important to know what personal and financial resources are available to you: are you able to use a language-editing service or a translation service? Do you know colleagues with native fluency in the language who could proofread your work? Neither of these are necessary to produce a fantastic article, but they can make you feel more confident in the quality of your work.
Researching
Research is the foundation of the entire writing process and it is where you can address those three questions mentioned earlier. Assess how you need to expand upon your language ability, subject knowledge and available resources in order to produce an article with an original and well-argued perspective.
First, it is essential to have a secure knowledge of your subject matter: understanding your argument, the theories and ideas within it, as well as what other articles may argue against it.
Having this familiarity with your article’s content will allow you to focus on the challenging aspects of writing in a second language. So, here are some suggestions for things to pay attention to during your research:
Read research in the target language
Reading and incorporating secondary research in the target language will not only expose you to subject-specific terminology in that language, but it will also limit the amount of theoretical content you will need to translate in the future writing stage.
Particularly in the case of English-language research, including other target-language writing to support or contrast your argument may give your work greater credibility. US and UK readers, peer reviewers and journal editors are likely to be more familiar with English-language scholarship. Therefore, they will likely find your article more relevant and accessible if it engages with that same English-language academia.
Pay attention to the use of language in recently published research
While the authorial voice of your article should be your own, it can be tiring trying to determine what register is appropriate for academic writing. With that in mind, noting the tone and style of contemporary research in the target language can help you to judge the expected register for your work, as well as providing some inspiration for emphatic words and phrases that you may want to use yourself.
Check whether the literature, media, or events that you are discussing already have a title in the target language.
It is often the case that the titles of literary or cinematic works are not translated literally, and so it can cause confusion if you refer to a work by its title in your first language when writing in a second one. For example, it might confuse Spanish readers if I wrote an article on Las aventuras de Alice en el mundo fantástico (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) since the novel is titled Alicia en el país de las maravillas in Spain. There may not be a drastic difference between the two translations, but not using a work’s official title in that language is an immediate giveaway that I am not a native speaker. Therefore, it’s worth a quick Google search to check that you are referring to the work correctly. If there is no official target-language title for the work you are discussing, feel free to use your own translation.
Incorporate the target language into your notes
Constructing your ideas as much as possible in the target language will avoid any struggles in translating them during the writing process. This does not mean that the language quality needs to be perfect. You can use a language hybrid (e.g. Spanglish, Konglish) or make as many mistakes as you want – nobody will ever see! What is important is using the target language in some way whilst planning and researching. After all, you are an author not a translator.
Devising a plan
Now that you have researched your topic and formed some ideas, it is time to plan your own argument. Much like your research notes, it is useful to incorporate the target language into your plans. This does not need to be perfect: you can use a hybrid of two languages, slang, or even a shorthand that only you can understand. What is important is that your plan should help you to write your argument in the target language, rather than forming your ideas and arguments in your native language and then having to translate them.
There are a multitude of ways to produce a plan for your article. For example, you may prefer to plan your conclusion first, or begin with a very brief bullet-point list of your arguments, which you expand upon in multiple stages to form an article. You may prefer to plan using mind maps or flowcharts, or use your plan as a brain-dump for all your sources, notes and ideas, which you then work to sort through. Whether you begin with the conclusion, introduction, or the tenth line of page 3, it is likely that you already have a method that you know works for you.
A key tip that could be helpful at this stage is to look back at any previous work you have written in the target language and try to find your most common errors or areas for improvement. Keeping a list of these areas visible during the planning and writing process will severely cut down the amount of editing you will need to do later on.