I have a real, though non-academic, interest in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. My reading ability is probably better than my listening ability in all those languages.
That said, I don’t think I could reliably translate papers from any of those languages into English. I would probably get more subtle ideas and nuances wrong.
And even authors who have real problems with English will be more aware of the terminology and forms of their subjects than I am.
I would welcome people explaining thing to me in their native languages. I can’t remember anyone doing that in asking me to edit their papers, but I like getting the chance to use my foreign languages.
I was in 台灣 for 20 years, in Korea for 12 years and in Japan for 6-8 years, but I am more fluent in Japanese than in Korean, and more fluent in Korean than in Chinese.
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