Doctoral researcher Johannes Koski

Doctoral researcher Johannes Koski turned to Lingo’s language revision services to get the permission to defend his doctoral thesis in a public defence – and to get some much-needed peace of mind

Revising the language of the thesis was an important final step that improved the fluency of the text without detracting from the original author’s unique voice.

Johannes Koski wrote his doctoral thesis in Digital Culture at the University of Turku. In August 2023, he successfully defended his thesis entitled “Producing Affection: Affect and Mediated Intimacy in Pokémon”, which explores how affection is formed and distributed in Pokémon.

Before receiving the permission for public defence and publication, doctoral candidates must have the language of their thesis revised to a publishable standard. In Koski’s case, this is where translation agency Lingo entered the picture. “Language revision is usually done after the preliminary examiners have submitted their statements and the work has been revised based on the comments received. The language revision was carried out at this stage for my thesis as well,” says Koski.

For him, it was not just about getting the permission for defence and publication, but also about the finishing touches. “I have traditionally reviewed articles and other texts myself, but it’s clear that a professional will find quite a few things to correct that I wouldn’t have noticed myself. In addition, the expert at Lingo who carried out the language revision was able to take the content of my work into account very well.”

Koski admits that he was a little nervous about whether the reviser would make a lot of changes to the terminology, or whether the text would still feel like his own. However, these fears proved to be unfounded. “My work deals with emotions, and it makes quite a difference whether you use the word ‘emotion’, ‘feeling’, ‘mood’ or ‘affect’, although in everyday life many of these could be used almost synonymously. However, the language reviser worked well with these and other special terms. I think it also helped that we went over some of the terms beforehand.”

Koski was very happy with the corrections and modifications made by the reviser. “The text was given a slightly more formal tone, but my own voice was not lost in the process. I thought it would be difficult to dive into a thesis that deals with such specialised topics and theories, but the whole time I felt that the changes made reflected an understanding of the subject and how the language of this particular text could be improved without changing it too much. The corrections made by the reviser were very precise and elegant.”

When Koski ordered the language revision from Lingo, he hoped to receive a good text within the agreed deadline and at the agreed price, and these expectations were met without a fuss. He was also positively surprised by Lingo’s active and effective communication. After the language revision, Koski felt relieved knowing that the language of the thesis he was about to publish was clear and polished.